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

The change from x86 to arm, the unified architecture, etc. allowed M1 to have way better performance per watt than previous desktop class cpus. This means way better battery life, thermals, etc. while retaining good performance in a small and lightweight package.

This doesn’t need to be exclusive to the M1, of course – other chipmakers are now doing similar designs, and will probably see similar results. M1 was revolutionary because it was the first to do it on a wide scale for computers (phones have been using a similar architecture for a long time).