• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, November 10, 2020

Apple CEO Tim Cook announced on Tuesday the release of the Apple Silicon Mac, in the company’s third streaming presentation in the past few months.

The company plans to transition its hardware devices to its own silicon chips. Previously, it only used Intel for years.

The move makes the company self-reliant for the key component running its devices.

The more powerful the computing processing power, the more power developers can build into their apps. Creative ad designers and gamers gain higher resolution and improved frame rates.

Until now, the Mac needed multiple semiconductor chips to run the device. It needed security, processing, and memory.

Now all aspects of the machine run on one chip that Apple calls M1. It provides a unified architecture -- all technologies can access the same data without having to switch between multiple pools of memory, supported by 16 billion transistors in the one chip.

Prior to the development of M1, Apple only used Intel Core technology.

Animation runs more quickly because of the unified memory architecture.

macOS Big Sur on M1-enabled machines will also use certain cores for specific tasks, with high-performance cores for more taxing apps, and high-efficiency cores for less intensive functions. Each runs one task to increase performance.

The first Apple Mac with the M1 processor is the MacBook Air. The chip allows the computer to run 3.5 times faster. The integrated graphics are supported by eight core processor.

Apple managed to design the macOS 11, also known as Big Sur, for the company's own silicon.

It makes Safari about 1.5 times as fast.

The updated OS based on M1 means more graphics memory, faster speeds, advanced power management, and heightened security.

Apple has also integrated M1 into the Mac Mini. Developing the chip and integrating into its devices is the first step away from Intel processors, which Apple’s computers have used since 2005. The company expects the process to take two years.