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Someone here posted when the M1 powered Macs launched that they're essentially ASICs now and that made me do a double take. Since you cannot change the operating systems anymore, aren't these essentially ASICs?

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Not even close. An ASIC is a program on a chip. These are still general purpose, programmable computing machines.

An FPGA is a program on a chip. An ASIC is literally just a chip. Calling the M1 an ASIC is insulting to the Apple hardware team.

Yes, M1 is not just a chip, is a magical piece of the rib of steve jobs himself. I agree though its not an ASIC even though it have ASIC things inside of it, just like any other modern processor.

It is much more complete SoC then other procs which makes its performance even more impressive if this indications hold up, I am still very skeptical, nothing comes for free and the real world is a b

ASIC stands for application specific, and since thei IC is application specific - used only in certain hardware along certain software, it's kind of correct to call it ASIC.

I am unsure, since the application here is general purpose computing.

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