What does it mean for Apple to switch from X86 to ARM? Will it repeat the mistakes of Surface RT? I tried to share my understanding with you, and also included some preliminary purchase suggestions. If there is any bias, please discuss and correct it ~
What's good about M 1 chip?
Intel X86 is based on CISC, and M 1 chip is based on RISC.
What are CISC and RISC? Let's put it in a more common (vague) language:
That is, complex instruction set computer-complex instruction system computer.
Everyone's existing personal computer processors, including Intel Yes and AMD Yes, are based on CISC. CISC has many complicated instructions, which can handle some complicated tasks.
For example, some instructions are "firemen". They are very professional in fire fighting, but the disadvantage is that if there is a traffic jam, firefighters can do nothing but send traffic police. Therefore, the characteristic of CISC is that "there is specialization in the industry". Then you should ask, what if there are too many houses on fire and firefighters can't control them? Sorry, only one by one, the traffic police can only watch;
Reduced instruction set computer.
Apple M 1 based on RISC. RISC has only a few simple instructions.
It's as if there are no firemen or traffic policemen in this city, only ordinary people. When it comes to solving simple tasks, everyone can go to work, so it's faster. But when the house is on fire (solving complex tasks), because there are no firefighters, someone must unite to put out the fire. They are not professional enough and can only rely on teamwork. They can still put out the fire after a lot of efforts, but they pay much more labor and energy than professional firefighters.
When we use computers, we usually need to solve complex problems. CISC supports many advanced instructions and can effectively handle special tasks. RISC only has some common instructions. When you have to deal with complex things, RISC needs to be combined with common instructions to complete it. For a popular example, when we want to order a person to "eat", CISC will tell him directly: eat! RISC didn't have the advanced instruction of "eating", only told him to pick up a spoon, dig a spoonful of rice and put it in his mouth.
Therefore, due to the inherent disadvantage of the complexity of instruction set, the computing power of RISC can't catch up with CISC in general. This is the focus of questions before Apple officially launched M 1: "Is it really a joke to run a computer system with a mobile phone chip?"
But because of the simple instruction set, RISC also has inherent advantages-simple chip structure and few unit circuits.
So the power consumption is very low, so small mobile terminals such as mobile phones and tablets are using RISC processors. Usually, the heat generated by chip operation can be taken away in time through heat conduction. Both Intel and AMD, as long as they are computers, have to rely on air cooling or water cooling to dissipate heat, because they are all based on CISC platform (but there are exceptions, such as 12-inch MacBook, which is a wonderful passive cooling model and is also realized by ultra-low voltage CPU, so the performance is greatly weakened, as are some fixed-purpose commercial computers).
Moreover, RISC processor has the advantages of easy circuit design, fast iteration speed and low cost.
In fact, john cocke, the proponent of RISC concept, discovered as early as 46 years ago that about 20% of the instructions in a computer take on 80% of the work. It is not accidental that CISC is now facing the challenge of RISC, but it is only a matter of time.
When we realize the difference between RISC and CISC, we can easily understand the advantages of M 1 chip based on ARM architecture:
superiority
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