History of Apple's CPU architecture
On October 31, 2023, Apple announced the third generation Apple silicon '
Through the Ages: Apple CPU Architecture
https://jacobbartlett.substack.com/p/through-the-ages-apple-cpu-architecture
Since the Mac's release in 1984, Apple has transitioned its CPU architecture three times. According to Bartlett, this is 'not an easy task.' The history of Apple's CPUs begins with the first Mac, the Apple Macintosh in 1984.
In order to overtake Apple's PC ' Lisa ', which was sold at a ridiculously high price at the time, development of a new PC had begun under Apple's Steve Jobs and others. Jobs introduced the cutting-edge graphical user interface (GUI) to the PC, which later became known as the Mac, and asked his team to find a product that met the requirements so that it could be equipped with the same cutting-edge hardware. Ta.
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In the early 1980s, the latest 16-bit processor architectures that met the requirements were the Intel 8088, Zilog Z8000, and Motorola 68k.
The low-end 'Intel 8088' had been adopted by IBM, so it had a good software ecosystem. The mid-range Zilog Z8000 has few competitors and a minimal software ecosystem. The high-end ``Motorola 68k'' has been adopted by Atari and Commodore, and there is some existing development ecosystem. Here, Apple adopted Motorola's architecture ``Motorola 68k'', which it had a supplier relationship with through ``Lisa'' and others.
Although the Motorola 68k was plagued with ecosystem and compatibility weaknesses, it was a necessary sacrifice to differentiate itself from its rival at the time, IBM. Furthermore, while many competing CPUs at the time limited instructions to specific registers, the Motorola 68k allowed CPU operations to be executed in almost all registers. This seems to be the ideal configuration for nurturing a developing software ecosystem.
In the 1990s, Microsoft formed a partnership with Intel and almost monopolized the market in Windows and Intel CPU business. Not only has Intel consistently improved its powerful x86 chip architecture, but it has also achieved the greatest innovation since the transistor, and its Pentium processor, introduced in 1993, helped Microsoft increase its market share. I was there.
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Intel dominated with 100MHz clock speed and unparalleled power efficiency, leaving behind the ``Motorola 68k'' family that supported Macs until the 1990s. With the computer world under threat of monopoly, Apple teamed up with long-time partner Motorola as well as former competitor IBM. This was the birth of the AIM (Apple, IBM, Motorola) alliance.
The three AIM companies focus on the only path that seems to be able to compete with Intel: the weakness of the x86 architecture in that it uses the CISC architecture.
There are two types of chip design philosophies: CISC (Complex Instruction Set Computer) and RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computer).
A CPU can perform a limited number of different operations while being subject to the physical constraints of the circuit, but CISC accepts complex instruction sets, but can suffer from catastrophic performance degradation if something goes wrong. RISC, on the other hand, aims to improve performance by processing a simpler and fewer instruction set.
A major pitfall of CISC is its complexity for developers, with engineers working on the CISC architecture having to refer to a 500-page manual to find the necessary instructions. Apple and other companies proceeded with development to pave the way for RISC, and created the first RISC architecture processor, the PowerPC .
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PowerPC was a processor created to directly compete with the Intel x86 architecture and was measured in greater efficiency, meaning more CPU operations per watt of power. Since Apple was involved in both software and hardware development, they will continue to optimize their OS for the new PowerPC.
However, fully transitioning to PowerPC required some planning. Therefore, Apple's plan was to ``develop an emulator that would allow PowerPC to emulate Motorola's CPU'' and ``use fat binaries for transitional software.'' This allows developers to include code compiled for both the Motorola 68k and PowerPC architectures, allowing them to ship a single application that runs on both platforms.
Overall, Apple's transition was a success, delivering significant performance improvements to their PCs by moving from the Motorola 68k to PowerPC. Meanwhile, at that time, Windows and Intel were expanding to the point where they could no longer be controlled, and the world was transforming into a world where Windows-equipped PCs were commonplace.
When Jobs became Apple's CEO in 2000, as devices became smaller, batteries were becoming a bottleneck. With the emphasis on performance per watt, PowerPC lagged behind Intel x86.
PowerPC CPUs from the early 2000s consumed too much power and generated too much heat to realize the ultra-thin MacBook Air that Jobs had envisioned. Apple, which derived more than 50% of its revenue from laptop computers, needed to switch to Intel in order to survive the competition.
In 2005, Apple announced that it would be transitioning to Intel CPUs, and the transition was planned over several years. However, as a result of relying on Intel for CPUs, it was greatly affected by Intel's supply constraints and release delays, which sometimes affected Apple's roadmap.
Apple has been steadily preparing to break away from Intel's CPUs, which are excellent but have supply constraints. In 2008, Apple acquired PA Semiconductor, a CPU design company known for its high-end, low-power processors. PA's CPUs were originally based on IBM's Power architecture, the exact same instruction set used by the AIM coalition in their PowerPC Macs. The acquisition gave Apple the ability to create its own chip designs in secret.
Apple engineers had been designing and refining the Arm chips in iPhones and iPads for years, trying to improve power consumption and thermal efficiency, which were major concerns, by adopting a RISC architecture. .
And in 2020, Apple finally announced the third major change in Mac CPU architecture and spectacularly introduced its own chip called 'M1'. The M1 was the first model in Apple's silicon M family, and was positioned as custom hardware for Mac laptops and desktops.
The M1 is a system-on-chip (SoC), a different approach to building hardware than a standard desktop PC that integrates everything you need into one component instead of having components on the motherboard. Become. This approach is suitable for space-constrained mobile devices.
Mr. Bartlett praised Apple silicon, which started with M1, followed by M2, and M3, as ``Delivering amazing performance while consuming low power.''
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