Apple Silicon is basically a set of separate processors which are developed by Apple to be used in their laptops so that they become more powerful while not being high on battery consumption status.
The latest series of Apple Silicon chips are M1, M1 Pro and M1 Pro Max respectively. All these sets of processors were designed by Apple based on their efficient Arm architecture. These Apple Silicon chips are used to power the various sets of Apple devices like Macbook, iMac and iPad etc.
In this article, we will learn about the famous Apple Silicon chip and how it is special and more powerful than other chips made by other manufacturers.
Why is Apple Silicon So Powerful?
- The famous Apple Silicon chips are so closely integrated that they contain all the CPU,GPU and RAM and the various Neural Engines, SSD controllers and the image signal processors so that the chip does not have to reach out to many different places as compared to other processors as they are not very tightly integrated.
- The Apple starting edition M1 chip mainly consists of an eight core CPU and an eight core GPU. The eight core CPU consists of four high performance cores in the processor which mainly focus on boosting the performance of the processor to its peak level. The other four processor cores are power efficiency cores in the processor which deliver the maximum power required by the power while also maintaining the optimum power efficiency resulting in a long battery life.
- Similarly, the M1 Pro has a 10 core processor with a 16 core GPU embedded in it. The M1 Pro Max has a 10 core processor with a 32 core GPU for more graphics performance.
- The main difference between the Apple Silicon chips and the chips made by other manufacturer is that the Apple Silicon mainly use the single unified memory for all its task related to information read and write, due to which it doesn’t has to go to different places to access the data which eliminates multiple threading and wasting of time in data transfer and storage.
- Apple also ensures a high sense of software and hardware integration between its chips and the software used in their devices. It ensures maintaining high performance while also having the lowest battery consumption.
- The machine learning algorithms and the devices used in it called the Neural Engines make it further more powerful and capable. They monitor the usage of the users and then adapt it according to the needs of the user to give the best possible experience to the user.
- The processors made by other manufacturers mainly use the older version of CPU architecture called the x86 architecture. It has become very old and not efficient for today’s high performance demanding apps.Instead, Apple Silicon uses the more advanced Arm architecture in its chips which gives more power to the user for higher performance driven apps.
- Software also plays an important role in shaping the performance of the processor. Most other chips run Windows in it, which is not optimised to its best and it always contains some malware and virus issues. Meanwhile, Macs always run the best optimised software as they are not vulnerable to dangerous viruses and they can run all the software very smoothly.
Unified memory:
The Unified memory in the Apple silicon chip is responsible for quickly sharing the memory access between all the CPU, GPU and the RAM in the chip for fast read and write data speeds. There is no separate memory to be created for the different use of CPU and GPU , so they do not need to transfer any information to each other and hence, they can even use the same memory location for operation of the data.
The unified memory takes care of transferring and copying large chunks of data. It carefully understands the usage pattern and then makes the high performance cores of the CPU to perform at its peak level.
Better than Intel chips:
The Apple silicon chips are much better than other chip manufactures like Intel because of the following reasons:
- The Intel chips use the previous generation of processor architecture designs like the x86 design architecture while the Apple silicon chips use the latest generation of the Arm architecture design that have comparatively less flows than it.
- Apple silicon chips are capable of running the various iOS applications and games on the M1 powered chips which make them much more superior to the Intel chips.It can support various cross-platform applications to run on the Apple silicon chips for enhancing the user experience.
- The M1 powered Apple silicon chips are more powerful than the random chips produced by other companies because it takes use of its high speed unified memory in order to support fast data speeds across the board.
- Apple silicon chips are more tightly integrated with the MacOS software which is customly designed by keeping in mind the usage scenario of these mobile processors.
- The neural Engines used in these processors apply their machine learning algorithms to work by adjusting and adapting of the user’s needs and then maximising thrower efficiency according to these machine learning neural engines.
- They perform at a very high level by giving the least battery consumption as these are very less battery consuming mobile processor. They consume very little to no battery consumption when they are kept idle, meanline the Intel processors consume a lot of power leading to lower power efficiency.