First ARM-based Mac laptops: MacBook Air and 13-inch MacBook Pro
The new Macbook Air with M1 is a 13", completely fanless and silent design. (credit: Apple)
After 15 years shipping Mac computers with Intel processors, Apple has announced details about its first Mac to forgo Intel CPUs in favor of Apple-designed, ARM-based chips dubbed Apple Silicon. Apple announced that the first Apple Silicon Mac will be the 13-inch, $999 Macbook Air with M1, a completely fanless and silent design.
The new Macbook Air will feature the Apple M1 CPU, which is the latest in a line of higher-performance ARM CPUs introduced with the iPad Pro. M1 is a an eight-core CPU built on a 5nm process design, and it features unified memory architecture offering high-bandwidth, low-latency memory access. Of its eight cores, four are higher performance aimed at demanding foreground tasks, and four are lower-power, higher-efficiency units designed to complete less-demanding background tasks at a decreased power and thermal cost.
Apple says that the M1 offers the highest performance per watt, with double the performance of an x86 laptop CPU when running at 10 watts-and one quarter the power draw of an x86 laptop CPU at higher performance levels. M1 also features an eight-core GPU with 128 execution units (EUs). Apple shows a similar performance-per-watt curve for the M1's GPU compared to "the latest PC chip"-but since that latest chip was not specified by name, it's unclear whether that includes Intel's record-breaking Iris Xe graphics, as seen in Tiger Lake laptop CPUs.
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