The Fundamental Difference Between CPU Architectures: A Closer Look at Apple's M1

There is a fundamental difference between the CPU architectures used by different manufacturers, and one of the most notable examples is the way that CPUs handle instruction execution. In traditional CPUs, instructions are executed in a linear sequence, with each instruction being completed before the next one can begin. This approach, known as sequential execution, can lead to inefficiencies and reduced performance.

In contrast, some CPU architectures use what is called out-of-order execution. This means that the CPU can choose the order in which it executes instructions, allowing multiple instructions to be executed concurrently. This enables the system to complete more instructions in parallel or at the same time, making efficient use of the processor and speeding things up.

The M1 Core: A Revolutionary Approach

Apple's M1 chip is a prime example of this revolutionary approach. The M1 core is designed to take advantage of out-of-order execution, allowing it to process twice as many instructions as equivalent X86 cores at the same frequency. This means that the M1 can perform complex tasks more quickly and efficiently than traditional CPUs.

One of the key benefits of the M1's out-of-order execution architecture is its ability to handle memory access. The M1's memory management system is highly optimized, allowing it to access both CPU and GPU memory simultaneously without the need for copying data between different memory spaces. This means that the M1 can perform tasks like graphics rendering more efficiently than traditional CPUs.

The Impact of the M1's Architecture on Performance

The M1's architecture has a significant impact on its performance. By processing multiple instructions concurrently, the M1 can complete tasks much more quickly than equivalent X86 cores. In fact, the M1 can process up to 2 times as many instructions per second as X86 cores at the same frequency.

This is due in part to the M1's ability to handle memory access more efficiently. By accessing both CPU and GPU memory simultaneously, the M1 can reduce the time it takes to perform tasks like graphics rendering. This means that the M1 can complete complex tasks much more quickly than traditional CPUs.

The Role of Memory in the M1's Performance

Memory plays a critical role in the M1's performance. The M1 uses a high-speed storage system, known as an SSD (solid-state drive), to store its operating system and applications. This allows the M1 to access data much more quickly than traditional hard disk drives.

The M1 also uses advanced memory compression techniques to optimize memory usage. By compressing data in real-time, the M1 can reduce the amount of memory required to run certain applications. This means that the M1 can handle multiple tasks simultaneously without running out of memory.

The Benefits of the M1's Memory Architecture

The M1's memory architecture offers several benefits over traditional CPUs. By accessing both CPU and GPU memory simultaneously, the M1 can complete tasks more efficiently than equivalent X86 cores. The M1 also uses advanced memory compression techniques to optimize memory usage, reducing the amount of memory required to run certain applications.

In addition, the M1's use of an SSD storage system means that it can access data much more quickly than traditional hard disk drives. This reduces the time it takes to perform tasks like graphics rendering and other compute-intensive workloads.

The Limitations of the M1's Architecture

While the M1's architecture offers many benefits, there are some limitations to consider. One of the main limitations is the GPU performance. The M1's GPU is not as powerful as those found in traditional PCs or gaming consoles.

However, Apple has been working to improve the M1's GPU performance over time. With future software updates and improvements to the M1's architecture, it's likely that the M1 will become even more competitive with high-end GPUs.

The Future of CPU Architecture

So what does this mean for the future of CPU architecture? In short, it means that Apple has a major advantage in terms of processing power and efficiency. The M1's out-of-order execution architecture and advanced memory management system make it a formidable competitor to traditional CPUs.

In the short term, it's likely that Apple will continue to release updated versions of the M1 chip with improved performance and features. This could potentially lead to Apple's dominance in certain markets, such as mobile devices or laptops.

However, there are still some limitations to consider. As mentioned earlier, the M1's GPU performance is not as strong as those found in traditional PCs or gaming consoles. It remains to be seen whether future software updates and improvements will be able to bridge this gap.

Conclusion

The M1 chip represents a major breakthrough in CPU architecture. Its out-of-order execution architecture and advanced memory management system make it a formidable competitor to traditional CPUs. With its ability to process multiple instructions concurrently, the M1 can complete tasks more quickly and efficiently than equivalent X86 cores.

As we look to the future of CPU architecture, one thing is clear: Apple has made significant strides in terms of processing power and efficiency. The M1's revolutionary architecture offers many benefits over traditional CPUs, and it will be interesting to see how it plays out in various markets over time.

But for now, the M1 chip is a game-changer. It represents the future of CPU architecture and sets Apple up as a major player in the world of computing.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enapple's m1 chips have been astonishing people since their launch in november 2020. there were those who laughed at the thought of iphone chips powering a computer and those people have had to eat their words industry experts have been scratching their heads they're wondering how it is that these arm cpus are so much faster than many of their x86 pc counterparts the simple answer is because they're not standard arm cpus but let me explain the apple m1 is a system-on-chip not just a cpu it contains a cpu but it also contains other components which in a traditional pc would live on the motherboard or would simply not be present we do have cpu cores and there are two different types we've got high efficiency cores which take care of less demanding tasks and use hardly any power and then there are high performance cores which look after the more demanding tasks and of course use more power in the process within the m1 there are also gpu cores to handle graphics tasks things like drawing the interface and rendering 3d graphics for games of course many pc cpus also have gpus on board but they're not integrated in the same way and you can't really compare the m1 gpu to pc integrated graphics now also on that m1 chip we've got a number of specialized processors for performing specific tasks now whereas a general purpose cpu core needs to be able to handle a multitude of different tasks these specialized processors are built to handle just a few and as a result they are very fast and very power efficient each time the system can offload processing to these specialized processors it just means less work for the cpu to handle what are these specialized processors well we have a video encoder and decoder which is able to convert video formats in a fast and power efficient way and that's why the m1 can convert video codecs like h.265 without breaking a sweat whereas an x86 machine will have to work a lot harder we've also got an image signal processor and that speeds up tasks that are commonly done by image processing apps including things like noise reduction in video we've got 16 cores dedicated to machine learning or ai tasks and this is becoming increasingly important in modern computing for things like computational photography you know how the iphone can produce portrait photography effects by blurring the background and not your subject's face that's all done with machine learning and of course we've got the rise of virtual assistants so we need accurate voice recognition that's really important the m1 also has what apple calls the secure enclave which handles things like biometric authentication encryption and decryption tasks and security again the cpu is not having to do any of that work and there are other areas taking care of things like mp3 music decompression communication with the ssd and controllers for things like thunderbolt and usb and then right next to the system on chip we have the ram with apple's unified memory architecture that allows all of these cores along with the cpu and gpu to access the same memory so this is not a cpu it's an entire computer on a chip and that alone is a key advantage that apple has because it can design and control the totality of the system and then make easy tools that allow developers to make use of all of these features in a consistent way pc chip manufacturers and system builders simply can't do that and think about it apple can get its software and hardware engineers to work together in the same room collaborating with each other day in day out to create hardware and software that are perfectly well optimized for each other could microsoft all of the linux vendors intel amd nvidia motherboard and chipset manufacturers all come together to work with the same level of efficiency probably not now that's not to say that apple's hardware is only quick because of that software optimization far from it the cpu cores in the m1 code named firestorm are genuinely faster than equivalent x86 cores in fact these cores beat out pretty much everything from intel and it's only amd's new zen3 cores that have the edge but the faster zen3 core runs at 5 gigahertz and apple's firestorm achieves almost the same performance at 3.2 gigahertz remember that power consumption and heat increase exponentially with clock speed so that zen 3 core is also using a good deal more power and it's generating rather more heat than the m1 and apple of course wants power efficient processors that don't require lots of cooling for most of its models apple likes to prioritize the design aesthetic over cooling and as a result their machines haven't traditionally been the best thermal performers imagine though if you will an apple design chip in the mac pro tower where you can have a decent cooling solution that would allow apple to increase the clock speed on the cause and the results would surely be even more astonishing how does apple achieve this feat when it seems that intel and amd can well that largely comes down to the architecture apple has based their design on the arm architecture now apple has always been interested in arm and actually they were equal shareholders with acorn in the early 90s so they even owned a significant chunk of the arm company so this isn't new to them and indeed they've actually been working on these chips for almost a decade arm cpus are risk or reduced instruction set computers x86 cpus are cisc or complex instruction set computers and both of these systems have their advantages and disadvantages and i'm not going to delve into the highly technical in this video and that's because i want this information to be accessible to a wide audience what you need to understand is that there is a fundamental difference in these architectures and how they approach computing tasks cis cpus do something called out of order execution to put this in simple terms what it means is that the cpu can to some extent choose the order in which it executes instructions and this enables the system to complete more instructions in parallel or at the same time and that makes efficient use of the processor and it speeds things up risk cpus can also use out of order execution now typically your smaller cheap arm cpus don't do that but the m1 absolutely does apple has focused very heavily on this and it's implemented considerably more capacity for processing the underlying micro operations than equivalent intel and amd cpus and again both risk and cisc have their pros and cons here but in real world usage risk turns out to be more efficient now if all of that still sounds complicated um that's because it is but here's the headline fact the m1 firestorm cores can typically process twice as many instructions as x86 cores at the same frequency so there's no two ways about it the m1 cpu cores are just genuinely fast and genuinely power efficient in a way that x86 cores simply aren't that's not all though the m1 has a massive advantage when it comes to ram first of all it's very fast and secondly it's mounted on the same package as that system on chip in a traditional pc or mac the memory is mounted on the main board and there's a chipset that then links that to the cpu bringing all of this memory onto the system on chip speeds things up and it also allows all of the cores within the m1 to use the same memory and that increases efficiency and removes the need to copy memory from one area to another for example copying cpu memory to the gpu memory something which has to be done over the pcie bus in a traditional computer that has a separate graphics card now if we take the pci 4.0 standard that offers an overall bandwidth of 2 gigabytes per second per lane and typically you'd install your graphics card in a 16 lane socket so that gives you a theoretical maximum speed of 32 gigabytes per second theoretical though because there's an overhead and many graphics cards aren't pcie 4.0 compliant so in reality it's probably much less than that amount in contrast the memory on the m1 package can apparently hit peak speeds of 68 gigabytes per second and there's no need to copy data because the gpu can access the same memory space as the cpu it's an incredibly efficient way of working and it's why the gpu cores in the m1 can perform as well as they do despite being rather inferior to the best that nvidia and amd offer the m1 also uses the ssd for additional memory space swapping out areas of memory that are not needed for a time so that more memory space is available for active tasks and through clever use of memory compression and due to the speed of the ssd you probably won't even notice that this is happening true if you work the eight gigabyte m1 model really hard for an extended period of time you can get it to slow down but we've never been able to do that with the 16 gigabyte model that really just shows how efficient this system is now whether these techniques will compromise the lifespan of the ssd that remains to be seen but it's true to say that modern ssds are incredibly resilient so combine all of these factors together and it's easy to see why the m1 machines are so fast sure they have their limits but most general computer users won't find those limits and perhaps the most obvious weakness is the gpu performance which can't hold a candle to nvidia and amd's latest offerings but i suspect that will come in time and there's a few issues some niggles with this first effort from apple but again those things will get fixed future iterations of these systems on chip have the potential to pull apple way ahead of the pc competition in a lot of computing disciplines so that raises an obvious question does apple silicon spell the end for x86 pcs probably not in the short term but that's a question i'd like to answer in a future video and that's it for this video thanks very much for watching i hope you found it useful entertaining interesting in some way please leave a comment i love interacting with you guys in the comments section and why not consider joining our growing community with just one click of that subscribe button if you're a tech lover you might want to check out our dedicated podcast channel so we've moved our weekly podcast over onto that channel there's a link in the description and we'll pop a link up here somewhere and i hope i did enough in this video to earn a thumbs up or a thumbs down if you prefer but in any case i hope to see you next time for some more geekery youapple's m1 chips have been astonishing people since their launch in november 2020. there were those who laughed at the thought of iphone chips powering a computer and those people have had to eat their words industry experts have been scratching their heads they're wondering how it is that these arm cpus are so much faster than many of their x86 pc counterparts the simple answer is because they're not standard arm cpus but let me explain the apple m1 is a system-on-chip not just a cpu it contains a cpu but it also contains other components which in a traditional pc would live on the motherboard or would simply not be present we do have cpu cores and there are two different types we've got high efficiency cores which take care of less demanding tasks and use hardly any power and then there are high performance cores which look after the more demanding tasks and of course use more power in the process within the m1 there are also gpu cores to handle graphics tasks things like drawing the interface and rendering 3d graphics for games of course many pc cpus also have gpus on board but they're not integrated in the same way and you can't really compare the m1 gpu to pc integrated graphics now also on that m1 chip we've got a number of specialized processors for performing specific tasks now whereas a general purpose cpu core needs to be able to handle a multitude of different tasks these specialized processors are built to handle just a few and as a result they are very fast and very power efficient each time the system can offload processing to these specialized processors it just means less work for the cpu to handle what are these specialized processors well we have a video encoder and decoder which is able to convert video formats in a fast and power efficient way and that's why the m1 can convert video codecs like h.265 without breaking a sweat whereas an x86 machine will have to work a lot harder we've also got an image signal processor and that speeds up tasks that are commonly done by image processing apps including things like noise reduction in video we've got 16 cores dedicated to machine learning or ai tasks and this is becoming increasingly important in modern computing for things like computational photography you know how the iphone can produce portrait photography effects by blurring the background and not your subject's face that's all done with machine learning and of course we've got the rise of virtual assistants so we need accurate voice recognition that's really important the m1 also has what apple calls the secure enclave which handles things like biometric authentication encryption and decryption tasks and security again the cpu is not having to do any of that work and there are other areas taking care of things like mp3 music decompression communication with the ssd and controllers for things like thunderbolt and usb and then right next to the system on chip we have the ram with apple's unified memory architecture that allows all of these cores along with the cpu and gpu to access the same memory so this is not a cpu it's an entire computer on a chip and that alone is a key advantage that apple has because it can design and control the totality of the system and then make easy tools that allow developers to make use of all of these features in a consistent way pc chip manufacturers and system builders simply can't do that and think about it apple can get its software and hardware engineers to work together in the same room collaborating with each other day in day out to create hardware and software that are perfectly well optimized for each other could microsoft all of the linux vendors intel amd nvidia motherboard and chipset manufacturers all come together to work with the same level of efficiency probably not now that's not to say that apple's hardware is only quick because of that software optimization far from it the cpu cores in the m1 code named firestorm are genuinely faster than equivalent x86 cores in fact these cores beat out pretty much everything from intel and it's only amd's new zen3 cores that have the edge but the faster zen3 core runs at 5 gigahertz and apple's firestorm achieves almost the same performance at 3.2 gigahertz remember that power consumption and heat increase exponentially with clock speed so that zen 3 core is also using a good deal more power and it's generating rather more heat than the m1 and apple of course wants power efficient processors that don't require lots of cooling for most of its models apple likes to prioritize the design aesthetic over cooling and as a result their machines haven't traditionally been the best thermal performers imagine though if you will an apple design chip in the mac pro tower where you can have a decent cooling solution that would allow apple to increase the clock speed on the cause and the results would surely be even more astonishing how does apple achieve this feat when it seems that intel and amd can well that largely comes down to the architecture apple has based their design on the arm architecture now apple has always been interested in arm and actually they were equal shareholders with acorn in the early 90s so they even owned a significant chunk of the arm company so this isn't new to them and indeed they've actually been working on these chips for almost a decade arm cpus are risk or reduced instruction set computers x86 cpus are cisc or complex instruction set computers and both of these systems have their advantages and disadvantages and i'm not going to delve into the highly technical in this video and that's because i want this information to be accessible to a wide audience what you need to understand is that there is a fundamental difference in these architectures and how they approach computing tasks cis cpus do something called out of order execution to put this in simple terms what it means is that the cpu can to some extent choose the order in which it executes instructions and this enables the system to complete more instructions in parallel or at the same time and that makes efficient use of the processor and it speeds things up risk cpus can also use out of order execution now typically your smaller cheap arm cpus don't do that but the m1 absolutely does apple has focused very heavily on this and it's implemented considerably more capacity for processing the underlying micro operations than equivalent intel and amd cpus and again both risk and cisc have their pros and cons here but in real world usage risk turns out to be more efficient now if all of that still sounds complicated um that's because it is but here's the headline fact the m1 firestorm cores can typically process twice as many instructions as x86 cores at the same frequency so there's no two ways about it the m1 cpu cores are just genuinely fast and genuinely power efficient in a way that x86 cores simply aren't that's not all though the m1 has a massive advantage when it comes to ram first of all it's very fast and secondly it's mounted on the same package as that system on chip in a traditional pc or mac the memory is mounted on the main board and there's a chipset that then links that to the cpu bringing all of this memory onto the system on chip speeds things up and it also allows all of the cores within the m1 to use the same memory and that increases efficiency and removes the need to copy memory from one area to another for example copying cpu memory to the gpu memory something which has to be done over the pcie bus in a traditional computer that has a separate graphics card now if we take the pci 4.0 standard that offers an overall bandwidth of 2 gigabytes per second per lane and typically you'd install your graphics card in a 16 lane socket so that gives you a theoretical maximum speed of 32 gigabytes per second theoretical though because there's an overhead and many graphics cards aren't pcie 4.0 compliant so in reality it's probably much less than that amount in contrast the memory on the m1 package can apparently hit peak speeds of 68 gigabytes per second and there's no need to copy data because the gpu can access the same memory space as the cpu it's an incredibly efficient way of working and it's why the gpu cores in the m1 can perform as well as they do despite being rather inferior to the best that nvidia and amd offer the m1 also uses the ssd for additional memory space swapping out areas of memory that are not needed for a time so that more memory space is available for active tasks and through clever use of memory compression and due to the speed of the ssd you probably won't even notice that this is happening true if you work the eight gigabyte m1 model really hard for an extended period of time you can get it to slow down but we've never been able to do that with the 16 gigabyte model that really just shows how efficient this system is now whether these techniques will compromise the lifespan of the ssd that remains to be seen but it's true to say that modern ssds are incredibly resilient so combine all of these factors together and it's easy to see why the m1 machines are so fast sure they have their limits but most general computer users won't find those limits and perhaps the most obvious weakness is the gpu performance which can't hold a candle to nvidia and amd's latest offerings but i suspect that will come in time and there's a few issues some niggles with this first effort from apple but again those things will get fixed future iterations of these systems on chip have the potential to pull apple way ahead of the pc competition in a lot of computing disciplines so that raises an obvious question does apple silicon spell the end for x86 pcs probably not in the short term but that's a question i'd like to answer in a future video and that's it for this video thanks very much for watching i hope you found it useful entertaining interesting in some way please leave a comment i love interacting with you guys in the comments section and why not consider joining our growing community with just one click of that subscribe button if you're a tech lover you might want to check out our dedicated podcast channel so we've moved our weekly podcast over onto that channel there's a link in the description and we'll pop a link up here somewhere and i hope i did enough in this video to earn a thumbs up or a thumbs down if you prefer but in any case i hope to see you next time for some more geekery you\n"