Apple's custom silicon has been rumored for years, but the Cupertino monster has finally given us real-world information about the Apple M1, the SoC behind the switch to ARM. Like many other ARM chips already on the market, the processor is an 8-core chip with a small BIG configuration, featuring four high-performance cores and four energy-efficient cores. Apple also packs an 8-core GPU into the SoC, which is expected to be more powerful than the Intel Iris graphics found in lower-end MacBooks. Apple is making some pretty bold claims about its M1 chip, claiming that it offers up to 3,5x performance compared to "competitive processors", though we're not sure what level of performance Apple is aiming for here. . Apple has also claimed that the Apple M1 is three times more powerful per watt than the "latest laptop PC chip," which is also incredibly vague. What's impressive, though, is that Apple has apparently created its own Thunderbolt controller, which means that even if Apple is ditching Intel for its entry-level computing products, those products will still have access to Thunderbolt. Fortunately, with pre-orders for the new MacBook Air, MacBook Pro 13, and Mac mini available today, it won't be long before we get to test Apple's performance for ourselves.
Come to the point
- Apple Custom Silicone for Mac
- When did it come out? New Macs running on the M1 are available to order now
![Mac 2020]()
(Image credit: Apple)
Apple M1 release date
The Apple M1 won't be available on its own, so its availability is ultimately tied to the products you use. At its One More Thing event on November 10, Apple announced that all three M1-equipped products—the new MacBook Air, the new MacBook Pro 13, and the Mac mini—will be available for pre-order the same day. We don't know how long it will take for any of these items to ship after you pre-order, but you can assume that if you order one today it will arrive in about a week.
![Mac 2020]()
(Image credit: Apple)
Apple M1 price
Again, the Apple M1 doesn't sell itself, which means the price depends entirely on the device it's sold on. However, since the new MacBook Air and the new MacBook Pro 13 have not changed in price, it does not change. It seems that switching to silicon internally will save consumers money. The cheapest way to get the Apple M1 will be the new Mac Mini, Apple's entry-level desktop PC. It'll set you back $699 / £699 / AU$1099 to start, and it'll go up if you add more RAM or SSD to the package. The MacBook Air with Apple M1 is still $999 / £999 / AU$1,599, and the new MacBook Pro starts at $1,299 / £1,299 / AU$1,999. One thing to note is that there is only one Apple M1 chip configuration. You can't afford to get a more powerful processor, as each configuration of the three announced computers will have the same processor, though the MacBook Pro and Mac mini should still see better performance, thanks to more power and more space. to cool.
![Mac 2020]()
(Image credit: Apple)
Apple has made some pretty bold claims about the speed and durability of its new SoC, and at first glance, it seems incredibly scalable. It can run fanless on MacBook Air and scale to desktop performance on Mac mini. However, Apple only provided very vague comparisons to existing hardware, stating that its new SoC was simply faster than the latest laptop chips, without going into details about the laptop chip itself. faster: there is more than one.
What we do know is that because it's an ARM chip, the Apple M1 is a complete system on a chip, or SoC. This means that Apple has been able to bundle a large number of components into a single package, reducing motherboard footprint and increasing performance by reducing latency and power requirements.
Specifically, the Apple M1 contains the processor, the cache, the structure, about which we have practically no information, a GPU, a neural engine, and DRAM. Putting all of these together in one package theoretically means that Apple could start producing much thinner MacBooks.
As for the CPU, the Apple M1 has 8 cores in a small BIG configuration. This means that there are four high-performance cores and four high-efficiency cores. High-performance cores are for short burst workloads that require a lot of high-frequency power from a single core, while high-efficiency cores will handle many tasks in the background, keeping the more powerful cores open. . load more demanding tasks as they arise.
This is a familiar layout at this point, similar to the Microsoft SQ1 chip found in the Surface Pro X; read our review if you want to know how it turned out.
We also get 8 GPU cores. Apple claims this integrated GPU is the fastest in its class, offering 2.6 TFLOPs of FP32 performance.
Based on the chip design, it's safe to assume that the CPU and GPU share cache, which isn't ideal given how little is available on the Apple M1. Each block of processor cores has access to a separate 4MB block of L2 cache, not to mention L3. For comparison, Intel's Tiger Lake flagship, the Core i7-1160G7, has three times that amount, at 12MB, that each core can access.
Apple's monumental claims of exponentially faster performance and increased efficiency seem super impressive at first glance, ultimately not meaning much until we know what Apple actually compared its new chip to. And it's unlikely that we ever will.
Apple's performance comparisons are being compared to a mysterious "latest laptop processor," which it won't reveal throughout the event. Likewise, when we're talking about the Mac mini, arguably the most powerful configuration of the Apple M1, we've only heard the comparison to "best-selling desktop" because the stream is rendering the image of a PC. low end HP desktop.
Fortunately, we should have these laptops in our labs for a full suite of tests to see what they can do, so we won't have to wait too long to see if Apple's performance claims are accurate.
Keep in mind that this first generation of Apple-built ARM processors for MacBooks may very well be just like any other first-generation product, with poor performance and plenty of bugs to fix.