As I write this, there are three new Apple computers available which will change the face of computing for the next decade at least. This is likely to be the first of a short series of notes so let’s just start with what has just happened and get on to the likely outcomes the next time.
Apple has launched and delivered a new MacBook Air, MacBook Pro and Mac mini, all using the Apple Silicon main processor chip.
For the last 15 years Intel has been the sole provider for Apple computer processor chips but for these new ones, Apple has taken upon itself the design and fabrication of their own chip built and manufactured under their control. In fact, they have taken it several stages further than this. They have not only produced the main processor chip but added within the chip itself the graphics controller to drive the screen, the memory for the processor and the actual “hard drive” storage space itself, (although this is like the iPad and iPhone just another chip rather than a rotating drive).
It’s called an SOC, a System On a Chip and contains everything that you need to make up what you and I call a computer and in so doing, Apple are pushing the boundaries of quantum physics where the distance between atoms is critical to the performance. Everything is so close together that the electrons take no time at all to carry messages between the discrete components.
Whereas in the old days you had a radio with a 1, 2 or 3 valves, (you remember, the ones that glowed orange!), then superseded by transistors which were first invented in the 50s and which replaced the valves using 10s, then 100s and then 1000s of transistors to make your portable device that much more efficient and user friendly. Today the new Apple M1 chip has 16 billion transistors and it’s the size of your thumbnail!
The result of these advances means that these new machines are very, very fast. So fast that these devices produce results many times faster than pretty well all current laptops and considerably faster than the majority of desktop machines, saving time, money and energy from the off.
This is just a glimpse of what these advances entail so just Google “Apple M1” to get a lot more about the specs and we’ll discuss the meaning of how it affects your computing next time.
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