Apple Silicon

Apple Silicon is a series of system on a chip (Soc) and system in a package (SoP) processor designed and developed by Apple. The Silicon is primarily based on ARM architecture and resembles the A-series chips used in iPhones and iPads. The Silicon marked the transition from external Intel processors to in-house Apple processors. Its first sub-series, the M1 series, began with the Apple M1 chip, followed by several extensions of the latter, M1 Pro, M1 Max, and M1 Ultra.

M1
The first Apple Silicon chip, the Apple M1 features Apple's first Soc design for the Mac. It integrates the CPU, GPU, unified memory architecture Neural Engine, Secure Enclave, etc. into a single processing system. The M1 has an 8-core CPU with four high-performance cores and four high-efficiency cores and an 8-core GPU; the upgraded standard, M1 Pro, in contrast, has 10-core CPU with eight high performance cores and two high efficiency cores along with a 16-core GPU, in addition, an entry-level version of M1 Pro has a a 8-core CPU and 14-core GPU. The higher-end M1 Max has a 10-core CPU and 32-core GPU. The M1 Ultra combines two M1 Max chips with an UltraFusion connector and has doubled the CPU (20-core) and GPU (64-core).

The M1 series incorporates several high-performance and high-efficiency cores designed to execute specific tasks, diverging between the necessarily power-intensive single-threaded tasks and inferior tasks. This efficient split of power consumption was attributed to its doubled battery life. All M1 processors share a unified memory architecture that is linked between all chip components. They are tied to a common software architecture interconnecting all Apple devices: iPhone, iPad, etc so applications designed for other Apple devices can run on Apple Silicon natively.

Transition
Apple issued the transition from Intel processors to consolidate its dependence on the latter and subjection of their manufacturing issues: ie: release timelines, chip delays, and security issues, etc, as well as to boost performance advantages over its hardware-software integration. The transition, which was announced in the June 2020 WWDC, is nearing to complete within about the next few months across all Macintosh product lines, including a potential iMac, iMac Pro, and Mac Pro in the latter months of the year.

Apple offered a Developer Transition Kit that is housed in a black Mini enclosure and included 16GB memory, 512GB SSD, 2 USB-C ports (up to 10 Gbps), 2 USB 3.0 ports (up to 5 Gbps), HDMI 2.0 port, 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 5.0, Gigabit Ethernet, macOS Big Sur developer beta, and Xcode 12 with support for Universal 2. The kit allowed registered developers to experiment and optimize their applications for Apple Silicon before the Silicon was released to the consumer public. The 500-dollar Developer Transition Kit, however, are requested to be returned to Apple by March 31, 2021 for a compensation of 500 Apple credits.

Mac computers with Apple silicon

 * Mac Studio (2022)
 * MacBook Pro (14-inch, 2021)
 * MacBook Pro (16-inch, 2021)
 * iMac (24-inch, 2021)
 * Mac Mini (2020)
 * MacBook Pro (2020)
 * MacBook Air (2020)