Flashback: how the Apple M1 evolved out of Apple's iPad chipsets

The first custom Apple chipset, the Apple A4, launched in 2010 with the original iPad and was also featured in the iPhone 4 a few months later. The A4 was manufactured by Samsung and used an enhanced Cortex-A8 CPU core dubbed “Hummingbird”. Hummingbird was co-developed by Samsung and Intrinsity and was announced in 2009 as “the world’s faster ARM Cortex-A8 processor”. Multiple customizations had to be made for the core to hit its 1GHz target. Apple acquired Intrinsity just months after it unveiled the iPad. And a couple of years before that it had acquired PA Semi. After those key...