Apple’s New MacBook Pro Chips Flex the Power of Custom Silicon

The combination of the Windows operating system and Intel chips was once so successful that the duo was referred to as “Wintel.” Apple’s new MacBook Pro laptops, revealed Monday, show just how much things have changed.

At the core of Apple’s new 14- and 16-inch computers is a pair of custom chips—the M1 Pro and M1 Max—that demonstrate the benefits of designing your own silicon—especially when you also make the software to run on it.

Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering, said the MacOS and software apps had been recrafted to get the most out of the new chips and at the same time use less power. And because Apple’s chips share design features with its tablets and smartphones, it’s possible to run mobile apps on the new laptops too.

Apple announced just over a year ago that it would switch from using Intel chips in its laptops to ones of its own design based on an architecture licensed from ARM, whose designs are more commonly found in smartphones. Indeed, Apple has long designed the chips inside its iPhones, giving it the ability to integrate snappier graphics and artificial intelligence capabilities.

The M1 chips for Apple’s PCs are made by Taiwan’s TSMC, which leads the world when it comes to etching infinitesimally small components onto an area of silicon using its “5-nanometer” manufacturing process.

“Today was a good representation of what a company can do when they have the whole tech stack,” says Patrick Moorhead, chief analyst at Moor Insights and Strategy. He cites Apple’s claim that the new chip can boost the performance of its video editing software Final Cut Pro 10-fold as an example of the benefit of codesigning software and silicon.

Apple’s new M1 chip for its MacBook computers.

Photograph: Apple