The Apple event has just concluded «One more thing»And we were pleasantly surprised. In the same way that the previous keynote of the presentation of the iPhone 12 was simply a confirmation of everything that we already knew in advance, in this the surprises have been capital letters, although we already knew roughly what they were going to talk about.
A new processor that we knew absolutely nothing about (let's forget about the A14X), and three new Macs of the new Apple Silicon era, with brutal power and performance, an autonomy never seen before, without raising prices or a Euro (even some cheaper ) and available from next week. Without a doubt, this keynote will go down in history, with a before and after in the trajectory of Apple computers. Let's see what they told us about the new brown beast M1.
We all believed that the first Macs of the new Apple Silicon era were going to mount the processor of the new iPhone 12 and the iPad Air adapted to computers, one "A14X". And the first thing we have seen in the presentation is a new processor called "M1". The first of the M series, which will be responsible for moving the company's future Macs. A proprietary processor with ARM technology to the detriment of current Intel chips, which will all be progressively eliminated from Apple's computer offerings. The Apple Silicon era has begun.
M1 Technical Specifications
M1 is the first M-series processor, designed exclusively for Apple with unified memory ARM architecture with 5 Nanometer technology. It has the best throughput per consumed ratio in the world.
It has a CPU of 8 nuclei consisting of four high-performance cores and four high-efficiency cores. Each of the high-performance cores provides industry-leading performance for single-threaded tasks, while running as efficiently as possible.
They are the fastest CPU cores in the world on low-power chips, allowing photographers to edit high-resolution photos with blazing speed and developers to create applications nearly 3 times faster than before. And all four can be used together if a brutal amount of processing is needed at any given time.
Management of the different nuclei
The four high-efficiency cores offer exceptional performance at one-tenth the power needed in previous processors. By themselves, these four cores offer similar performance to the current generation dual-core macBook Air at much lower power. They are the most efficient way to perform light, everyday tasks like checking email or browsing the web, and conserve battery life in an exceptional way. And if necessary, all eight cores can work together to provide incredible computing power for the most demanding tasks and deliver the best world CPU performance per watt.
As a result, the new M1 processor offers CPU performance up to 3,5 times faster, up to 6x faster GPU performance, and up to 15x faster machine learning, while enabling up to 2x longer battery life than previous generation Macs with Intel processors.
A very powerful integrated graphics
A performance never seen in a processor
The M1 includes Apple's most advanced GPU. You benefit from years of analyzing Mac applications, including everyday applications and heavy professional workloads. It has up to eight powerful cores capable of running almost 25.000 threads simultaneously.
The GPU can handle extremely demanding tasks with ease, from smoothly playing multiple 4K video streams to rendering complex 3D scenes. With 2,6 teraflops of performance, M1 has the world's fastest integrated graphics built into a personal computer processor.
Machine learning
The M1 processor carries the neural motor from Apple to the Mac, greatly speeding up machine learning (ML) tasks. With Apple's most advanced 16-core architecture capable of 11 trillion operations per second, the neural Engine in M1 enables up to 15 times faster machine learning performance. In fact, the entire M1 chip is designed to excel at machine learning, with ML accelerators in the CPU and a powerful GPU, so tasks like video analysis, speech recognition, and image processing will take a level performance never seen before on an Apple computer.
Exclusive new technologies in the M1
The M1 chip contains a number of powerful custom technologies, including:
- Apple's latest Image Signal Processor (ISP) for higher-quality video with better noise reduction, greater dynamic range, and better auto white balance.
- The ultimate Safe Enclave for best-in-class security.
- A high-performance storage controller with AES encryption hardware for faster and more secure SSD performance.
- Low-power, high-efficiency media encoding and decoding engines encode for great performance and longer battery life.
- An Apple-designed Thunderbolt controller with support for USB 4, with transfer speeds of up to 40 Gbps and support for more peripherals than ever.
macOS Big Sur designed to fully exploit the M1
The symbiosis M1 and macOS Big Sur is called Apple Silicon
Big Sur macOS is designed, from its core, to take full advantage of the full capacity and power of the M1, providing a massive boost in performance, astonishing battery life, and even stronger security protections than today's. Like the iPhone and iPad, the Mac now wakes up instantly from sleep mode. Browsing with Safari, already the world's fastest browser, is now up to 1.5 times faster to run JavaScript.
With Big Sur and M1, Mac users can run a greater range of applications than ever. All Apple Mac software is now universal and runs natively on M1 systems. Existing Mac applications that have not been updated to the M1 will run smoothly on Apple's Rosetta 2 technology. And iPhone and iPad apps can now be run directly on an Apple Silicon Mac.
