Big for Macs: Apple’s new M1 processor debuts on 3 devices
dubai — Apple on Tuesday announced a major shift in its computing prowess, introducing new Macs that will now use the company’s very own processor.
And unless Apple pulls off another surprise event, the ‘One more thing’ virtual gathering — the company’s third major one in two months — caps off a busy year that has seen Apple release more products in this time of the year than ever before — an “unbelievable pace”, Apple CEO Tim Cook said.
The shift comes at a key time for Apple — and the computing industry in general — given the transformation of the work and education industries owing to the effects of the coronavirus pandemic that has forced more remote and work from home endeavours. In its recent fourth-quarter results, Apple posted a new high for Mac revenues, raking in $9.032 billion, a 29.2 leap from the year-ago period.
Apple has been, as a matter of fact, used Silicon for a decade now, and is the “heart” of the iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch. The company has been using Intel chips on its desktops and laptops since 2006.
The move also allows Apple to further expand its ecosystem, allowing apps from its App Stores to migrate easily to Macs.
Apple says all of its Macs will be fully transitioned to Silicon chips in the next two years. But to start off the new era, the company intro
duced a trio of devices — a MacBook Air, 13-inch MacBook Pro and Mac mini — that will debut the M1 system-on-chip (SoC). Before the new M1-powered Macs, all of Apple’s computing devices used multiple chips, each with specific purposes, including for memory, security, controllers for input/output and the CPU itself; the M1 SoC integrates all of these into one.
This, in turn, allows significantly better performance while being extremely power-efficient and without compromising on security.
The M1 is also the first chip built on 5nm architecture, using transistors at atomic size, which total 16 billion. It’s also capable of executing 11 trillion processes in a second, at par with the latest iPhones.
Apple will, however, continue to support and release new versions of macOS for Intel-based Macs in the comping years, and still has new Intel-based Macs in development.