Apple Silicon: The Complete Guide

[MacRumors]

Apple in 2020 introduced the first Apple silicon Macs, marking the start of its transition away from Intel's chips. Apple's custom chips are Arm-based and are similar to the A-series chips used in iPhones and iPads, making them markedly different from the Intel chips that were used in earlier Macs. Apple started its Apple silicon transition in 2020, and finished it in 2023 with the launch of an Apple silicon Mac Pro. At this point, none of Apple's Macs use Intel chips, and Intel chip technology has been phased out.

This guide covers everything you need to know about Apple silicon chips.

Apple Silicon Mac Lineup

All of Apple's Macs use Apple silicon, and Apple is on its second generation of M-series chips. The MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, Mac mini, Mac Studio, iMac, Mac Pro, and iPad Pro all use variants of the M2 chip.

M-series chips feature Apple's "System on a Chip" design for the Mac, and it integrates several different components including the CPU, GPU, unified memory architecture (RAM), Neural Engine, Secure Enclave, SSD controller, image signal processor, encode/decode engines, Thunderbolt controller with USB 4 support, and more, all of which power the different features in the Mac.

Apple's current chip lineup includes the M2, M2 Pro, M2 Max, and M2 Ultra, all of which are built on a 5-nanometer process and are upgrades to the M1, M1 Pro, M1 Max, and M1 Ultra.

• M2 - 8-core CPU, 10-core GPU
• M2 Pro - 10-core or 12-core CPU, 16-core or 19-core GPU
• M2 Max - 12-core CPU, 30-core or 38-core GPU
• M2 Ultra - 24-core CPU, 60-core or 76-core GPU.

In the case of the M2 Ultra, it is basically two M2 Max chips that are linked together, which is why it has the specifications of a doubled M2 Max chip. Apple uses the M2 in its lower-priced Macs, including the MacBook Air, 13-inch MacBook Pro, and the Mac mini. The M2 Pro is for the 14 and 16-inch MacBook Pro models and higher-end Mac mini models, while the M2 Max is designed for upgraded MacBook Pro models and the Mac Studio. The M2 Ultra is reserved for the Mac Pro and the Mac Studio, and it is Apple's most powerful and most expensive chip option.

All of the Apple silicon chips have unified memory that's shared between all chip components to eliminate swapping and improve performance, plus a 16-core Neural Engine and other add-ons like an image signal processor, Secure Enclave for secure booting and Touch ID, and more.

Why Apple Made the Switch

Apple adopted its own Apple silicon chips to make better Macs. Apple's chips bring a whole new level of performance with more powerful Macs that are also more energy-efficient. M-series Macs are much more powerful than Intel Macs ever were, and the battery life is much improved.

Apple Silicon Advantage

Apple has years of experience with power-efficient chip design thanks to its work on the iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch, all of which use custom-designed chips developed by Apple engineers. Apple has made huge gains in processor performance over the years, and its chips are now more than powerful enough to be used in Macs.

Apple aimed to deliver the highest possible performance with the lowest power consumption, a goal that its expertise made it well-suited to achieve. Better performance and efficiency were Apple's main goals, but there are other reasons that the company decided to transition away from Intel, and that includes all of the custom technologies that are built into Apple silicon to further boost the Mac's capabilities and make it stand out from the competition.

Deep integration between software and hardware has always made iPhones stand out from other smartphones, and the same is true for the Mac. Apple's custom chips provide best-in-class security with the Secure Enclave and high-performance graphics capabilities for pro apps and games, but the true performance gains remain to be seen.

Apple silicon chips are built with Neural Engines and Machine Learning Accelerators to make Macs ideal platforms for machine learning. Other technologies include a high-quality camera processor, performance controller, Secure Enclave and Touch ID, high-performance DRAM, unified memory, and cryptography acceleration.

Ditching Intel

Many of Apple's prior Macs used x86 chips from Intel, while its iPhones and some iPads used Arm-based chips. x86 chips and Arm chips like the M-series chips are built using different architectures, so the transition from x86 to Arm has took some effort.

Apple used Intel's chips in its Mac li... Click here to read rest of article

Article Link: Apple Silicon: The Complete Guide

 

[Eorlas]

i know this forum is oddly excited about this idea, but i would much rather apple keep the higher tiers with intel processors.

 

[kylepro88]

Maybe the MacBook Air first? Ideal place to start probably given it's goals as a product, weight, battery life emphasis, performance needs, etc.

 

[jdiamond]

Back in 2006, Apple brought out the first x86 based Macs, and it only took them 12 months to switch them all. A big key back then was Rosetta Stone (to run the old software unchanged). I have to wonder if one reason Apple is ditching 32-bit desktop apps and promoting iPad Apps on Mac is to prepare for such a transition.

 

[JosephKing]

A Mac with an arm? Or ARM? I'd rather the latter!

 

[jdiamond]

i know this forum is oddly excited about this idea, but i would much rather apple keep the higher tiers with intel processors.

That might be fine with desktop Macs, but the thermals on notebooks are just awful, and the fan noise is so loud...

 

[DNichter]

Only a matter of time. I can't stand macOS now, but I would be interested in an iOS book with a trackpad and touchscreen keyboard.

 

[jdiamond]

Ya just click this one check box in XCode...

 

[nol2001]

I hope that there will be at least one Apple Arm laptop without fans.

The Apple TV 4K has a fan though so it might be wishful thinking...

 

[kanki1985]

I think Apple wants to make this as seamless as they transitioned from 32bit to 64bit or from static screen size to variable screen size. And given Apple, I am really looking forward to ARM based chips and hope my 2018 intel based laptop stays useable one the transition is fully complete...

 

[Jerion]

Back in 2006, Apple brought out the first x86 based Macs, and it only took them 12 months to switch them all. A big key back then was Rosetta Stone (to run the old software unchanged). I have to wonder if one reason Apple is ditching 32-bit desktop apps and promoting iPad Apps on Mac is to prepare for such a transition.

No question about dropping 32-bit support, that is going to have been a useful part of getting the ecosystem of modern Mac software running on an A-series chip. Catalyst though is pretty orthogonal to the whole idea; that's blending iOS and Mac in a totally different way. It's more about enticing iPad developers to spend more attention on the Mac and much less about hardware nitty gritty.

 

[TheRealNick]

I have no doubt an arm-based Mac will allow Apple to provide a better experience overall, but I have two concerns: The first is running Windows/Parallels, how will that work, if at all? And second, will this mean that Apple will move to a controlled-app ecosystem like iOS?

 

[jb-net]

Hopefully not too soon until they are really ready. Benchmarks are not everything. Intel Chips are way more complex and still significantly faster in real life.

 

[Porco]

This is why Apple products cost an arm and a leg. They are collecting all the arms. Eventually they will release an Arm-based mac... and finally, when they have enough, they will also release a Leg-based mac too.

Seriously, though, I hope if there is a transition it's a very gradual one.

 

[RFolk]

Hackintosh will be so much harder.

 

[Mac Fly (film)]

Where are you getting those Geekbench scores from? The numbers seem too high:

 

[oneMadRssn]

First, the article is a bit confusing. ARM is not the opposite of Intel.

ARM is company that develops several different architectures / instruction sets. Many companies design ARM-licensed or ARM-compatible chips, and many other companies make them. For example, the A13 is a 64-bit ARM architecture chip manufactured by TSMC but designed by Apple.

Second, I think one of the biggest assets to macOS currently is that it can run pretty much all x86/x64 Linux apps, and most x86/x64 Windows apps can be ported over to macOS relatively easily. If they switch to ARM architecture with backwards compatibility, macOS will suffer greatly.

Windows RT failed because it lacked apps. Windows 10 on the Surface Pro X can emulate 32-bit x86 apps, and support for x64 is coming soon supposedly. If that ARM fork of Windows 10 is to be successful, it will be because of the emulation. Apple has to do the same thing, or it will surely fail.

And before someone says "but devs can just port their ARM iOS/ipadOS apps over to macOS," they can, but (1) usually iPad apps are inferior to the current x86-based macOS counterparts, and (2) so far, there have been no good ported apps.

Maybe Apple can dip their toes in the water, like Microsoft is doing, and release a ARM-based Macbook or something, but keep the Air/Pro and iMac lines on x64.

Frankly, I'd rather see Apple use the new 7nm TSMC-made AMD Ryzen CPUs.

 

[Cosmosent]

With Apple closing the speed gap between Arm and x86, there's no reason why many of the company's notebook machines (and even desktop machines) couldn't be powered by Arm-based chips instead of standard Intel chips.

I've been hearing that for 15+ years !

It's much more complicated than that !

 

[hawkeye_a]

I'm excited about the transition as ARM chips get more powerful. Truth be told, a lot of computational heavy tasks these days seem to be be offloaded onto GP-GPUs. 68000 to PowerPC to Intel to ARM.... if anyone can pull off a transition of this magnitude it's Apple.

That being said, if the year was 1998-2010, i'd be more confident in Apple. Today, I worry that they might throw an ARM CPU into Macs and just to market an ability to run iOS Apps or the Mac with touchscreens or something along those lines.

 

[realtuner]

Where are you getting those Geekbench scores from? The numbers seem too high:

View attachment 875162

Those were the Geekbench 4 results. Your results are Geekbench 5.

 

[CaTOAGU]

I think Apple wants to make this as seamless as they transitioned from 32bit to 64bit or from static screen size to variable screen size. And given Apple, I am really looking forward to ARM based chips and hope my 2018 intel based laptop stays useable one the transition is fully complete...

If they stop supporting a 2 year old machine for the transition they’re finished as far as I’m concerned. My wife’s 10! Year old Toshiba laptop runs the latest version of Windows 10 X64 absolutely fine. Apple have no excuse at all.

 

[alexandero]

I hope they'll improve Catalyst before starting the transition, otherwise it'll be a fiasco.

 

[slineaudi]

I think a more reasonable first step will be for the iPad to become more mac like. Just a few more features and the Macbook Air is replaced.

 

[mi7chy]

It's not a matter of 'if' but 'when' considering they have nothing to compete with Microsoft Windows and Google ChromeOS on ARM.

 

[realtuner]

It's not a matter of 'if' but 'when' considering they have nothing to compete with Microsoft Windows and Google ChromeOS on ARM.

You're backwards.

Microsoft and Google have nothing to compete with Apple. Windows on ARM isn't the holy-grail people think it is and Chrome - well that's a useless pretend OS.