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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 ...
-based
system-on-a-chip A system on a chip (SoC) is an integrated circuit that combines most or all key components of a computer or electronic system onto a single microchip. Typically, an SoC includes a central processing unit (CPU) with memory, input/output, and dat ...
(SoC) designed by
Apple Inc. Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, in Silicon Valley. It is best known for its consumer electronics, software, and services. Founded in 1976 as Apple Comput ...
, launched 2020 to 2022. It is part of the
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 family, ARM architecture. They are used in nearly all of the company's devices including Mac ...
series, as a
central processing unit A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor, or just processor, is the primary Processor (computing), processor in a given computer. Its electronic circuitry executes Instruction (computing), instructions ...
(CPU) and
graphics processing unit A graphics processing unit (GPU) is a specialized electronic circuit designed for digital image processing and to accelerate computer graphics, being present either as a discrete video card or embedded on motherboards, mobile phones, personal ...
(GPU) for its
Mac Mac or MAC may refer to: Common meanings * Mac (computer), a line of personal computers made by Apple Inc. * Mackintosh, a raincoat made of rubberized cloth * Mac, a prefix to surnames derived from Gaelic languages * McIntosh (apple), a Canadi ...
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 **Notebook (laptop), a specific, smaller class of laptop *Google Notebook, a discontinued online appli ...
, and the
iPad Pro The iPad Pro is a series of tablet computers, positioned as the premium line of Apple Inc., Apple's iPad brand. It runs iPadOS, a tablet-optimized Fork (software development), fork of the iOS operating system. Early models were distinguished f ...
and
iPad Air The iPad is a brand of tablet computers developed and marketed by Apple that run the company's mobile operating systems iOS and later iPadOS. The first-generation iPad was introduced on January 27, 2010. Since then, the iPad product lin ...
tablets. The M1 chip initiated Apple's third change to the
instruction set architecture In computer science, an instruction set architecture (ISA) is an abstract model that generally defines how software controls the CPU in a computer or a family of computers. A device or program that executes instructions described by that ISA, ...
used by Macintosh computers, switching from Intel to Apple silicon fourteen years after they were switched from PowerPC to Intel, and twenty-six 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 computing, 32-bit complex instruction set computer (CISC) microprocessors. During the 1980s and early 1990s, they were popular in personal computers and ...
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 its 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 con ...
. Its successor,
Apple M2 Apple M2 is a series of ARM architecture family, ARM-based system on a chip (SoC) designed by Apple Inc., launched 2022 to 2023. It is part of the Apple silicon series, as a central processing unit (CPU) and graphics processing unit (GPU) for ...
, was announced on June 6, 2022, at
Worldwide Developers Conference The Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) is an information technology conference held annually by Apple Inc. The conference is currently held at Apple Park in California. The event is used to showcase new software and technologies in the macO ...
(WWDC). The original M1 chip 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 for digital image processing and to accelerate computer graphics, being present either as a discrete video card or embedded on motherboards, mobile phones, personal ...
cores and
memory bandwidth Memory bandwidth is the rate at which data can be read from or stored into a semiconductor memory by a processor. Memory bandwidth is usually expressed in units of bytes/second, though this can vary for systems with natural data sizes that are ...
, a larger die size, and a large used interconnect. Apple introduced the M1 Ultra in 2022, a desktop
workstation A workstation is a special computer designed for technical or computational science, scientific applications. Intended primarily to be used by a single user, they are commonly connected to a local area network and run multi-user operating syste ...
chip containing two interconnected M1 Max units. These chips differ largely in size and the number of functional units: for example, while the original M1 has about 16 billion
transistor A transistor is a semiconductor device used to Electronic amplifier, amplify or electronic switch, switch electrical signals and electric power, power. It is one of the basic building blocks of modern electronics. It is composed of semicondu ...
s, the M1 Ultra has 114 billion. Apple's
macOS macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...
and
iPadOS iPadOS is a mobile operating system developed by Apple for its iPad line of tablet computers. It was given a name distinct from iOS, the operating system used by Apple's iPhones to reflect the diverging features of the two product lines, suc ...
operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...
s both run on the M1. Initial support for the M1 SoC in the
Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...
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. 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 diff ...
configuration similar to ARM big.LITTLE and Intel's Lakefield processors. This combination allows power-use optimizations not possible with previous
Apple–Intel architecture The Apple–Intel architecture 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 used in th ...
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 an 8 MB System Level Cache shared by the GPU.


M1 Pro and M1 Max

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).


M1 Ultra

The M1 Ultra consists of two M1 Max units connected with UltraFusion Interconnect with 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 In computer engineering, an execution unit (E-unit or EU) is a part of a processing unit that performs the operations and calculations forwarded from the instruction unit. It may have its own internal control sequence unit (not to be confused w ...
(EUs), which each contain 8 arithmetic logic units (ALUs). In total, the M1 GPU contains up to 128 EUs and 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 Floating point operations per second (FLOPS, flops or flop/s) is a measure of computer performance in computing, useful in fields of scientific computations that require floating-point calculations. For such cases, it is a more accurate measur ...
. 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 a processing unit that performs the operations and calculations forwarded from the instruction unit. It may have its own internal control sequence unit (not to be confused w ...
s or 4096 ALUs, which have a maximum floating point (FP32) performance of 10.4
TFLOPs Floating point operations per second (FLOPS, flops or flop/s) is a measure of computer performance in computing, useful in fields of scientific computations that require floating-point calculations. For such cases, it is a more accurate measur ...
. 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, aka memory on package (MOP). The SoC and DRAM 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 LPDDR5 SDRAM, and the M1 Max has 512-bit LPDDR5 SDRAM memory. While the M1 SoC has 70 GB/s memory bandwidth, the M1 Pro has 200 GB/s bandwidth and the M1 Max has 400 GB/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 800 GB/s bandwidth in a 64 GB or 128 GB configuration.


Other features

The M1 is the successor to and integrates all functionality of the Apple T2 chip that was present in Intel-based Macs. It keeps bridgeOS and sepOS active even if the main computer is in a halted low power mode to handle and store encryption keys, including keys for Touch ID, FileVault, macOS Keychain, and UEFI firmware passwords. It also stores the machine's unique ID (UID) and group ID (GID). 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, a
NVM Express NVM Express (NVMe) or Non-Volatile Memory Host Controller Interface Specification (NVMHCIS) is an open, logical-device interface functional specification, specification for accessing a computer's non-volatile storage media usually attached via th ...
storage controller, a
USB4 Universal Serial Bus 4 (USB4), sometimes erroneously referred to as USB 4.0, is the most recent technical specification of the USB (Universal Serial Bus) data communication standard. The USB Implementers Forum originally announced USB4 in 201 ...
controller that includes Thunderbolt 3 support, and a Secure Enclave. The M1 Pro, Max and Ultra support Thunderbolt 4. 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 co ...
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 d ...
. It has decoding support for HEVC, H.264, and ProRes. 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 60 Hz over Thunderbolt, while the M1 Max supports a third 6K display over Thunderbolt and a 4K monitor over HDMI 2.0. 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 mains ...
processors) and seen as one processor in macOS.


Performance and efficiency

The M1 recorded competitive performance with contemporary Intel and AMD processors in popular benchmarks (such as
Geekbench Geekbench is a proprietary and freemium cross-platform utility for benchmarking the central processing unit (CPU) and graphics processing unit (GPU) of computers, laptops, tablets, and phones. History Geekbench began as a benchmark for Mac OS X ...
and Cinebench 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 one of the company's four current Mac (computer), Mac desktop computers, positioned ...
draws 7 watts when idle and 39 watts at maximum load, compared to 20 watts at idle and 122 watts maximum load for the 2018 6-core Core i7 Mac Mini. The
energy efficiency Energy efficiency may refer to: * Energy efficiency (physics), the ratio between the useful output and input of an energy conversion process ** Electrical efficiency, useful power output per electrical power consumed ** Mechanical efficiency, a rat ...
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 The iMac is a series of all-in-one computers from Apple Inc., sold as part of the company's Mac (computer), Mac family of computers. First introduced in 1998, it has remained a primary part of Apple's consumer desktop offerings since and evol ...
(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) (2022)


M1 Pro

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


M1 Max

* MacBook Pro (14-inch and 16-inch, 2021) *
Mac Studio The Mac Studio is a small form factor (desktop and motherboard), small-form-factor workstation computer developed and marketed by Apple Inc. It is one of four desktop computers in the Mac (computer), Mac lineup, sitting above the consumer-range M ...
(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 A mobile device or handheld device is a computer small enough to hold and operate in hand. Mobile devices are typically battery-powered and possess a flat-panel display and one or more built-i ...
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 software versioning, major release of macOS, Apple Inc., Apple's operating system for Macintosh computers. It was announced at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) on June 22, 2020, and w ...
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-onl ...
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 19 ...
, violating the security model and constituting a minor vulnerability. It was discovered by Hector Martin, founder of the
Asahi Linux Asahi Linux is a project that Porting, ports the Linux kernel and related software to Apple Silicon-powered Mac (computer), Macs, started by Hector Martin (hacker), Hector Martin. It does so by Reverse engineering, reverse-engineering the System ...
project for Linux on Apple Silicon.


Augury

In May 2022 a flaw termed "Augury" was announced involving the Data-Memory Dependent Prefetcher (DMP) in M1 chips, discovered by researchers at
Tel Aviv University Tel Aviv University (TAU) is a Public university, public research university in Tel Aviv, Israel. With over 30,000 students, it is the largest university in the country. Located in northwest Tel Aviv, the university is the center of teaching and ...
, the
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC, U of I, Illinois, or University of Illinois) is a public university, public land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Champaign–Urbana metropolitan area, Illinois, United ...
, and the
University of Washington The University of Washington (UW and informally U-Dub or U Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington, United States. Founded in 1861, the University of Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast of the Uni ...
. 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 research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of modern technology and sc ...
researchers announced they had found a
speculative execution Speculative execution is an optimization (computer science), 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 woul ...
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.


GoFetch

An exploit named
GoFetch GoFetch is a family of cryptographic attacks on recent Apple silicon CPUs that exploits the CPU's on-chip data memory-dependent prefetcher (DMP) to investigate the contents of memory. Attacks CPUs affected include the M1, M2, M3 and A14 se ...
is able to extract cryptographic keys from M-series chip devices without administrative privileges.


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 * List of Mac models grouped by CPU type


References


External links

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