SSD contributes immensely to M1 relative speed gains

[prism]

Everyone is focused almost solely on the new silicon and I’m not saying that the M1 is not a speed demon but the literal doubling of SSD r/w speeds has certainly contributed to making these computers dramatically more responsive than the ones that came before.
Im more than certain that if the early 2020 MBA was equipped with these drives, the differences would be significantly less.

 

[flowave]

I have 1TB. It's surprisingly fast. I think it's the single core performance that is doing the fast work.