The first ARM-based Mac with Apple Silicon is Macbook Air with M1

After 15 years shipping Mac computers with Intel processors, Apple has announced details about its first Mac to forgo Intels' CPUs in favor of Apple-designed, ARM-based chips dubbed Apple Silicon. Apple announced that the first Apple Silicon Mac will be the 13" Macbook Air with M1, a completely fanless and silent design.

The new Macbook Air will feature the Apple M1 CPU, which is the latest in a line of higher-performance ARM CPUs introduced with the iPad Pro. M1 is a an 8-core CPU built on a 5nm process design, and features unified memory architecture, offering high-bandwidth low-latency memory access. Of its 8 cores, four are higher-performance aimed at demanding foreground tasks, and four are lower-power, higher-efficiency designed to complete less-demanding background tasks at a decreased power and thermal cost.

Apple says that the M1 offers the highest performance per watt, with double the performance of an x86 laptop CPU when running at 10 watts—and 1/4 the power draw of an x86 laptop CPU at higher performance levels. M1 also features an 8-core GPU with 128 execution units (EUs). Apple shows a similar performance-per-watt curve for the M1's GPU compared to "the latest PC chip"—but since that latest chip was not specified by name, it's unclear whether that includes Intel's record-breaking Iris Xe graphics, as seen in Tiger Lake laptop CPUs.

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