Apple has unveiled its first chipset for MAC called M1. It is a powerful chipset specially designed for Mac.
The Apple M1 has a small form factor, offers optimum performance and power efficiency. The chipset combines several powerful technologies in a single chip and features a unified memory architecture for improved performance and efficiency.
The Apple M1 is first personal computer chip based on 5nm process technology and packs in 16 billion transistors, which is the most Apple has used in a chip.
It has world’s fastest CPU core in low-power silicone, best CPU performance per watt and fastest integrated graphics in personal computer. It also includes Apple Neural engine.
The Apple M1 SoC delivers 3.5X faster CPU performance, up to 6X faster GPU performance, up to 15X faster machine learning and 2X longer battery than previous generation Macs.
Unlike traditional Chips, the M1 combines CPU, I/O, Security and more technologies in to a single system-on-chip (SoC) and features in unified memory architecture that brings together high-bandwidth, low-latency memory into a single pool with a custom package, which allows SoC to access the same data without copying in between multiple pools of memory.
The M1 chipset from Apple features an 8-core CPU which makes up of four high performance cores and four high efficiency cores. The high performance cores delivers optimum performance for single-threaded tasks. The CPU is fast enough to allow photographers to quickly edit high-res pictures or allow developers to build apps that are 3x faster than before.
The SoC’s four high-efficiency cores deliver performance at 10th of the power. Apple says that these cores deliver similar performance as the current-generation dual-core MacBook Air at a much lower power.
The GPU in M1 is also powerful, featuring eight powerful cores capable of running nearly 25000 threads simultaneously. It can also handle multiple 4K video streams to render complex 3D scenes. It delivers 2.6 teraflops of throughput.
The Apple M1 chipset brings Apple Neural Engine to Mac. It has 16-core architecture capable of 11 trillion operations per second. The entire M1 chip is designed to excel at machine learning, with ML accelerators in CPU and GPU.
Apart from these M1 packs in Apple’s latest image signal processor (ISP) for higher quality video with better noise reduction, greater dynamic range and improved auto white balance.
It has latest Secure Enclave for best in class security. There is a high-performance storage controller with AES encryption hardware for faster and more secure SSD performance. The SoC also features in low-power, high efficient media encode and decode engines for great performance and extended battery life. It has an Apple designed Thunderbolt controller which supports USB 4 and transfer speeds up to 40Gbps.