Apple M1 — How Apple Silicon Changed the PC Industry
It’s 2007. You have a bulky mobile phone with a tiny physical keyboard that you could “theoretically” use for emailing, games, and browsing the internet… But practically, these phones were only good for calling and messaging. But then, among the chaotic, slow, & boring phones, Apple unveiled a revolutionary new phone, the iPhone. A touchscreen phone that was capable of doing stuff that existing phones couldn’t imagine doing. A phone that was truly worthy of the title “smartphone”. Did smartphones not exist before the iPhone? Yes, they absolutely did. But were they as good as the iPhone? Nope, not even close.
Apple had set a gold standard in the mobile industry. 1 year later, they revolutionized the tech industry, once again! This time with the first MacBook Air. Then they did it again, in 2010, with the iPad. Apple was becoming famous for industry changing products. But soon after the iPad, Apple’s innovations started becoming stagnant. Though they did come up with the Apple Watch, Apple TV, and Apple Pay, none of these were as remarkable as the iPhone, MacBook, or iPad. The consumers had become accustomed to the fact that Apple doesn’t innovate anymore…
But these opinions completely changed in 2020.
In 2020, Apple announced a new chip for their Macs. The M1 chip. They made bold claims with this chip — the world’s fastest CPU core, the world’s best CPU performance per watt, the world’s fastest integrated graphics, and an unheard battery life. These claims sounded insane… but they held true! Apple had come up with yet another ground-wrecking innovation — Apple Silicon. The Apple Silicon, i.e. the M1 chip was probably one of the biggest technological innovations of the last decade.
Apple M1 vs. Intel. Let’s Compare.
Powered by an 8-core CPU, up to 8-core GPU, a Neural Engine, and a 5 nanometer design, an M1 powered MacBook is capable of taking on an Intel i9 chip powered desktop. In fact, the M1 MacBook Air is so efficient that it makes the Intel MacBook Pro appear outdated.
While the Intel MacBooks could barely last 5 hours on battery, the M1 MacBook would easily cross 10 hours on battery power! This battery life with such an amazing performance was something unheard of. Moreover, the M1 chip was significantly faster for developers, and it even allowed users to run iPhone apps on their MacBooks.
Apple had beaten Intel in their own game. With this success, Apple was quick to leave Intel in order to make way for Apple Silicon on its high-end PCs.
How Apple M1 and Intel Processors Work?
Fundamentally, the working of the Apple silicon chips (processors) is completely different from the Intel chips.
Let’s take an example to understand how they work. Say you throw a ball and ask your dog to “Fetch” it. When you say the word “Fetch”, your dog will automatically understand to run after the ball, pick up the ball, bring it back, and give it to you. This is how an Intel processor works.
Now, let’s assume that your dog is dumb (sorry!) and gets confused when you give him difficult instructions. To fetch the ball, you decide to give him simple, step-by-step instructions. So, you say “Run after the ball”, “pick up the ball”, “bring the ball back”, and “give the ball to me”. Well, those were a lot of instructions. However, each instruction was simple, compared to the complicated “fetch” instruction. This is how an Apple silicon (M1) chip works.
Apple chips are based on the ARM (Advanced RISC Machine) architecture. On the other hand, Intel chips are based on the x86 architecture. The difference between these two architectures lies in the way they process instructions. The ARM architecture processes instructions by using the Reduced Instruction Set Computer (RISC) mechanism. And, the x86 architecture processes instructions based on the Complex Instruction Set Computer (CISC) mechanism.
As we understood from our dog example, in RISC processors, the total number of raw instructions are more, however, the amount of work (or energy) required per instruction is low. Contrary to this, in CISC processors, the total number of raw instructions are less, while the amount of work required per instruction is huge. Because of the low energy requirement in RISC based processors, they are much more energy efficient than CISC based processors.
Why x86 Dominates the PC Industry?
Since we now understand that RISC is more efficient than CISC, the question is, why use CISC at all? Why is the entire world using Intel’s x86 chips? Well, as it turns out, RISC is not always as efficient as CISC. To understand this concept, we need to push our dog analogy a little further.
Let’s say our dog is given a more sophisticated task, say getting a cola from the fridge. In this case, providing a single CISC instruction (“Bring Cola”) would be much easier for him, than explaining him each and every step individually (go to the fridge, open the door, find a red can, pick it up, close the door, bring it back, hand it over to me).
This trade-off between the number of instructions and the amount of energy required to process an instruction has been a topic of debate between RISC and CISC disciples. Usually, it is said that if the task to be done is relatively simple, like scrolling through Instagram or watching a video, RISC would be more effective in providing a balance between performance and battery life. However, if the task to be done is complicated, like editing a video or playing a high-end game, CISC would be able to provide a better performance.
This is why almost all smartphones are powered by ARM based processors (like Snapdragon 650) while PCs are powered by x86 based processors. This is also the reason why Apple used Intel chips in their PCs up until 2020.
So how did Apple manage to implement ARM in their PCs when these chips were clearly not suitable for them?
How did Apple Pull Off ARM?
The primary reason why Apple was able to fabricate this amazing chip was because of their hardware and software integration. Because Apple controls the entire production process of their software and hardware, they were able to design a chip that would cater to the exact requirements of MacOS and the hardware components.
Another point to be considered is that the M1 chip is a System on a Chip (SoC), and not a stand-alone processor (CPU) like the ones Intel creates. It means that besides the CPU (the brain of a PC), this chip also has an integrated RAM, GPU (Graphics Processing Unit), and other geeky stuff that we don’t need to know about. Since all the essential components are located on the same chip, these components are able to interact with each other much more quickly and efficiently, compared to the separate components like we see in a traditional PC. The results? The M1 chip had better performance than its Intel predecessor, buttery smooth animations, instant wake from sleep, and an incredible battery life.
This leverage of vertical integration and firm control was not available to other PC (or CPU) manufacturers, since these manufacturers buy their hardware and software from multiple different companies. This is also the reason why a M1 chip won’t work well on a Windows PC.
The After Effects of M1
The M1 chip powered MacBook Air and MacBook Pro received an overwhelming response from the consumers. As of Q1 2023, Apple had a global PC market share of 21.3%. A decade ago, it was just 12.8%. Since the launch of Apple Silicon, Apple saw growth of a whopping 60%, while Windows’ growth stood at just 6%.
Considering the fact that even the cheapest MacBook Air would cost around Rs 80,000, while a Windows laptop or Chromebook would be start at Rs 15,000 to 20,000, Apple’s 21% is a rather big market share.
The M1 chip now also powers Apple’s iPad lineup, which makes them as good as any other laptop in the market. With the release of newer M2 and M3 chips, Apple is on the cusp of dominating the premium PC industry.
References
Click the following link to view the references — https://docs.google.com/document/d/1sonNBdc2Vw8U5lqBLOMHFfsv4aACgs80RpY9iW3s3lU/edit?usp=sharing
