Writing’s been on the wall for some time given Intel’s ongoing manufacturing and engineering woes. The announcement of Apple silicon seems to have sealed Swan’s fate.
The performance of emulated x64 apps on a Surface Pro X laptop isn’t even close to the latest Macs powered by Apple’s M1 laptop chip and running Rosetta emulation.
These new chips, currently in the works, are said to deliver a significant graphics boost for upcoming Mac desktops, including the Mac Pro workstation.
The Santa Clara, California-headquartered semiconductor company apparently has two Apple M1 competitor chips in prototype stages that are reportedly “almost ready”.
Follow along with this quick tutorial for the instructions showing you how to identify Apple silicon and Intel Macs.
TSMC’s 5nm+ process technology (aka N5P) is a performance-enhanced version of its 5nm process that’s used to fabricate the current Apple A14 and M1 chips.
As for the refreshed MacBook Pro and Mac mini, some of these models are still available with Intel processors.
The first generation of the M1 chip maxes out at 16 gigabytes of RAM and it doesn’t support external GPUs over Thunderbolt.
Apple is simply using chip binning, which is a common industry practice designed to salvage some weaker chips by disabling one or more cores.
Modified versions of this custom chip are expected to power Apple’s second-generation iMac and MacBook computers.
Apple’s contract manufacturer TSMC is understood to be already producing custom five-nanometer chips for the first Apple Silicon-powered MacBook notebook.
The alleged move is the strongest indication to date that the iPhone maker is keen to move more of its supply chain to the United States.
