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Apple Silicon is a Marvel
Winners and losers in Apple’s chip revolution
Over the last six months, I have been trying to move away from the Apple ecosystem. I have exposed my naive and ignorant self to computing outside of the Apple ecosystem: seeing the benefits and challenges a move to Linux brings, while also being able to judge more objectively what Apple does well. Having seen the competition, Apple’s biggest technical achievement is beyond question: Apple Silicon, specifically the M-series of chips.
Astonishing benchmarks
Comparing almost any Apple Silicon chip with immensely expensive ‘pro’ lines of computers offered by Apple in the last decade shows the massive leap in performance. Initially, Apple claimed that its M1 chip could match ‘peak PC performance’ using less than 25% of the power. Now, those numbers were confusing, but the realworld information we have gathered since then shows more clearly the gap:
For comparison, Intel’s i9 14900K chips can hit higher peak performance in multithreaded loads, but only when compared to the standard M4 chip (not its Pro or Ultra variant). This is astonishing stuff.
