Here’s a current 2020 Apple Macbook Air
Apple sells them new, in two version. One is up to the Intel i7 Core Processor and and the other is using the Apple M1 chip. Other than the M1 has a nicer screen and the processor, everything about both Macbook Air is identical.
And here’s some youtubers reviewing the Macbook Air:-
Even Linus ‘I hate Apple’ Techtips was impressed by the laptop. If even the greatest critics praise your product, it says a lot about the product:-
Anyways, here’s what I think why Apple M1 beats Intel:-
Manufacturing Process
first and foremost is the lithography technology is being used. Or how small each circuits that is printed on both laptops. On the CPU die, M1 is at 5nm process while Intel is at 10nm process. It means the smallest feature size for the Apple chip is 5nm while the Intel is 10nm. To put in perspective, the smallest feature on the Apple chip is the size of 10 silicon atoms side by side.
Because of this, Apple can theoretically put 4 times more transistors inside than Intel can for the given area. This itself will give more performance boost. Furthermore, signals travel half the distance and time from one transistor to another. This will give even more performance boost.
System on Chip
For typical x86–64 designs from Intel or AMD, this will be the typical layout on your computer’s motherboard. We have pretty much use this layout for 30–40 years because it’d works.
To show the evolution, this is the architecture layout back in Pentium 4 (2000s).
This layout has done over more than 30 years because it’d works, it’s flexible and good enough for the most part. Now here’s the layout for Apple M1 chip:-
The first thing to notice is that the RAM (DRAM) is on the chip itself. Another thing to notice is that GPU is also on the chip itself. Neural Engine, a specialize hardware to process Machine learning algorithm is on the chip itself. This is something that Intel doesn’t even have. So the main stuff to run a computer (CPU, GPU, RAM) is already on the chip itself. Based on this design, input/output controller for USB ports, audio, networking, display is also on the chip itself. all you need to have is connection to a hard drive to store all the data.
This kind of layout improves performance because everything that you need is in a single place. A lot of work for the 2nd chip set is put on the apple M1 chip. Here’s the tear down of the Macbook Air on both versions (Intel and Apple):-
Optimization
Here’s another thing that is rarely talked about on why Apple M1 is faster than the Intel: Optimization. First, we go back to the M1 layout picture again:-
You will notice that the DRAM connects to a ‘fabric’. This fabric in turns connects to CPU, GPU and neural engine. This is the unified memory architecture. all 16GB which will be on the chip is shared by all 3 circuits. The diagram also implies that the 3 main circuits also shares the cache, the faster and closer memory storage where CPU and GPU stores their data for immediate processing.
Traditionally, you have a discrete video card with their own fast RAM. CPU also connects to their own RAM. this means when you load a program, and you encounter some data that needs to be processed by the GPU, you need to tell the GPU to copy the data from the RAM to it’s own RAM, process it and send the results back to the CPU’s RAM. meanwhile in Apple’s case, the CPU tells the GPU where the RAM is and the GPU process it immediately and skip the copying part.
This optimization comes because of the tight integration between hardware and software. This kind of optimization does come at a cost of flexibility. In this case, you can’t upgrade the RAM or upgrade the GPU later down the road.
Mindset
Intel and Apple has two different mindset when building the chips. Intel is a company that makes CPUs for a lot of markets while Apple makes chips for a very targeted and segmented market: wearable, phones and consumer. Intel also makes CPUs for consumer and the highly lucrative server / data center market.
Intel has multiple customers around the globe that demand different things. Intel has to make a chip that caters to all of them and sometimes can’t afford to ignore them. Apple chip division has only one customer: Apple. So, it makes chips that is highly optimized to meet whatever vision that Apple has. Because of this, the chips are highly optimized for the things that need to be done, but not that flexible if it’s not in their vision.
Take this example for the calculator app. the calculator app is available on the iPhone, Watch and Mac. Because they can’t design a good looking calculator app on the iPad, they decided they won’t make a calculator app. The closest thing you can get as a calculator in iPad is asking Siri to do calculations.
So, the M1 chip is a highly optimized version of the Intel chip in ARM instruction set that works really well in macOS environment: the only environment that Apple cares.
Conclusion
So the fact that Apple M1 chips are indeed faster than anything that Intel has to offer at the moment is not because just because of the technology. It is a very highly optimized solution that works in Apple’s environment. The good news is that your get the performance that you need, the bad news is that you will stuck in the walled garden that is Apple. It is a compromise that a lot of people will take.
Plug
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