Apple launched the M1, some people have wondered how it is different from the A14. Although the two SoCs are based on a common CPU micro-architecture, the M1 has added additional on-chip functions that the A14 does not have. At the same time, the total number of CPU cores is larger and the overall mold size is larger.
TechInsights announced the comparison photos of two SoC diagram:
- Apple A14 SoC
- Apple M1 SoC
Compared with the A14, the M1 has twice the number of DDR interfaces than the A14, the high-performance CPU cores are twice that of the A14, the GPU cores are twice that of the A14, and the L2 cache that supports Apple’s Firestorm core is 1.5 times that of the A14. The smaller IceStorm core uses the same size L2 in both A14 and M1. The NPUs of the two chips are also identical.
According to TechInsights data, M1’s overall system cache is 25% less than A14, and its overall die size is 37% larger than A14. The increase in die size is mainly driven by two factors. First of all, M1 increases the number of CPU and GPU cores, L2 cache, and the number of DDR interfaces. Secondly, M1 integrates silicon that A14 does not have, such as Apple’s T2 security processor, and supports standards such as PCIe.
TechInsights data, Apple used about 2.1 times more silicon to implement 2 times the CPU and GPU cores in the M1. This slight gap may be evidence that Apple used a transistor library optimized for performance rather than power consumption on M1, but there is no evidence to support this claim, and the clock of M1 is only slightly higher than the clock of A14.
(Via)
