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Source: Machine Heart
Besides light office work, Apple’s Arm architecture computers can also play games, watch videos, and run deep learning, all with decent efficiency.
Recently, many people’s M1 chip versions of Apple MacBook and Mac Mini have arrived. In many tests, we have seen exciting results: the M1 chip’s score rivals that of high-end X86 processors, with comparable CPUs being the Ryzen 4900HS and Intel Core i9, and it can even compete with Nvidia’s GPU GTX 1050Ti. Is the 5-nanometer chip really that magical?
Since Apple released Mac products equipped with the self-developed M1 chip, people have been curious about the M1 chip, and various reviews have emerged. Recently, developer Erik Engheim wrote a long article analyzing the technical reasons behind the M1 chip’s speed, as well as the disadvantages of chip manufacturers like Intel and AMD.This article will discuss the following questions regarding Apple’s M1 chip:
The technical reasons behind the M1 chip’s speed.
Did Apple use any special technology to achieve this?
If Intel and AMD wanted to do the same, how difficult would it be?
Given the large amount of technical jargon in Apple’s official publicity, let’s start with the basics.What is a CPU?When talking about Intel and AMD chips, we usually refer to the Central Processing Unit (CPU), also known as a microprocessor. They extract instructions from memory and execute each instruction in order.
A basic RISC CPU (not M1). Instructions move from memory to the instruction register along the blue arrow. The decoder interprets the contents of the instructions and connects various parts of the CPU through the red control lines. The ALU performs addition and subtraction on numbers in registers.The CPU is essentially a device that contains many memory units called registers and a computational unit known as the Arithmetic Logic Unit (ALU). The ALU performs addition, subtraction, and other basic mathematical operations. However, these are only connected to the CPU registers. To add two numbers, you must retrieve both numbers from memory and place them into two registers of the CPU.Here are some typical instruction examples executed by a RISC CPU (the type of CPU in M1):
In this example, r1 and r2 are registers. The current RISC CPU cannot perform operations on numbers that are not in the registers, such as adding numbers from two different memory locations; instead, both numbers must be placed into individual registers.In the above example, we must first place the number at memory location 150 into register r1, and then place the number at location 200 into r2. Only then can these two numbers be added according to the add r1, r2 instruction.
This old mechanical calculator has two registers: an accumulator and an input register. Modern CPUs typically have dozens of registers, and they are electronic, not mechanical.The concept of registers has been around for a long time. For example, in the mechanical calculator shown above, registers are used to store added numbers.M1 is not just a CPUThe M1 chip is not just a CPU; it integrates multiple chips into one, with the CPU being only one part.It can be said that the M1 puts an entire computer on a single chip. The M1 includes a CPU, GPU, memory, input/output controllers, and many other components needed for a complete computer, which is the concept of SoC (System on Chip) that we often see in smartphones.
The M1 is a System on Chip. That is, all the components that make up a computer are placed on a single silicon chip.Nowadays, if you buy a chip from Intel or AMD, what you get is actually a microprocessor package, while the computer motherboard in the past had multiple separate chips.
Example of a computer motherboard, which contains components such as memory, CPU, graphics card, IO controller, and network card.However, now we can integrate a large number of transistors on a single silicon chip, so companies like AMD and Intel have started placing multiple microprocessors on one chip. We call these chips CPU cores. A core is essentially a completely independent chip that can read instructions from memory and perform calculations.
Microchips with multiple CPU cores.For a long time, adding more general CPU cores has been the main method to improve chip performance, but one manufacturer did not do this.Apple’s heterogeneous computing strategy is not so mysteriousIn the pursuit of performance, Apple did not choose to add more general CPU cores, but took another approach: adding more dedicated chips to perform specific tasks. The benefit of this is that dedicated chips can perform tasks using less current and can be faster than general CPU cores.This is not a brand new technology. For years, dedicated chips like Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) have existed in Nvidia and AMD’s graphics cards to perform graphics-related operations, and they are much faster than general CPUs.Apple has just taken this direction further. In addition to general cores and memory, the M1 includes a series of dedicated chips:
