Apple silicon is Apple’s family of custom‑designed system‑on‑a‑chip (SoC) processors (e.g., M1, M2, M3, M4) built on ARM architecture. Introduced in 2020 to replace Intel x86 chips in Macs, these chips integrate the CPU, GPU, Neural Engine, memory controller and other components into a single package, delivering higher performance, better energy efficiency and tighter hardware‑software integration across Apple’s devices.