Apple M1 vs MediaTek Dimensity 7020 vs MediaTek Dimensity 8100

Apple M1

The Apple M1 is a System on a Chip (SoC) from Apple that is found in the late 2020 MacBook Air, MacBook Pro 13, and Mac Mini. It offers 8 cores divided in four performance cores and four power-efficiency cores. The big cores offer 192 KB instruction cache, 128 KB data cache, and 12 MB shared L2 cache. According to Apple the performance of these cores should be better than anything on the market (in late 2020). The four efficiency cores are a lot smaller and offer only 128 KB instruction cache, 64 KB data cache, and 4 MB shared cache. The efficiency cores (E cluster) clock with 600 - 2064 MHz, the performance cores (P cluster) with 600 - 3204 MHz.

The M1 is available in two TDP variants, a passive cooled 10 Watt variant for the MacBook Air and an active cooled faster variant for the MacBook Pro 13 and Mac Mini. Those should offer a better-sustained performance according to Apple.

The integrated graphics card in the M1 offers 8 cores (7 cores in the entry MacBook Air) and a peak performance of 2.6 teraflops. Apple claims that it is faster than any other iGPU at the time of announcement.

Furthermore, the SoC integrates a fast 16 core neural engine with a peak performance of 11 TOPS (for AI hardware acceleration), a secure enclave (e.g., for encryption), a unified memory architecture, Thunderbolt / USB 4 controller, an ISP, and media de- and encoders.

The Apple M1 includes 16 billion transistors (up from the 10 billion of the A12Z Bionic and therefore double the amount of a Tiger Lake-U chip like the i7-1185G7) and is manufactured in 5nm at TSMC.

MediaTek Dimensity 7020

The Mediatek Dimensity 7020 is a fast mid-range SoC with an integrated 5G modem. It includes two fast ARM Cortex-A78 cores at up to 2.2 GHz and six power efficient Cortex-A55 cores at up to 2 GHz (Octa-Core with Heterogeneous Multi-Processing). Furthermore, the chip integrates a IMG BXM-8-256 GPU, a Wi-Fi 5 modem, a LPDDR5 / LPDDR4X memory controller, a AI processing unit  and video de- and encoding.

The 5G modem supports NR 2CC and mixed duplex (TDD/FDD) and dual SIM. The download speeds can reach up to 2.77 Gbit/s.

Compared to the Dimensity 930, the 7020 offers the same specifications and seems to be a rebrand.

The Dimensity 930 and 7020 are manufactured in the modern 6nm process and should be very power efficient.

MediaTek Dimensity 8100

The Mediatek Dimensity 8100 is a upper mid-range smartphone SoC. The CPU integrates four fast ARM Cortex-A78 cores with up to 2.85 GHz and four efficient Cortex-A55 cores with up to 2 GHz. The integrated 5G modem supports all modern standards including 5G SA and a maximum download speed of 4.7 Gbps.

The integrated ARM Mali-G610 MC6 GPU integrates 6 cores and supports displays with up to 2,960 x 1,440 pixels (WQHD+).

The chip is produced at TSMC in 5nm.