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Apple M1 is a series of
ARM In human anatomy, the arm refers to the upper limb in common usage, although academically the term specifically means the upper arm between the glenohumeral joint (shoulder joint) and the elbow joint. The distal part of the upper limb between th ...
-based systems-on-a-chip (SoCs) designed by Apple Inc. as a
central processing unit A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor or just processor, is the electronic circuitry that executes instructions comprising a computer program. The CPU performs basic arithmetic, logic, controlling, an ...
(CPU) and
graphics processing unit A graphics processing unit (GPU) is a specialized electronic circuit designed to manipulate and alter memory to accelerate the creation of images in a frame buffer intended for output to a display device. GPUs are used in embedded systems, mobi ...
(GPU) for its Mac desktops and
notebooks A notebook is a small book often used for writing. Notebook or The Notebook may also refer to: Computing *Laptop, a type of personal computer *Google Notebook, a discontinued online application * Notebook interface, a type of programming environ ...
, and the
iPad Pro The iPad Pro is a premium model of Apple's iPad tablet computer. It runs iPadOS, a tablet-optimized version of the iOS operating system. The original iPad Pro was introduced in September 2015, and ran iOS 9. The second-generation iPad P ...
and
iPad Air The iPad is a brand of iOS and iPadOS-based tablet computers that are developed by Apple Inc. The iPad was conceived before the related iPhone but the iPhone was developed and released first. Speculation about the development, operating s ...
tablets. The M1 chip initiated Apple's third
change Change or Changing may refer to: Alteration * Impermanence, a difference in a state of affairs at different points in time * Menopause, also referred to as "the change", the permanent cessation of the menstrual period * Metamorphosis, or change, ...
to the
instruction set architecture In computer science, an instruction set architecture (ISA), also called computer architecture, is an abstract model of a computer. A device that executes instructions described by that ISA, such as a central processing unit (CPU), is called an ' ...
used by Macintosh computers, switching from
Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...
to
Apple silicon Apple silicon is a series of system on a chip (SoC) and system in a package (SiP) processors designed by Apple Inc., mainly using the ARM architecture. It is the basis of most new Mac computers as well as iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, Apple TV, a ...
14 years after they were switched from PowerPC to Intel, and 26 years after the transition from the original
Motorola 68000 series The Motorola 68000 series (also known as 680x0, m68000, m68k, or 68k) is a family of 32-bit complex instruction set computer (CISC) microprocessors. During the 1980s and early 1990s, they were popular in personal computers and workstations and w ...
to
PowerPC PowerPC (with the backronym Performance Optimization With Enhanced RISC – Performance Computing, sometimes abbreviated as PPC) is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) created by the 1991 Apple Inc., App ...
. At the time of introduction in 2020, Apple said that the M1 had the world's fastest CPU core "in low power silicon" and the world's best CPU
performance per watt In computing, performance per watt is a measure of the energy efficiency of a particular computer architecture or computer hardware. Literally, it measures the rate of computation that can be delivered by a computer for every watt of power consume ...
. Its successor, Apple M2, was announced on June 6, 2022 at
WWDC The Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) is an information technology conference held annually by Apple Inc. The conference is usually held at Apple Park in California. The event is usually used to showcase new software and technologies in t ...
. The M1 was introduced in November 2020, and was followed by the professional-focused M1 Pro and M1 Max chips in October 2021. The M1 Max is a higher-powered version of the M1 Pro, with more
GPU A graphics processing unit (GPU) is a specialized electronic circuit designed to manipulate and alter memory to accelerate the creation of images in a frame buffer intended for output to a display device. GPUs are used in embedded systems, mobi ...
cores and
memory bandwidth Memory bandwidth is the rate at which data can be read from or stored into a semiconductor memory by a central processing unit, processor. Memory bandwidth is usually expressed in units of bytes per second, bytes/second, though this can vary for ...
and a larger die size. Apple introduced the M1 Ultra in 2022, combining two M1 Max chips in one package. These chips differ largely in size and the number of functional units: for example, while the original M1 has about 16 billion
transistor upright=1.4, gate (G), body (B), source (S) and drain (D) terminals. The gate is separated from the body by an insulating layer (pink). A transistor is a semiconductor device used to Electronic amplifier, amplify or electronic switch, switch e ...
s, the M1 Ultra has 114 billion. Apple's
macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...
and
iPadOS iPadOS is a mobile operating system developed by Apple Inc. for its iPad line of tablet computers. It is a rebranded variant of iOS, the operating system used by Apple's iPhones, renamed to reflect the diverging features of the two product l ...
operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also in ...
s both run on the M1. Initial support for the M1 SoC in the
Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...
kernel was released in version 5.13 on June 27, 2021. The initial versions of the M1 chips contain an architectural defect that permits sandboxed applications to exchange data, violating the security model, an issue that has been described as "mostly harmless".


Design


CPU

The M1 has four high-performance "Firestorm" and four energy-efficient "Icestorm" cores, first seen on the
A14 Bionic The Apple A14 Bionic is a 64-bit ARMv8.5-A system on a chip (SoC), designed by Apple Inc. It appears in the fourth generation iPad Air and tenth generation iPad, as well as iPhone 12 Mini, iPhone 12, iPhone 12 Pro, and iPhone 12 Pro Max. App ...
. It has a
hybrid Hybrid may refer to: Science * Hybrid (biology), an offspring resulting from cross-breeding ** Hybrid grape, grape varieties produced by cross-breeding two ''Vitis'' species ** Hybridity, the property of a hybrid plant which is a union of two dif ...
configuration similar to ARM DynamIQ and Intel's Lakefield,
Alder Lake Alder Lake is Intel's codename for the 12th generation of Intel Core processors based on a hybrid architecture utilizing Golden Cove performance cores and Gracemont efficient cores. It is fabricated using Intel's Intel 7 process, previousl ...
and
Raptor Lake Raptor Lake is Intel's codename for the 13th-generation of Intel Core processors based on a hybrid architecture, utilizing Raptor Cove performance cores and Gracemont efficient cores. Raptor Lake launched on October 20, 2022. Mobile versions ...
processors. This combination allows power-use optimizations not possible with previous
Apple–Intel architecture The Apple–Intel architecture, or Mactel, is an unofficial name used for Macintosh personal computers developed and manufactured by Apple Inc. that use Intel x86 processors, rather than the PowerPC and Motorola 68000 ("68k") series processors ...
devices. Apple claims the energy-efficient cores use one-tenth the power of the high-performance ones. The high-performance cores have an unusually large 192 KB of L1
instruction cache A CPU cache is a hardware cache used by the central processing unit (CPU) of a computer to reduce the average cost (time or energy) to access data from the main memory. A cache is a smaller, faster memory, located closer to a processor core, which ...
and 128 KB of L1 data cache and share a 12 MB L2 cache; the energy-efficient cores have a 128 KB L1 instruction cache, 64 KB L1 data cache, and a shared 4 MB L2 cache. The SoC also has a 8MB System Level Cache shared by the GPU. The M1 Pro and M1 Max use the same ARM big.LITTLE design as the M1, with eight high-performance "Firestorm" (six in the lower-binned variants of the M1 Pro) and two energy-efficient "Icestorm" cores, providing a total of ten cores (eight in the lower-binned variants of the M1 Pro). The high-performance cores are clocked at 3228 MHz, and the high-efficiency cores are clocked at 2064 MHz. The eight high-performance cores are split into two clusters. Each high-performance cluster shares 12 MB of L2 cache. The two high-efficiency cores share 4 MB of L2 cache. The M1 Pro and M1 Max have 24 MB and 48 MB respectively of system level cache (SLC). The M1 Ultra combines two M1 Max chips in one package for a total of 20 CPU cores and 96 MB system level cache (SLC).


GPU

The M1 integrates an Apple designed eight-core (seven in some base models) graphics processing unit (GPU). Each GPU core is split into 16 Execution Units, which each contain eight
Arithmetic Logic Unit In computing, an arithmetic logic unit (ALU) is a Combinational logic, combinational digital circuit that performs arithmetic and bitwise operations on integer binary numbers. This is in contrast to a floating-point unit (FPU), which operates on ...
s (ALUs). In total, the M1 GPU contains up to 128
Execution unit In computer engineering, an execution unit (E-unit or EU) is a part of the central processing unit (CPU) that performs the operations and calculations as instructed by the computer program. It may have its own internal control sequence unit (not ...
s or 1024 ALUs, which Apple says can execute up to 24,576 threads simultaneously and which have a maximum floating point (FP32) performance of 2.6
TFLOPs In computing, floating point operations per second (FLOPS, flops or flop/s) is a measure of computer performance, useful in fields of scientific computations that require floating-point calculations. For such cases, it is a more accurate mea ...
. The M1 Pro integrates a 16-core (14 in some base models) graphics processing unit (GPU), while the M1 Max integrates a 32-core (24 in some base models) GPU. In total, the M1 Max GPU contains up to 512
execution unit In computer engineering, an execution unit (E-unit or EU) is a part of the central processing unit (CPU) that performs the operations and calculations as instructed by the computer program. It may have its own internal control sequence unit (not ...
s or 4096 ALUs, which have a maximum floating point (FP32) performance of 10.4
TFLOPs In computing, floating point operations per second (FLOPS, flops or flop/s) is a measure of computer performance, useful in fields of scientific computations that require floating-point calculations. For such cases, it is a more accurate mea ...
. The M1 Ultra features a 48- or 64-core GPU with up to 8192 ALUs and 21 TFLOPs of FP32 performance.


Memory

The M1 uses a 128-bit LPDDR4X SDRAM in a unified memory configuration shared by all the components of the processor. The SoC and RAM chips are mounted together in a system-in-a-package design. 8 GB and 16 GB configurations are available. The M1 Pro has 256-bit
LPDDR Low-Power Double Data Rate (LPDDR), also known as LPDDR SDRAM, is a type of synchronous dynamic random-access memory that consumes less power and is targeted for mobile computers and devices such as mobile phones. Older variants are also known as ...
5 SDRAM memory, and the M1 Max has 512-bit LPDDR5 SDRAM memory. While the M1 SoC has 66.67GB/s memory bandwidth, the M1 Pro has 200GB/s bandwidth and the M1 Max has a 400GB/s bandwidth. The M1 Pro comes in memory configurations of 16 GB and 32 GB, and the M1 Max comes in configurations of 32 GB and 64 GB. The M1 Ultra doubles the specs of the M1 Max for a 1024-bit or 1-kilobit memory bus with 800GB/s bandwidth in a 64 GB or 128 GB configuration.


Other features

The M1 contains dedicated neural network hardware in a 16-core Neural Engine, capable of executing 11 trillion operations per second. Other components include an
image signal processor An image processor, also known as an image processing engine, image processing unit (IPU), or image signal processor (ISP), is a type of media processor or specialized digital signal processor (DSP) used for image processing, in digital cameras or ...
, a
PCIe PCI Express (Peripheral Component Interconnect Express), officially abbreviated as PCIe or PCI-e, is a high-speed serial computer expansion bus standard, designed to replace the older PCI, PCI-X and AGP bus standards. It is the common mo ...
storage controller, a
USB4 USB4 (aka: USB 4.0) is a specification by the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF), which was released in version 1.0 on 29 August 2019. The USB4 protocol is based on the Thunderbolt 3 protocol; the Thunderbolt 3 specification was donated to the USB- ...
controller that includes
Thunderbolt 3 Thunderbolt is the brand name of a hardware interface for the connection of external peripherals to a computer. It has been developed by Intel, in collaboration with Apple. It was initially marketed under the name Light Peak, and first sold as ...
support, and a Secure Enclave. The M1 Pro, Max and Ultra support
Thunderbolt 4 Thunderbolt is the brand name of a hardware interface for the connection of external peripherals to a computer. It has been developed by Intel, in collaboration with Apple. It was initially marketed under the name Light Peak, and first sold as ...
. The M1 has video codec encoding support for
HEVC High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC), also known as H.265 and MPEG-H Part 2, is a video compression standard designed as part of the MPEG-H project as a successor to the widely used Advanced Video Coding (AVC, H.264, or MPEG-4 Part 10). In compar ...
and
H.264 Advanced Video Coding (AVC), also referred to as H.264 or MPEG-4 Part 10, is a video compression standard based on block-oriented, motion-compensated coding. It is by far the most commonly used format for the recording, compression, and distr ...
. It has decoding support for HEVC, H.264, and
ProRes Apple ProRes is a high quality, "visually lossless" lossy video compression format developed by Apple Inc. for use in post-production that supports video resolution up to 8K. It is the successor of the Apple Intermediate Codec and was introduc ...
. The M1 Pro, M1 Max, and M1 Ultra have a media engine which has hardware-accelerated H.264, HEVC, ProRes, and ProRes RAW. This media engine includes a video decode engine (the M1 Ultra has two), a video encode engine (the M1 Max has two and the M1 Ultra has four), and a ProRes encode and decode engine (again the M1 Max has two and the M1 Ultra has four). The M1 Max supports High Power Mode on the 16-inch MacBook Pro for intensive tasks. The M1 Pro supports two 6K displays at 60Hz over Thunderbolt, while the M1 Max supports a third 6K display over Thunderbolt and a 4K monitor over
HDMI 2.0 High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) is a proprietary audio/video interface for transmitting uncompressed video data and compressed or uncompressed digital audio data from an HDMI-compliant source device, such as a display controller, t ...
. All parameters of the M1 Max processors are doubled in M1 Ultra processors, as they are essentially two M1 Max processors operating in parallel; they are in a single package (in size being bigger than
Socket AM4 Socket AM4 is a PGA microprocessor socket used by AMD's central processing units (CPUs) built on the Zen (including Zen+, Zen 2 and Zen 3) and Excavator microarchitectures. ''AM4'' was launched in September 2016 and was designed to replace the ...
AMD Ryzen Ryzen ( ) is a brand of multi-core x86-64 microprocessors designed and marketed by AMD for desktop, mobile, server, and embedded platforms based on the Zen microarchitecture. It consists of central processing units (CPUs) marketed for mainst ...
processor) and seen as one processor in macOS.


Performance and efficiency

The M1 recorded competitive performance and efficiency in popular benchmarks (
Geekbench Geekbench is a cross-platform utility for benchmarking the central processing unit of computers. Geekbench began as a benchmark for Mac OS X and Windows and was created by John Poole who ran the now-defunct Geek Patrol website, which reviewed ha ...
5,
Cinebench Cinema 4D is a 3D software suite developed by the German company Maxon. Overview As of R21, only one version of Cinema 4D is available. It replaces all previous variants, including BodyPaint 3D, and includes all features of the past 'Studio' ...
R23). The 2020 M1-equipped
Mac Mini Mac Mini (stylized as Mac mini) is a small form factor (desktop and motherboard), small form factor desktop computer developed and marketed by Apple Inc. , it is positioned between the consumer all-in-one iMac (Intel-based), iMac and the profes ...
draws 7 watts when idle and 39 watts at maximum load, compared with 20 watts idle and 122 watts maximum load for the 2018 6-core Intel i7 Mac mini. The energy efficiency of the M1 increases battery life of M1-based MacBooks by 50% compared to previous Intel-based MacBooks. At release, the MacBook Air (M1, 2020) and MacBook Pro (M1, 2020) were praised by critics for their CPU performance and battery life, particularly compared to previous MacBooks.


Products that use the Apple M1 series


M1

* MacBook Air (M1, 2020) – base model has 7-core GPU * Mac Mini (M1, 2020) * MacBook Pro (13-inch, M1, 2020) *
iMac iMac is a family of all-in-one Mac desktop computers designed and built by Apple Inc. It has been the primary part of Apple's consumer desktop offerings since its debut in August 1998, and has evolved through seven distinct forms. In it ...
(24-inch, M1, 2021) – base model has 7-core GPU * iPad Pro (11-inch, 3rd generation) (2021) * iPad Pro (12.9-inch, 5th generation) (2021) *
iPad Air (5th generation) The iPad Air (5th generation), colloquially known as the iPad Air 5, is a tablet computer designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. It was announced by Apple on March 8, 2022. Pre-orders began on March 11, 2022, and shipping began on Marc ...
(2022)


M1 Pro

* MacBook Pro (14-inch and 16-inch, 2021)


M1 Max

* MacBook Pro (14-inch and 16-inch, 2021) *
Mac Studio Mac Studio is a small-form-factor workstation designed, manufactured, and sold by Apple Inc. It is one of four desktop computers in the Mac lineup, sitting above the consumer-range Mac Mini and iMac, and positioned below the Mac Pro. It is con ...
(2022)


M1 Ultra

* Mac Studio (2022)


Problems


USB power delivery bricking

After its release, some users who charged M1 devices through USB-C hubs reported
bricking A brick (or bricked device) is a mobile device, game console, router or other consumer electronic device that is no longer functional due to corrupted firmware, a hardware problem, or other damage. The term analogizes the device to a brick's ...
their device. The devices that are reported to cause this issue were third-party USB-C hubs and non-Thunderbolt docks (excluding Apple's own dongle). Apple handled this issue by replacing the logic board and by telling its customers not to charge through those hubs.
macOS Big Sur macOS Big Sur (version 11) is the seventeenth major release of macOS, Apple Inc.'s operating system for Macintosh computers. It was announced at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) on June 22, 2020, and was released to the public ...
11.2.2 includes a fix to prevent 2019 or later MacBook Pro models and 2020 or later MacBook Air models from being damaged by certain third-party USB-C hubs and docks.


Security vulnerabilities


M1racles

A flaw in M1 processors, given the name "M1racles", was announced in May 2021. Two sandboxed applications can exchange data without the system's knowledge by using an unintentionally writable
processor register A processor register is a quickly accessible location available to a computer's processor. Registers usually consist of a small amount of fast storage, although some registers have specific hardware functions, and may be read-only or write-only. ...
as a
covert channel In computer security, a covert channel is a type of attack that creates a capability to transfer information objects between processes that are not supposed to be allowed to communicate by the computer security policy. The term, originated in 197 ...
, violating the security model and constituting a minor vulnerability. It was discovered by Hector Martin, founder of the
Asahi Linux Asahi Linux is a porting project to develop support for Linux on Apple devices, Linux on Apple hardware, specifically Apple silicon-powered Macintosh , Macs, allowing them to run alternative operating systems in addition to macOS. The software d ...
project for Linux on Apple Silicon.


Augury

In May 2022 a flaw termed "Augury" was announced involving the Data-Memory Dependent
Prefetcher The Prefetcher is a component of Microsoft Windows which was introduced in Windows XP. It is a component of the Memory Manager that can speed up the Windows boot process and shorten the amount of time it takes to start up programs. It accomplishe ...
(DMP) in M1 chips, discovered by researchers at
Tel Aviv University Tel Aviv University (TAU) ( he, אוּנִיבֶרְסִיטַת תֵּל אָבִיב, ''Universitat Tel Aviv'') is a public research university in Tel Aviv, Israel. With over 30,000 students, it is the largest university in the country. Locate ...
, the
University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the University ...
, and the
University of Washington The University of Washington (UW, simply Washington, or informally U-Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1861, Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast; it was established in Seattle a ...
. It was not considered a substantial security risk at the time.


Pacman

In June 2022
MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...
researchers announced they had found a
speculative execution Speculative execution is an optimization technique where a computer system performs some task that may not be needed. Work is done before it is known whether it is actually needed, so as to prevent a delay that would have to be incurred by doing t ...
vulnerability in M1 chips which they called "Pacman" after pointer authentication codes (PAC). Apple said they did not believe this posed a serious threat to users.


Variants

The table below shows the various SoCs based on the "Firestorm" and "Icestorm" microarchitectures.


Gallery


See also

*
Rosetta 2 Rosetta is a dynamic binary translator developed by Apple Inc. for macOS, an application compatibility layer between different instruction set architectures. It enables a transition to newer hardware, by automatically translating software. The ...
*
Universal 2 binary The universal binary format is, in Apple Inc., Apple parlance, a format for executable files that run natively on either PowerPC or Intel-manufactured IA-32 or Intel 64 or AArch64, ARM64-based Apple Macintosh, Macintosh computers. The format or ...
*
List of Mac models grouped by CPU type This list of Mac models grouped by CPU type contains all central processing units (CPUs) used by Apple Inc. for their Mac computers. It is grouped by processor family, processor model, and then chronologically by Mac models. Motorola 68k Motoro ...


References


External links

* {{Application ARM-based chips Computer-related introductions in 2020 Apple silicon