As expected, Apple presented the announced Macs with ARM processors on Tuesday evening. In addition to the externally unchanged MacBook Air 13 “with Retina display ( from 1150 Euro) and a MacBook Pro 12 “(1412 Euro) is also surprisingly a Mac mini included (from 779 Euro).

New M1 processor Inside comes like the iPad Air 4 and the iPhone 12 one 64 – Bit-SoC (System on a Chip) is used, which is manufactured in a 5-nanometer design and thus, according to Apple, is the first computer chip with this structure. Unlike the A 14 Bionic in iOS devices, the M1 The processor called not two performance and four energy-saving cores, but four cores of each type. In addition, the six to eight instead of four core GPU sits on the SoC and accesses the same RAM as the CPU. This unified memory differs significantly from the shared memory of the integrated GPUs of the Intel chips, which grind off part of the RAM and separate it. Unified memory should lead to performance gains in games, for example.

The M1 also has a neural engine that accelerates calculations with artificial intelligence, called “machine learning” by Apple. In the iPhone 12 the bionic unit 16 Cores, also on the new MacBooks. Because the M1 in the MacBook Air only needs 14 watts of energy, Apple can leave out the fan, which makes the new Airs noiseless (as long as you don’t tap the keyboard).

Instead of Thunderbolt 3 (with a maximum of 40 GBit / s) is used in the new Macs USB 4.0 with Thunderbolt.

The technical data of the MacBook Air include otherwise 13, 3-inch display with 2560 times 1600 pixels and true tone, up to 16 GByte RAM, SSDs up to 2 terabyte capacity, Touch Bar with Touch ID to unlock the Device, FaceTime camera with 512 p-resolution, Bluetooth 5 and for the first time on a Mac Wi-Fi 6.

According to Apple, the battery life of the MacBook Air should be 18 hours that of the MacBook Pro 20 hours, for the Intel predecessors were it 10 to 11 hours.

The MacBook

Reasons for the change ARM-based processors are not only suitable for mobile Handhelds, but thanks to the simple scaling of the core number, are now also used in supercomputers. So the ARM computer Fugaku from Fujitsu with its 40 cores has the throne of the fastest computer in the summer climbed and defended it until now. A lot of RAM and PCI-Express are also not a problem in terms of hardware technology, although the drivers could certainly become one, especially for dedicated, i.e. independent GPU chips.

Apple’s ARM SoCs are particularly good at saving energy : Although the processor remains “always on”, it hardly wastes any performance due to the big-little principle with separate cores. This affects the battery life and the necessary cooling effort. Thanks to the image processor, the Bionics can already handle video on the iPhones very well: They even enable recording of 4K with 60 Hertz while image optimization is running at the same time, while some Intel Macs already have problems with playback.

The M1 also has a Secure Enclave for storing biometric data on the device and can use Flash Manage memory directly, which eliminates the need for the T2 chip (which is also an ARM SoC) on Intel Macs. Independent tests have to show how fast the M1 really is.

So far, ARM processors have not achieved as high clock rates as Intel CPUs. While ARM chips achieve up to 3 GHz (e.g. in the iPhone 12), Intel manages over 4 GHz, with TurboBoost even over 5 GHz. In addition, many x 86 CPUs with Hyper-Threading can virtually double the number of cores. Other computing units (SIMD) such as SSE, AVX, AVX2 and AVX – 512 expand the x 86 – instruction set and thus accelerate, for example, the coding of certain video formats and must be replaced by Apple.

Developers now have to adapt their macOS programs to the new architecture, because the x 86 code for Intel CPUs won’t just run natively on ARM hardware. For apps that run on all hardware platforms (Apple Silicon and Intel), there is a new standard called Universal 2. In order to make the transition for the user uncomplicated, Apple has similar to when switching from PowerPC to x 86 again created a runtime environment, called Rosetta 2. It should emulate existing apps until they are ported. It remains to be seen how much this affects performance and compatibility. According to Apple, some apps have already been ported. We have written our own message for this.

This message will be supplemented and changed in the course of the evening as soon as new facts become known.

(jes)