Apple is finally starting the transition to their own custom Silicon and they’re doing
it with the brand new M1 chip that’s going into each of the 3 brand new Macs, the MacBook
Air, the MacBook Pro and the mac Mini.
Ever since Apple’s event, there has been tons of confusion over how this chip is gonna
perform, how it works, and why Apple made some odd choices like only having two Thunderbolt
ports on the mac mini and only having a maximum of 16GB of RAM on the MacBook Pro.
There’s also the whole meme about how the only thing different between the Air and the
Pro is quite literally one cooling fan, and at $300, that must be a pretty expensive fan,
but that’s not true because there are quite a few differences that you’re probably not
aware of.
So before I get into answering weird questions and doubts about these Macs, as well as analyzing
the leaked benchmarks of the M1’s insane performance, I’m gonna do my best to explain
how the new M1 Mac chip works.
For years now, Apple has been designing their own custom chips based on the ARM architecture
that they license from ARM Holdings. They then send that design to TSMC, the most advanced
chip manufacturer in the world, which builds the chips, like the A14 Bionic chip in the
new iPhone 12s which is built on the same brand new 5nm process that the new M1 chip
is also being built on.
To make it ever better, Apple specifically designs their software, like iOS and iPadOS,
to fully take advantage of the chips, just like Apple is doing with the new MacOS Big
Sur software for the Mac which is made to take advantage of the new M1 chip.
Because of all of this, Apple has stayed ahead of the entire smartphone and tablet industry
with their iPhones and iPads, making the most powerful and efficient chips ever, and now
they’re trying to do the same with the new M family of chips for their Macs, starting
with the M1.
This new chip is essentially a beefed-up iPad chip thrown into a Mac, but they’re obviously
adding extra features needed to run the Mac operating system, like the I/O chip and Thunderbolt
controller.
Because of this, Apple Silicon Macs can run any iPhone or iPad app from day one, since
the architecture is quite literally the same. This is a huge advantage for developers because
in the past, they’d have to make two separate apps if they wanted to support the iPhone
and the Mac, but now, they simply make one app one time, and it automatically works on
both.
The only downside is that developers can opt-out of supporting Apple Silicon Macs if they choose
to, so iPhone apps like Amazon Prime Video won’t work because Amazon would rather have
you use the browser where they can potentially track your data more easily and make more
ad revenue off of you.
And that’s also another benefit for using the M1 chip. You get much better security
with the built in Secure Enclave and the new architecture which is way less prone to security
issues compared to Intel chips which constantly have security flaws like Meltdown and Spectre.
Now the downside of the new ARM-based architecture is that third-party apps need to be updated
to support it if they want to run natively. But don’t worry, every single third-party
app that you had before on your Mac is still gonna work fine because Apple created Rosetta
2.
The other downside to this is that you won’t be able to run the traditional x86 version
of Windows via bootcamp anymore, so more loading into Windows to play games, and no more using
eGPUs to boost graphics performance either.
Apple Silicon Macs are gonna rely on playing games that were already available on the Mac
like Shadow of the Tomb Raider, and of course, ARM-based games from the iPhone and the iPad,
which I believe are gonna start becoming much more impressive in the next couple of years.
Now with all of that software stuff out of the way, I want to jump into the actual M1
chip itself and how it performs.
On previous MacBooks, everything from the CPU, the GPU, the memory, the T2 chip, the
I/O chip and the Thunderbolt controller were on different areas of the Logic board, so
data had to travel back and forth between all of those components which introduced latency.
Now, with the new M1 chip Macs, all of that is built into one single chip, and every component
is connected using high-bandwidth fabric, which also connects to a unified pool of memory
that’s accessible to every component on the fly, without having to copy it between
different pools of memory like traditional systems have to do.
So here’s a weird analogy to help you understand how this works. Imagine that you have a painting
that both the CPU and GPU are working on. Instead of them each taking turns and handing
the canvas back and forth between each other. They’re both side by side, painting the
canvas at the same time.
This greatly lowers latency, increases efficiency and improves performance, and if you’re
worried about the GPU using the same memory as the CPU, don’t worry because the CPU
has its own dedicated cache, and the GPU has its own dedicated tile memory as well.
Making it even better, the 8-core CPU is split into 4 performance cores and 4 efficiency
cores, with a performance controller which works in real time to enable and disable cores
for maximum performance and efficiency.
This means that when you’re surfing the web or using a basic app, you’re most likely
only using the efficiency cores, drastically saving battery life compared to an Intel chip
which has to use the same cores for everything.
Going even further, standby battery life on the new MacBooks is incredible because it
could only be using 1 of those efficiency cores while it sits there, and this enables
the always-on feature, just like you have on a smartphone or tablet, compared to a lot
of Windows laptops which go into a deeper sleep to save battery life, so they can take
seconds to start back up.
But the advantages don’t stop there. The M1 chip also packs the 16-core Neural Engine
and two dedicated Machine Learnings accelerators which will be a game changer for those who
do that kind of work.
There’s also the new Image Signal Processor which will help make the 720P webcam look
better, with better exposure, less noise and more accurate white balance.
There’s also dedicated video encoders and decoders which will greatly help for video
editing, and it’ll enable low-power video playback, which is basically what allows the
MacBook Pro to get up to 20 hours of battery life.
And to make it even more interesting, the M1 chip supports the latest Gen 4 PCI Express,
Mac ever recorded, with the new 27” iMac in 2nd place with a score of 1251.
That makes the new M1 chip 37% faster in terms of single core performance than the previous
best Mac, which is absolutely insane.
Just to put that into perspective, the absolute best single-core score on any Intel processor
is 1,410 on the latest desktop i9-10900K which you can buy for $500-600 on Newegg, and that’s
just for the processor by itself.
Now moving onto multi-core, the new M1 chip scored 7,423 points, which basically makes
it 9% more powerful than the 16” MacBook Pro with the best i9 processor, which is priced
at $2700. And it outperforms every 6-core 2020 iMac 27” as well, which are priced
at up to $2000.
Obviously, that’s just a short benchmark, but due to the new efficiency process, it
could very well outperform those Macs in performance tasks.
But the most important thing to understand is that the M1 chip is the slowest Silicon
Mac chip Apple will ever make.
We are still expecting a fully redesigned 14” MacBook Pro and 16” MacBook Pro coming
next year before the Summer, and we’re also expecting a new redesigned 24” iMac as well.
Many months ago, it was leaked that Apple was working on a new 12-core Apple Silicon
Mac chip, so I believe that 12-core chip is what will be going into all three of those
Macs, and it’s probably gonna be called the M1X or M1Z.
In that chip, Apple will most likely keep the same 4 efficiency cores, but double the
performance cores, and based on my own estimations, it should score around 11,000 to 12,500 points
in Geekbench 5’s multi-core test, potentially outperforming the current 12-core Mac Pro
that we currently have in our office.
Now in terms of graphics performance, there was a leaked benchmark running OpenCL, which
these chips are not optimized for, scoring 18,500 points.
I personally think that the 8-core version of the M1 chip will break 20,000 points in
terms of the metal score in Geekbench 5, making it twice as fast as the previous best integrated
G7 graphics in the 10th gen Intel chips, and around 33% faster than Intel’s latest XE
graphics.
But compared to the 16” MacBook Pro which has a dedicated graphics chip, the new M1
still falls short with the base 5300M getting around 25,000 points in Metal compared to
the M1’s estimated 20,000.
But keep in mind that the new 12-core M1X chip is gonna have faster graphics as well,
potentially a 12-core GPU, potentially bringing up the score to as high as 30,000 points in
metal.
And it doesn’t stop there, a couple of months back, we had leaks of a new iMac launching
in the 2nd half of 2021 with a custom Apple dedicated GPU, which is gonna be incredibly
powerful just based on how impressive the integrated graphics are, and keep in mind
that both GPUs will be working together on that iMac.
Now finally, let’s get into answering a couple of questions and doubts about these
new M1 Macs!
Why in the world are the new MacBooks limited to 16GB of RAM? Well, because they’re replacing
MacBooks which only had a maximum of 16GB of RAM.
I’m 100% confident that on the 14” MacBook Pro, you’ll be able to get 32GB of RAM,
and you may even be able to get the same 64GB of RAM limit on the 16” MacBook Pro, but
we’ll just have to see.
A lot of you guys are doubting that 16GB of RAM will be enough, but keep in mind that
the M1 chip is using a new unified architecture, so it’s gonna use RAM much more efficiently
compared to Intel chips, especially when running native ARM-based apps using the new MacOS
Big Sur which is fully optimized for these new chips.
It’s sort of the same story as the iPhone’s RAM management, with the new iPhone 12 Pro
with 6GB of RAM outperforming the less efficient galaxy Note 20 Ultra with 12GB of RAM.
So there’s a good chance that 16GB of unified M1 memory will perform close to as well as
32GB of RAM running on an inefficient x86 system.
Moving on, why do the new MacBooks only have two Thunderbolt ports instead of four? Because
they’re replacing models that only had two ports. Apple is saving the four ports for
the more expensive 14” MacBook Pro next year, which will replace the model that currently
has 4 ports.
Yes, I agree that it sucks that the Mac Mini only has two ports instead of 4 on the previous
model, so it seems like the M1 chip has a limited number of CPU lanes, so they weren’t
able to pack 4 ports on that model.
That’s also probably the reason why these new Macs can only connect to one external
display, there’s probably limited Thunderbolt bandwidth, but keep in mind that there is
a very small percentage of the market that needs to connect to more than one display
while using a lower-end MacBook instead of something like the 16” MacBook Pro.
Moving on, why does the base MacBook Air have a weaker version of the M1 chip with only
a 7-core GPU? Well, the main reason is something called binning.
Since this is a new chip, sometimes one of the GPU cores won’t pass quality control,
so instead of tossing the chip, they can disable that one core and throw it into the less expensive
base MacBook Air, which isn’t really meant for high-graphics performance workflows.
Here’s another question, why does the MacBook Air not have a fan? Well, because it makes
for an incredible experience, having no fan noise at all. And for basic and common apps,
there shouldn’t be any heat issues at all.
But the even more important thing is that a couple of years later, the fan and the heatsink
won’t get clogged up with dust which will make it start overheating like on basically
any other laptop or PC. The MacBook Air won’t have this issue at all, which gives it incredible
long-term reliability.
The last concern is software support, with people worried about apps like Microsoft office
running on the new Macs, and for that, the answer is Rosetta 2 emulation. Basically every
single app you’re currently using on your Mac is gonna work instantly on the new M1
Macs.
And from what developers have said in the past, Rosetta 2 is able to run those apps
under emulation faster than current Intel chips can run them natively.
Now as for the performance apps like Photoshop and Lightroom, we’re not exactly sure how
well Rosetta 2 will run them, but they will eventually be updated to run natively, hopefully
sooner than later.
And by the way, if you’re worried about plugins in apps like Logic Pro, Rosetta will
also be emulating them on the fly until they get updated, but we’re still not sure how
they’ll perform.
And here’s the final question, is Apple gonna close the ecosystem and only allow apps
to be downloaded from the Mac App Store? Of course not, here’s the answer from Apple
themselves:
So there you guys go, hopefully this video answered some of your questions on the new
Apple M1 chip, and if it did, go ahead and click that circle above to subscribe because
we’ve got 4 of these new Macs on order and we’ll be testing all of them in-depth, and
if you’re struggling to decide if you want to upgrade, check out those videos right over
there!