Apple M1 Chip Analysis: Is It Truly the World's Fastest Laptop CPU?

During the recent product launch event, Apple claims that its own M1 chip is the world's fastest CPU for laptops. According to AnandTech, it is a valid claim.

Apple M1 Chip Analysis: Pperforms 2.5x better at the 10W Measurement

The AnandTech's detailed analysis of the M1 Chip in comparison with A-series and Intel chip trajectories proves that Apple has been working hard to overtake Intel in computer chip making.

Nevertheless, the article is not all praises to the iPhone maker. In fact it draws some criticisms against Apple's presentation, particularly the random comparison of performance.

However, Apple's claim that M1 performs 2.5x better at the 10W measurement is realistic since this is Intel-based MacBook Air chips' nominal TDP. This would be possible due to Apple's power efficiency as proven in the mobile devices. Also, the M1 vows to showcase such large gains, which matches the A14.

Although Apple chose to show pretty curves and isolated points that represents the best case scenario, both performances of Intel and M1 chips are accurate pretty much across the range and they are believed to be broadly representative of the actual data.

Also, Apple failed failure to stipulate the GPU factors in its comparison. The company's power efficiency and performance claims lack context as there are too many variables that may affect and Apple did not specify what was being compared.

Apple vs Intel: M1 is the world's fastest chip

Despite the above criticisms, AnandTech concluded its analysis in favor of Apple. The website wrote that Apple's claims that M1 is the world's fastest CPU in the world is indeed true.

In fact, the less powerful A14 surpassed Intel PC chips in various benchmark tests. "The performance numbers of the A14 [are] relatively mind-boggling," AnandTech wrote in its analysis.

The site noted that as A14 competes with the current top-performance designs available in the market "is just an astonishing feat." The A14 data has beaten all Intel's designs, although it fell short of AMD's newest chips: the Zen3, which is powered by higher clocked Firestorm, which is above 3GHz, and unleashed TDP, and a 50% larger L2 cache. Thus, with A14's huge feat, it is highly possible that Apple's M1 with much higher specs than A14 is indeed the world's fastest.

The A14's performance as shown in the SPEC2006 chart is "absolutely fantastic," although it only fell short against AMD's recent Ryzen 5000 series.

The Apple device was able to achieve this with only 5W total power consumption, which already includes the DRAM, regulators, and SoC. This is far better than +21W for the Intel i7-1185G7 and 49W for AMD Ryzen 9 5950X, which still do not include DRAM or regulation.

Although some are critical about using GeekBench scores as comparison points for PC and mobile performance, the fact that Apple's performances in both in SPEC (CPU) and GB5 (CPU+DRAM) workloads only prove that the company already gained "an extremely well-balanced microarchitecture." Also, Apple Silicon could extend to "desktop workloads" without any major issue.

"We already saw the A14 performing outstandingly and outperforming the best that Intel has to offer. The new M1 should perform notably above that," AnandTech noted.

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Written by CJ Robles