As the “powerful” Apple M1 processor is announced

One of the largest tech companies in the world Apple, with the launch event held last month, based on ARM Apple M1 the first Mac models powered by the processor had unearthed. Started to be shared one by one with the release of M1 processor Macs performance test resultsMac with M1 processors Superior performance compared to Macs with Intel processors revealed that it showed. As well as?

Developer Erik Engheim delved into the M1 chip to find out how Apple could deliver higher performance with an ARM-based processor than Intel processors. Engheim’s most important discovery on this subject; While AMD and Intel include general purpose CPU cores in their processors, the Apple M1 they have cores focused on specific tasks to be.

The Apple M1 processor has many different units responsible for a single task

To explain this difference more clearly; The Apple M1 processor has a neural engine for machine learning operations, a video decoder / encoder with support for power saving, for encryption, unlike the CPU and GPU in conventional Intel or AMD processors Secure Enclavefor tasks that require powerful math, such as decompressing files. Digital signal processorand an image processing unit for image processing.

In addition, the new Apple M1 processor has a unified memory architecture that allows CPU, GPU and other drives to exchange data without copying data. Unified memory architectureOf course, it causes a performance boost as it speeds up data transfer between drives.

There is a fundamental reason why Apple is able to include units assigned to specific tasks in the M1 processor, while Intel and AMD cannot make radical decisions about it: the software. Since Apple also uses its operating system on Macs with an M1 processor, it has no software compatibility issues. When Intel or AMD do this, the Microsoft-Intel / AMD-PC / Notebook manufacturer triangle software and complexity of updates will come back.

In summary, Apple, with its own operating system and the self-confidence brought by the software to be developed specifically for its own operating system, is a classic of the ARM-based M1 processor. CPU + GPU architecture went further, adding special units to the processor that are only responsible for certain tasks. When we add some optimizations to this twist, we see a very performing processor.