At the ‘One More Thing’ event today, Apple announced its in-house ARM chip for Macs. It comes with a unified memory architecture, and is built on the 5nm process. The processor sports four high-performance cores and four high-efficiency cores. Apple says that it has the best performance per watt. With the new M1 chip comes a new GPU with eight cores that has 128 execution units. The company claims it is the world’s fastest integrated graphics.

Other components of the M1 chip include Thunderbolt 4 and Gen 4 PCIe support, a high-efficiency audio processor, a performance controller, an advanced display engine, a cryptography accelerator, and more. 

But what is all of this power when it doesn’t translate to real-world performance? Hence, Apple’s macOS Big Sur has been designed to maximize M1. With the new processor, apps launch nearly instantaneously, and the computer instantly wakes from sleep. The OS is now 2x more responsive all because of Apple’s unified memory architecture. Plus, it gives access to more graphics performance than ever.

With advanced power management, which intelligently allocates apps on the core that requires them, it allows quiet performance and even better battery life. Apple claims that it delivers “the best ever battery life on a MacBook Air to date.”

As for the software performance, Logic Pro is can run run up to 3x more plugins. Further, Final Cut Pro X can now render a timeline 6x faster. Right now, almost all Apple apps are compatible with the new chip. The support for Adobe Photoshop is coming early next year, while Lightroom is getting the upgrade next month. What’s even better? You can now run your favorite iPhone and iPad apps on your Mac.