The Apple Silicon M1 Discussion thread

thetechfreak

Legend Never Ends
*images.anandtech.com/doci/16226/2020-11-10%2019_08_13_678x452.jpg

Today, Apple has unveiled their brand-new MacBook line-up. This isn’t an ordinary release – if anything, the move that Apple is making today is something that hasn’t happened in 15 years: The start of a CPU architecture transition across their whole consumer Mac line-up.


Thanks to the company’s vertical integration across hardware and software, this is a monumental change that nobody but Apple can so swiftly usher in. The last time Apple ventured into such an undertaking in 2006, the company had ditched IBM’s PowerPC ISA and processors in favor of Intel x86 designs. Today, Intel is being ditched in favor of the company’s own in-house processors and CPU microarchitectures, built upon the Arm ISA.


The new processor is called the Apple M1, the company’s first SoC designed with Macs in mind. With four large performance cores, four efficiency cores, and an 8-GPU core GPU, it features 16 billion transistors on a 5nm process node. Apple’s is starting a new SoC naming scheme for this new family of processors, but at least on paper it looks a lot like an A14X.


Today’s event contained a ton of new official announcements, but also was lacking (in typical Apple fashion) in detail. Today, we’re going to be dissecting the new Apple M1 news, as well as doing a microarchitectural deep dive based on the already-released Apple A14 SoC.

Full article on Anandtech: Apple Announces The Apple Silicon M1: Ditching x86 - What to Expect, Based on A14

The new M1 products can be found here: Apple’s first M1 chip-based Macs are playing it too safe

Thoughts on this new series?
 

Desmond

Destroy Erase Improve
Staff member
Admin
Is there going to be a compatibility layer for existing x86 applications? Or are they expecting everyone to migrate their applications to ARM?
 
OP
thetechfreak

thetechfreak

Legend Never Ends
Is there going to be a compatibility layer for existing x86 applications? Or are they expecting everyone to migrate their applications to ARM?
There is something called Rosetta 2, which is an updated version of Rosetta that was first introduced that allowed PowerPC apps to run on the Intel x86 platform when they last made the switch.

Have a look at these writeups: Rosetta 2 is Apple’s key to making the ARM transition less painful

*www.engadget.com/rosetta-2-will-keep-old-intel-apps-running-on-apples-new-silicon-182442712.html
 

Nerevarine

Incarnate
I have remote access to one Developer Transition Kit (It has A14Z, some preproduction unit)..
All apps run fine on it, as far as I could see.

The M1 is seriously impressive tech, I am thinking of buying either an Air or Mini in the future for personal use.
 

ico

Super Moderator
Staff member
I suspect benchmarks like Geekbench entirely fit into Apple M1's "enormous" L1-L2 caches. As such, scores are inflated.

We should wait for actual benchmarks.
 

pkkumarcool

Game & anime Lover
The performance would be much better on mac than it was with intel chips as it is made by apple as for the x86 applications i dont think it would be supported later as we know its apple.So i guess everyone have to migrate to ARM as @Desmond David said.
 

pkkumarcool

Game & anime Lover
There is something called Rosetta 2, which is an updated version of Rosetta that was first introduced that allowed PowerPC apps to run on the Intel x86 platform when they last made the switch.

Have a look at these writeups: Rosetta 2 is Apple’s key to making the ARM transition less painful

*www.engadget.com/rosetta-2-will-keep-old-intel-apps-running-on-apples-new-silicon-182442712.html
i think rosetta 2 is also for running iphone apps on mac as far as i remember.
 
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