This article tells you what is different about Apple’s self-developed M1 chip?

      At Apple’s last fall conference in 2020, Apple brought its first self-developed SoC - M1. The M1 chip adopts the classic big and small core design of the ARM architecture, coupled with the neural engine and powerful GPU, providing Mac with a more powerful performance improvement.

　　If you are planning to buy a new Mac and don’t know much about the M1 chip, this article will tell you what is different about Apple’s self-developed M1 SoC?

　　What can the M1 chip bring?

　　At the previous WWDC, Apple announced that Mac will no longer use Intel processors with X86 architecture in the future.

　　Mac has been using Intel processors since 2006. Self-developed processors can completely get rid of Intel's restrictions and no longer have to consider Intel's release rhythm. Just like the iPhone and iPad use their own A series chips, Mac can use its own processors more freely.

　　So what can the Apple M1 chip bring? First of all, using Apple's own chips on the Mac can help it make better software optimizations and better control the performance of MacOS and Mac. Even without looking at the technical specifications of the chip, its improvements and optimizations to macOS will significantly improve performance and stability.

Significantly improved performance and stability

　　Another benefit is that this means that Macs can now run iPhone and iPad apps. Developers don't have to opt out of this feature, but this is the first time that iPhone and iPad apps can be found in the Mac App Store.

　　At the "One more thing" event, Apple touted it as "the first chip designed specifically for the Mac," saying it was made for Mac systems, where low power consumption is critical. That's why the first Apple-powered MacBook Air and MacBook Pro models have significant improvements in battery life over their Intel predecessors.

　　Apple M1 CPU

　　The core of the M1 chip is an 8-core CPU with a 4+4 large and small core design. Each core provides better performance guarantee for single-threaded tasks. In Apple's words: This is the world's fastest low-power CPU core.

The M1 chip's 8-core CPU

　　The high-performance cores themselves are so powerful that they can deliver similar performance to a dual-core Intel MacBook Air while offering greater efficiency. Apple says the eight cores can work together to "provide the most computing power and the best CPU performance for the most demanding tasks."

　　Graphics

　　Of course, the M1 chip does more than that: it also has up to an 8-core GPU that can perform 25,000 threads of work simultaneously, which means that the M1 can easily handle very complex tasks. According to Apple, the M1 has "the world's fastest computer-integrated graphics processing power" with a throughput of 2.6 trillion floating-point operations per second.

　　How does all this help in practical use? We will only know when the first batch of M1 chip Macs arrive and we actually use them. But in theory, these data mean that we can use Apple Arcade to play games, edit videos, connect to 6K external displays, and so on more easily.

　　Neural Engine

　　The M1 chip also brings Apple's industry-leading neural engine to the Mac for the first time. Apple has been using the neural engine in iPhones and iPads since the launch of the A11 processor in 2017. The M1's neural engine uses a 16-core design and can perform 11 trillion operations per second.

　　The neural engine has powerful machine learning capabilities, including video analysis, speech recognition, artificial intelligence, etc. Many modern applications increasingly rely on machine learning to perform daily tasks, so the neural engine plays a very important role for the M1 chip.

　　Unified memory and SSD performance

　　The new Apple M1 chip also includes a new unified memory architecture: This architecture combines high-bandwidth, low-latency memory into a single pool in a custom package. This enables all technologies in the SoC to access the same data without copying between multiple memory pools, further improving performance and efficiency.

　　For SSD storage, Apple uses a new high-performance storage controller with AES encryption hardware to improve security and performance. Apple says that the MacBook Air with the M1 chip can improve SSD performance by 2 times.

　　Secure Enclave Features

　　The M1 chip also has Apple's Secure Enclave feature, which can handle things like Touch ID authentication and other security tasks. However, this is not the first time Apple has introduced Secure Enclave to the Mac. In previous Macs, the T1 or T2 chips also supported the Secure Enclave feature, and now it's integrated directly into the M1 chip.

　　In addition, Apple said that the M1 chip improves the quality of the MacBook camera, with better noise reduction, wider dynamic range, improved auto white balance, and machine learning-enhanced facial detection, so users "look their best during video calls", but it will be necessary to wait and see the camera test results to know whether this model is significantly different from previous models.

　　Limitations of the M1 chip

　　The new Apple M1 chip is not without limitations, which is to be expected since it is the first chip Apple has designed for the Mac.

　　The first batch of Macs with M1 chips are the MacBook Air, Mac mini, and 13-inch MacBook Pro. If you look closely, you may notice that all three machines have only two USB-C ports that support USB 4 and Thunderbolt. The M1 chip only supports two ports, which is a big limitation.

　　Another limitation is that M1 Macs have a maximum memory of 16GB, while Intel Macs can have higher memory. The same applies to SSD storage, where M1 Macs are limited to 2TB, but Intel Macs can go up to 4TB or even higher.

　　Of course, the M1 chip is just the beginning of a "new series of chips designed specifically for Mac." Looking ahead, there is still a lot to do regarding the Apple Silicon transition for Mac. I believe that Apple will provide more powerful processor chips for the Mac series based on the M1 chip.