why was the M1 chip so revolutionary? What did it do that combined power with efficiency so well that couldn’t be done before?

Question

I ask this because when M1 Mac’s came I felt we were entering a new era of portable PCs: fast, lightweight and with a long awaited good battery life.

I just saw the announcement of the Snapdragon X Plus, which is looking like a response to the M chips, and I am seeing a lot of buzz around it, so I ask: what is so special about it?

In: Technology

Answer 1

It’s a few things that happened all at once:
– Shared high performance memory – with Graphics cards, CPU and other components (apple calls this unified memory architecture). Big power and performance benefit.
– RISC – better performance per watt. But also, Apple, due to expertise in A mobile chips, was able to execute on this extremely well. Only now is Qualcomm catching up. Maybe.
– Control over the hardware and OS – that allowed them to do rosetta 2, that allowed for all legacy Intel x86 apps to work during the transition.
– Intel chips were struggling – with lower nm / EUV – Made the performance difference more stark.
– Developer network – Apple worked with many top vendors to optimize the performance of their apps on M1