Why Apple Started Making Its Own Chips

apple is well known for making big splashy announcements whenever it unveils a game-changing piece of new tech like the ipod or ipad strangely last year the cupertino giant made an announcement every bit as revolutionary but one which largely escaped notice by the general public the announcement made at the firm's annual worldwide developer conference confirmed apple would start designing and manufacturing its own chips for mac computers to be clear it's not just tech geeks and tiresome apple fanboys who need to be aware of what the announcement means and what its implications are so today we're donning our black turtleneck and addressing a hushed auditorium to explain why apple is making its own chips for several years now apple has been sourcing its cpus from household name chip giant intel this special relationship between apple and intel started back in 2006 after apple's previously favored ibm motorola chips were written off as inadequate apple's brand new in-house chip the m1 was first rolled out this past november on the company's macbook air and mac mini range in what marks a significant departure this new chip on the block was designed using the so-called arm architecture which is markedly different from intel's preferred x86 architecture so what actually is the difference in technical terms arm uses what hardware geeks call an risc or reduced instruction set computing layout the x86 uses a cisc or complex instruction set computing arrangement in very broad language this means intel's x86 has a more complicated architecture than arm chips arm therefore performs fewer distinct mathematical functions or instructions than the x86 which has many more built-in instructions on an arm chip this shortfall in instruction needs to be made up for inefficient software design as opposed to hardware but wait a minute surely more complex is better from a microchip point of view not necessarily the ability of the x86 chip to perform a greater number of instructions makes it more powerful certainly but at the cost of guzzling up a great deal more power that's why big powerful pcs always need noisy fans and constant mains power alternatively arm chips are most often found on mobile devices like phones where compact size and energy efficiency battery life if you prefer are more important than raw operational horsepower they can do many of the same things but they take a bit longer and a few more passes owing to their more concise menu of instructions however arm chips have been catching up on the speediness stakes with the latest arm based iphones and ipads offering performance on a par with laptops this should come as no surprise since 2010 apple has been working tirelessly to refine their iphone and ipad based arm chips and now it seems the moment has come when arm chips are ready to make the leap from mobile to more traditional pc form factor so why are they doing it because the two rival chip architectures arm and x86 function in such different ways software design for one won't work on the other this means under the old regime anyway software that worked like a dream on your ipad wouldn't work at all on your mac you could use an emulator but you'd have to put up with a noticeable dip in performance and speed now both pc and mobile apple devices are set to use arm chips mac users will enjoy a far more seamless experience when swapping tasks between their devices and this kind of slick fuss-free user-friendly interface is exactly what endears the apple experience to millions of fans around the world not only that but thanks to arm's less power-hungry nature laptop users running on the new m1 chip can expect usage time between chargings to increase dramatically apples say 20 hours video playback is possible on a single charge or 15 hours web browsing which is around a third better than the latest comparable intel based max there's more apple has been the standard bearer for slimmed down elegant devices that both perform and are easy on the eye it's believed that within a few short years arm-based laptops could be even more razor thin than the current macbook air range as they'll at last be able to dispense with bulky hardware like the fans needed to keep those thirsty x86 is cool another advantage arm chips will bring to the next generation of mac computers involves the newish science of neural engines present on some of apple's recent mobile device chips the neural engine found on the m1 is designed to run machine learning code with substantially greater efficiency the upshot of this from a user's perspective is that photo and video editing packages will work a lot snappier similarly tasks which require organic brain style processing and analysis will work better like speech recognition within siri or sourcing all the cat pictures in your photo library beyond the user experience there are sound corporate reasons why apple is making the switch from intel's x86 to arm-based chips apple is the most valuable company in the world in part because it does so much by itself from the software to the operating system to the mouse this kind of vertical integration only enhanced now it designs its own chips serves the company well on one level apple is now able to move away from the helpless dependency on intel's design goals and logistics timetables on another level altogether designers working on those next generation razor thin laptops we mentioned not to mention any future bells and whistles version of mac os will have much more influence and flexibility on the final chip this will in time lead to faster more efficient built-in software apple ceo tim cook has expressly laid out his firm's long-term strategy of owning and controlling the primary technologies behind the products we make intel for their part have suffered a rough couple of years in november 2019 the company's executive vice president in charge of sales and marketing michelle johnston-holthaus was forced to issue a groveling apology to its partners after a delay in delivering its current batch of cpus and that's not all it's not even operating at the cutting edge anymore while apple's latest generation of arm chips have been shipped with five nanometer transistors intel has struggled even to get its products down to seven nanometers and only presently seem comfortable shipping ten nanometer chips for perspective on this 5 nanometers is about the size of 10 large atoms the smaller the transistor the more manufacturers can fit on the chip which impacts efficiency and ultimately speed while intel languishes apple chip manufacturing partner tsmc is reportedly working towards a manufacturing process that will be able to mass produce two nanometer transistors in the next decade or so that's genuine breakthrough level science happening on apple's watch one potential drawback of apple's move to arm is the fact that software designed for earlier max x86 chip architecture simply won't work apple is keen to stress that big developers are already reworking household name apps like adobe photoshop and microsoft office and for everything else apple's own rosetta software should suffice as an emulator for most purposes the present conventional wisdom among tech experts is that regular consumers won't notice a huge difference after the transition but more professional users might want to wait a bit before buying an arm mac for now max higher spec machines will continue to be shipped with intel hardware but the writing is clearly on the wall for that particular arrangement expected to draw to a close within the next couple of years so in sum apple is making its own chips to liberate itself from reliance on intel's manufacturing woes and in turn strive for the ultimate dream of total vertical integration that's only half the story though the move to arm also means max will soon be even slimmer even quieter and even more straightforward to use which is why so many people love apple when the chips are down what do you think should apple be putting its developers through the hassle of rebuilding apps are consumers being fobbed off with a substandard computer in the name of cosmetic expediency let us know in the comments and please subscribe for more high-spec tech content you

Channel: Tech Vision

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Keywords: apple, apple cpu, apple m1, apple macbook pro, apple macbook pro m1, apple macbook pro 16 inch m1, cpu M1, apple chip, apple m1 chip, apple chip vs intel, apple chip m1, arm cpu, apple m1 chip arm, why apple made m1, macbook pro m1, m1, m1 chip, m1 chip vs intel, m1 chip apple, m1 cpu

Id: cDJpRcDF6Z8

Length: 7min 33sec (453 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 17 2021