Fareham — Oct 9th 2021

Euan explained the technical wonders and evolution of Apple’s new Apple Silicon chips, starting with the M1, which are replacing Intel processors across the Mac range and is also used in the iPad Pro. He discussed some very technical details but the talk was aimed at a more general audience and he successfully held our interest and attention. We all felt informed rather than bewildered!

After visiting the development of integrated circuits from Jack Kilby’s first experimental design through Apple’s use of the Motorola 6800 in the original Macintosh, IBM’s Power PC, and the change to Intel’s designs, we were shown close-up views of the A14 and M1, annotated to show the different processing functions which Apple have incorporated within the M1 and which were supplementary chips on previous ‘Intel’ motherboards.

Apple was one of the founders of ARM with Acorn and as ownership changed Apple kept its access to ARM’s developments. Apple designs its own iPhone and iPad chips (the A series) and around ten years experience has enabled it to design the M1 chips that outclass the slow development of Intel x86 technology. This means that Apple’s closely integrated hardware, and system-software (System on a Chip) can at last develop as Apple intends.

ARM architecture (its Instruction Set or language grammar) is RISC. A Reduced Instruction Set Computer uses short, simple 4-Byte instructions which can be processed fast, unlike the X86 Intel CISC Complex Instruction Set which favours a set of long instructions of variable length. Other well-known computers using ARM have been the BBC Computer, Archimedes, and recently the Raspberry Pi.

What became clear is that it is Apple’s continued control of both the hardware and software that has enabled them to leap forward of their competitors who have to supply chips to cover a wide range of applications as well as personal computers etc.

After the break, the usual discussions on various topics followed.

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