Page 96 - IBT December 2020

Tech
SILICON
REBIRTH
Apple’s new
M1 CPU is
shifting the
paradigm of
computing as
we know it
By Abhijit Asad
Anyone who follows my technology-centric articles would the most revolutionary processor to have been released
know right off the bat that I have a tradition of not being in a very long time.
amused or hoodwinked by the kind of smoke-and-mirrors For starters, instead of going for a traditional x86
gimmicks that Apple typically serves up with its product architecture, Apple decided to build the M1 processor on
offerings and that I consider them extremely poor in a groundbreaking 5nm process using an alternative
terms of value for money, given the abundance of craters simplified architecture known as ARM, which is typically
in their feature lists, their tendency to remove essential reserved for low-power portable devices such as phones
and/or useful features, and of course their annoying and tablets, where power efficiency is a matter of
habit of trying to pass off age-old features as radical new paramount importance. Because of its relatively
innovations. However, I am anything but unfair when it uncomplicated nature, ARM processors were not
comes to technology, and therefore it gives me immense considered to be capable of competing alongside their
pleasure to say that Apple has not just finally come up x86 brethren, and for a long time, that was actually true.
with a product that is completely worth its price tag but However, because of heavy development in the mobile
is also almost certainly going to destabilize the global computing industry, ARM chipsets had been undergoing
computing industry as we know it. some fairly radical developments, and quite recently,
Yes, I am talking about the new MacBooks and Mac Mini some of them had caught up to their regular
systems unveiled in late 2020, powered by Apple’s new counterparts.
M1 processor – the very first iteration of ‘Apple silicon’ for But then, what had been preventing ARM from snatching
laptop and desktop systems. Spoiler alert – it is probably away the computer industry from x86 giants like Intel
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and AMD? The answer is rather strange – alongside many conventional x86 laptop CPUs. The M1 features
only good for mobile devices, there is also the fact heavy-duty tasks at high speeds, and four low-power
the persistent widespread notion that ARM chips are
four 'performance cores', optimized for performing
that ARM processors are typically used in devices that
cores designed for lightweight background tasks.
This allows the system to manage power in ways
have highly limited user interfaces, often restricted to
nothing more than a touchscreen, as found on that would simply not be possible on x86 CPUs,
leading to immense power savings. Alongside the 8
smartphones and tablets. While a touchscreen is a
CPU cores, the processor also houses 7 or 8 GPU
remarkably versatile input interface, for productivity
purposes, it cannot hold up to the deft elegance and
cores for all graphically intensive workloads, as well
speed of a keyboard-mouse or keyboard-touchpad
combination, or the vast plethora of connectivity and as a special 16-core neural network processor,
dubbed the Neural Engine, for AI and machine
peripheral options that are offered by traditional learning purposes. To complete its unified
laptop or desktop computers. As a result of this, the system-on-a-chip nature, the processor comes with 8
full potential of ARM processor-equipped devices, or 16 GB of onboard LPDDR4X memory.
however powerful, has never been fully explored. So what does all that technobabble translate into in
While some novelty laptops running ARM-based the real world? Well, given that all of these modules
processors had also been unveiled by numerous exist on the same processor die, they have direct and
companies, sacrificing raw processing power in favor extremely fast access to each other, which increases
its overall efficiency to astounding levels – to the
of quick wakeup times and long battery lives, they
have firmly remained in a narrow niche that sparked point that the M1 manages to punch many, many
very limited public interest. times above its weight class. Forget competing with
However, with the M1, Apple has managed to burst laptop CPUs – in benchmarks and real-world tests
out of the niche. Since the processor has been alike, the tiny single-chip M1 not only manages to
designed for use in computers instead of smaller beat the stuffing out of Intel’s highest-order offerings
devices, it is less restricted in terms of power draw but almost catches up with AMD’s top-tier CPUs,
and size, and Apple took full advantage of it by spelling the beginning of the end of the x86
making the chip larger and raising its power limit by architecture’s dominance. Even in GPU tests, the M1
several times, all the way up to 10 watts (potentially holds out surprisingly well against any other
just under 15 watts), which is still less than those of integrated graphics solution on the market, and it
can be safely said that this would only get better
with future iterations. The chip also promises
excellent security against potential exploits and
vulnerabilities because of its proprietary design.
However, the most astounding feature the M1 brings
to the table is the battery life improvement. Right off
the bat, the M1-based MacBooks offer up to 20 hours
of battery life on a single charge (over twice that of
similarly specced x86-based MacBooks), and this,
along with the device’s instant wake-up capability, is
being made possible only by the superbly efficient
power management and low power consumption of
the ARM-based chipset.
It’s even more flabbergasting when one realizes that
these shockingly powerful systems are being offered
at reasonable prices – starting at USD 699 for the
Mac Mini, USD 999 for the MacBook Air, and USD
1,299 for the MacBook Pro. When Apple not only
makes amazing products but also begins to price
them affordably, it is a sure sign that hell is indeed
freezing over.
The most exciting thing about the M1 is that it is
only a taste of things to come. If this is what Apple
silicon can do in the form of a simple laptop chip, it
is safe to say that its upcoming desktop iterations
would prove to be even more groundbreaking, and it
is then that every rival chipmaker would understand
the urgency of switching to ARM from the aging x86
architecture – because the alternative would be
courting obsolescence.