Apple ushers new Mac era with breakthrough M1 chip
Apple has unveiled the M1, the most powerful chip it has ever created and the first chip designed specifically for the Mac.
Reporting on an Apple Event held Tuesday, CNet shared that Apple's next-generation Macs powered by the new chip will have better speeds and battery life. The same M1 chip now powers new MacBook Air, MacBook Pro and Mac Mini models.
“M1 is a breakthrough chip for the Mac. Our approach for M1 was to deliver industry leading performance and features while relentlessly focusing on power efficiency," Johny Srouji, Apple's senior vice president of hardware technologies said at the Apple launch.
The eight-core chip is "by far the highest performance" processor the company has ever created, Apple says.
In a press release, Apple detailed the specs, sharing that as a system on a chip (SoC), M1 combines numerous powerful technologies into a single chip, and features a unified memory architecture for dramatically improved performance and efficiency.
M1 is the first personal computer chip built using a cutting-edge, 5-nanometer process technology and is packed with an astounding 16 billion transistors, the most Apple has ever put into a chip.
As a result, M1 delivers up to 3.5x faster CPU performance, up to 6x faster GPU performance, and up to 15x faster machine learning, all while enabling battery life up to 2x longer than previous-generation Macs. With its profound increase in performance and efficiency, and combination with the new MacOS Big Sur, M1 delivers the biggest leap ever for the Mac.
"There has never been a chip like M1. It builds on more than a decade of designing industry-leading chips for iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch, and ushers in a whole new era for the Mac," stated Srouji.
The M1's impact can already be experienced with the newest line of Mac products. The new MacBook Air is Apple's thinnest and lightest notebook, with a silent, fanless design and 18-hour battery life; the MacBook Pro 13" has an advanced Neural Engine for enhanced machine learning, super fast unified memory, and a whopping 20 hours of battery life; and the M1 takes the Mac Mini to a whole new level, boosting performance, graphics, and a powerful Neural Engine, making it the company's most versatile "do-it-all" desktop.
The new Macs will be joined by higher-end models in the next two years as Apple gradually ejects Intel from its notebooks and desktops.
Watch the industry event launch here.
(Images by Mac)