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Comment by mcphage | Hacker News Reader

> The main reason the M1 doesn't have good IO is that it's a beefed up ipad CPU. This was the first generation where they were putting the chips in systems that can use IO

Could you explain what you mean by this? I don't think I understand.

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All of Apple’s prior ARM experience comes from iOS devices. They had no need to develop io capabilities for iPhones and iPads with a single port. Now they put the chips in computers but most likely haven’t fully yet developed extended io capabilities.

Hmm, but wouldn't features like wifi, all the cameras, the touchscreen, Cellular data, NFC, touch ID, speakers, bluetooth, and so on all come in via IO as well? You're right that they only have one port, but they still connect to a lot of different components.

Those usually connect over serial-esque busses, and they connect via a security chip. (Akin to the t2 chip but much lighter)

A far cry from the kind of tolerances and sustained high throughput of PCIe.

The problem with this analogy is that NFC, touch ID, speakers, and bluetooth are all in the MB/s or less range. On the desktop side, you have to deal with 10gb/s ethernet and 50-100gb/s for ram. It's just a whole different ballgame.

Ah, that makes sense. Do iPhones connect to their RAM differently? I know it’s physically different than desktop RAM (for obvious reasons), but I don’t really know enough about hardware to know how it connects.

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