The Power of Apple Silicon
At the heart of every Apple device is an Apple-designed processor. Apple has been using the M chip design in iPhone and iPad for over a decade, with the entire Mac lineup now running on Apple Silicon as of June 2023.
The performance and power efficiency of Apple silicon is remarkable, with industry-leading performance per watt. The M2 Max chip offers greater performance, battery life and efficiency, with up to 2.5x more performance in Photoshop than a baseline MacBook Pro i9 and with up to 22 hours of video playback on battery.
What is Apple Silicon?
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SoC - is an integrated circuit, with input/ output/ graphics/ memory all on a single chip
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ARM based instruction set
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Built in secure enclave
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Industry leaving performance per watt
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Up to 192GB of RAM
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Up to 24-Core CPU
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Up to 76-Core GPU
Environmental Impact
Since Apple migrated to Apple Silicon the environmental impact of the Mac has decreased dramatically;
Example total carbon footprint;
Mac Mini 2018 i7 - 270kg
Mac Mini M2 - 112kg
The power consumption;
Mac Mini 2018 i7 - idle 20W / Max 122W - £11.52*
Mac Mini M2 - idle 7W / Max 50W - £4.73*
Based on 700 hours a year at 50% load (3.5 hours a day usage over 40 weeks of the year inc VAT)
Security
Apple Silicon has security capabilities designed into the Silicon. These capabilities are designed into the secure enclave which provides the foundations for the secure generation and storage of the keys necessary for encrypting data.
