The pdf Jean-Louis Gassée links to in the 2nd paragraph is an excellent source for the evolution of Apple silicon up until the A12X: > An Hungarian researcher

The pdf Jean-Louis Gassée links to in the 2nd paragraph is an excellent source for the evolution of Apple silicon up until the A12X: > An Hungarian researcher by the name of Dezsö Sima offers an exhaustive history of Apple processors [1] that shows the transition to homegrown cores clearly started with the A6 device. Extrapolate what a hypothetical 4+4 big.LITTLE A14X with 8 GPU cores would look like compared to the 2+4 A14 with 4 GPU cores and you don't need anything other than the progress of past Apple silicon SoCs to predict the characteristics of the M1. Apple Silicon is outpacing the competition on all fronts. Qualcomm, Samsung, Intel, and AMD are not keeping up. Huawei has been knocked out of the competition, mostly by geopolitics as far as I can tell. The only question was the timing of the MacOS pivot. The A12X was good enough for a MacBook Air but a compromise for a MacBook Pro. The M1 is a no-compromise SoC for MacOS and the only question is the execution of the software transition; the focus of Gruber and Moorhead's spat. [1] https://users.nik.uni-obuda.hu/sima/letoltes/Processor_families_Knowledge_Base_2019/Apple's_processor_lines_2018_12_23.pdf https://users.nik.uni-obuda.hu/sima/letoltes/Processor_famil...