Apple and the M1 chip: why the new chip could turn the PC market upside down

From the outside, you can’t see how new the new MacBooks Apple unveiled on Tuesday are, because they look like their predecessors. There should be practical and psychological reasons for this. On the one hand, sources of errors in production can be excluded in this way. On the other hand, it signals continuity to buyers. “It won’t be too bad with the new chip if the computer still looks the same as before,” may be the thought you want to plant in the interested parties. Nothing is as it was under the recycled aluminum lid.

Because instead of the Intel processors that Apple has implanted in its computer for a decade and a half, there is now something completely different from unity. Apple calls the M1 chip to differentiate it from the A14 chips found on the iPhone and iPad. M1 and A14 have a lot in common, especially the fact that they are based on ARM technology, which for many years has provided the models for the chips found in the vast majority of smartphones.

Talking about new Macs like Mac ARM would still be wrong. ARM technology is also in the M1, but only a small part. Since Apple hasn’t licensed the actual processor design from ARM, only the instruction set used by the chips, basically software. However, Apple has been developing the processors on which this software runs for years and does many things differently from the competition.

Apple’s chips are not just processors, but so-called SoCs, systems on chips. In addition to a number of processor cores, which differ from each other in performance and power consumption, there is also a graphics processor, the so-called neural engine for machine learning, working memory and a number of other circuits specialized in certain activities . What these tasks are is determined in coordination with the programmers who develop Apple’s operating systems and programs.

No more detours

This deep integration of hardware and software is also the secret of the incredible increase in performance and endurance that Apple promises for the first devices equipped with M1. There is talk of a battery life of up to ten hours longer and three and a half times more power.

This should be possible, for example, because the M1’s main memory is not on separate memory modules, as is usually the case, but on the chip itself. For example, graphics data does not have to be moved from main memory to graphics memory to be processed by the graphics chip, but can be performed by the graphics department and the processor can be used alternately without deviations, which saves time and thus obtains performance.

The price for this, however, is considerable. If you order one of the new MacBooks with 16 instead of the standard eight gigabytes of RAM, you have to pay 224 euros to double the memory, 28 euros per gigabyte. Retrofit memory modules are available for Windows notebooks in the accessory trade at prices around four euros per gigabyte. But doing this is impossible with new Apple computers.

Performance depends on the fan

Unlike its Intel-based computers, Apple doesn’t specify a clock rate for the M1 chips. Instead, the company wants to focus on the performance per watt metric. Almost all of the same M1 chips are built into the new MacBook and Mac Mini, but they are capable of offering different performance.

The difference is the cooling. In the fanless and therefore quiet MacBook Air, the M1 reaches its thermal limits under prolonged high loads and reduces its speed in order not to overheat. In the MacBook Pro and Mac Mini, on the other hand, the small fans expel the heat wasted by the chip from the housing, which is why it can run longer at full throttle, i.e. at a high clock rate, which is important when changing the video.

Less leads to more

With the move to Apple Silicon, Apple is also launching various additional chips overboard, such as external graphics processors and its own T2 security chip. Fewer additional chips means motherboards become simpler and smaller, the number of components is reduced, and thus manufacturing becomes simpler and cheaper. At this point, shareholders are also happy with the new technology, because it brings higher profit margins and therefore substantial dividends.

Far more important than a few dollars more in long-term dividends will be how the move to Apple Silicon transforms Apple’s ecosystem. Just as iPhone users can already use iPhone apps – sometimes a bit cumbersome – on an iPad, in the future they will also use them on the Mac, at least in theory. As a result, the boundaries between devices are at least further softened, and whoever gets involved is drawn deeper into Apple’s golden cage.