Back in November 2020, Apple shocked the computing world when they claimed that their engineers had designed an entirely new M1 CPU that was faster than the latest Intel chipsets. The Apple M1 CPU is power and energy efficient as it is based on the Advanced RISC Machines (ARM) architecture with a neural engine built in that could revolutionize how AI and machine learning works in the future. Is it time for Intel to license ARM and join the Apple Silicon revolution?
With the M1 chipset, Apple has designed processor, GPU, I/O, security and memory on a single system on a chip (SoC). With the Apple M1 reduced instruction set computer (RISC) architecture, everything is local so there is no need to waste processing time (and energy) writing from one component (CPU) to a another component (e.g. memory). Intel and AMD on the other hand use ‘Complex Instruction Set Computer’ (CISC) architecture for their CPU chipsets.
With RISC architecture, every instruction is expected to attain very small and simple operation, whereas CISC architecture involves complex instructions that can perform numerous operations. The CISC architecture has a range of 2-15 instructions per clock cycle whereas RISC has around 1 instruction per clock cycle. The performance of RISC based processor is better because of the easy & limited number of the instruction set. The RISC architecture is perceived by many as an improvement in CPU design over CISC. In the 90’s, it was believed that RISC was going to explode but its taken this long to get the size of the chips down to make RISC viable. With Apple officially adopting the RISC architecture for their MacBooks, many are starting to wonder if Intel and its CISC CPU’s dominance is about to end. In 5 to 10 years from now, the PC landscape is going to be very different.
The Apple M1 chip and the ARM chips are proving that the RISC paradigm might have been right from the very beginning. We’ll see how AMD and Intel react but I’d say x86/x64 chipset is one or two generations behind what the Apple M1 has done. With Apple officially in the ring, it will certainly start the computing revolution as Qualcomm, MediaTek, Huawei and Samsung will most likely start developing a very good ARM chip for the laptop. In the PC world, Microsoft’s job will be to make Windows 10 on ARM a real competitor for Apple.
Not too long ago, the only decent laptop you could get was intel with the exception of low end ones that would have an AMD and chromebook which could either have Intel or ARM. Fast forward to today, Intel has struggled with yield shortages leaving manufacturers unpleased. Not to mention AMD now makes competitive if not better processors. Most manufacturers nowadays offer an AMD version on half of their laptops. When it comes to desktop computers, AMD with 50.9% market share has finally surpassed Intel with 49.1% market share as of February 2021. Now that the floodgates have opened, there is no way Intel is going back to 80% market share. For the laptop computers, we are definitely going to start seeing an increase in ARM laptops. RISC is perceived by many as an improvement over CISC. There is no best architecture since different architectures can simply be better in some scenarios but less ideal in others. With the Apple M1 chip, you will definitely see better performance with apps that have been optimized for Apple Silicon. Apple will definitely make RISC a popular option and it will definitely shift the focus from hardware to software being optimized for best performance in the future.
I am officially a tech addict and enjoy providing my views on matters related to this industry. I am always interested in trying out new tech gadgets and I have owned multiple smartphones including the legendary HTC One, SGS2, Nexus 4, iPhone 4, 5S, 6S, XR, Note 9. You can ask me any tech related questions in the comment section or on twitter @hookedNav