For obvious reasons, a facility where cutting-edge technology is developed is not the kind of place a journalist is usually invited to visit, although there are sometimes opportunities to catch a glimpse of something more than meets the eye. In the heart of Europe, four office buildings, with no external indicators to let you intuit what is inside, form the Apple Silicon chip design center in Munich. This research complex will involve an investment of 2,000 million euros from 2021 until 2029. The Californian company uses three points in the world to design its chips, which today are the most advanced in the world in terms of performance per watt of power: Cupertino (California), Germany and Israel.
In 2020, Apple announced the transition of its computers to a more efficient processor architecture, the same ones that have equipped iPhones and iPads for years. It was a new concept that no one had tackled until then based on the ARM architecture, the same one used by mobile phones. The strategic decision meant goodbye to Intel, which had powered Macs since 2006. Almost the entire range of computers already works with its own chips. The story of this technological leap, with very powerful chips but with very little energy consumption, began in 2010 with the first iPad.
Apple's first tablet had a chip called A4 that in the fall of 2010 was also used for the iPhone 4. The A4 was what is called an SoC (an acronym in English for 'system on a chip' ). It doesn't just have a central processor (CPU), it brings together more elements that the device needs to function. In this case it also had an integrated graphics processor (GPU).
Traditional PCs, including Macs that carried Intel chips, include a CPU and GPU as separate chips on the motherboard. Each has its own memory, apart from the system memory. For the two chips to communicate they have to move data from one side to the other in a process that consumes more energy and time.
With Apple's scheme, the memory is included on the chip itself, so the input and output of data from the processors is more efficient. Each chip also carries a powerful neural engine for artificial intelligence tasks.
Apple Silicon for Macs are named with the letter M. There is already an M1 generation and an M2 generation. When Apple started developing the A4, it was made with 65 nanometer transistors – a nanometer (nm) is one billionth of a meter. The A16 Bionic released last year uses 4 nanometer technology. The smaller the transistor, the less resistance it offers to the passage of the electric current, so it heats up less and more transistors can fit in the same space. In short: more speed and less power consumption, which means more battery life. Today, a Mac mini M2 consumes 60% less than its predecessors with Intel.
Few companies in the world could make such a change, because you need to have your own operating system so that hardware and software fit perfectly. Right now, company sources explain, each chip is designed for each product.
One of the revolutions in the design of these chips is that they are scalable. From each basic development of the current M1 and M2, three additional versions (Pro, Max and Ultra - only in the M1 -) have been released so far, multiplying the capabilities of their predecessor by a lot.
Having a chip design center of this potential in Europe is also a strategic decision that allows Apple to attract talent just when the United States and China are immersed in a geostrategic competition for chip hegemony. It may seem strange that the design depends on three centers at the same time, but from a certain point of view you can say that Apple is designing its chips 24 hours a day.
