It's been more than a month since Craig Federighi launched the chupinazo of the Apple Silicon project. Many were the rumors that Apple was going to present this change at WWDC 2020, but what no one imagined is that it was already so advanced.
Only ten days after its presentation, the first Transitional Kits for Developers were already sent, consisting of a test Mac mini ARM and its corresponding software so that some privileged developers could already start "playing" with the first Apple silicon (test prototype) of the new era. And although Apple has prohibited it, the first results of the Geekbench 5 Pro test are already running.
Although Apple has prohibited the holders of the Transition Kit Apple Silicon publish performance data of the Mac mini, the second results of Geekbench are already running on social networks. It is as if you give your children a drone and forbid them to try it inside the house. Impossible.
A few days after the lucky developers received the Mac mini ARM To start working with it, the first Geekbench tests of this test unit have already appeared. But these results were obtained with the Geekbench application running under Rosetta 2, and no matter how much Apple says, it is still a virtual emulator and therefore reduces the performance of any software.
The data from Geekbech 5 Pro published today they are real, since this application has been run natively on the Mac mini, without Rosetta in between. This has been done by booting into recovery, disabling security features and code signing applications.
Mac mini ARM outperforms MacBook Air on Geekbench
The Geekbench of this kit are very good considering that it is a prototype with an iPad Pro processor.
Geekbench shows a result of 1098 points for a single core and 4555 points in multicore mode. Previously published data running Geekbench under Rosetta was 800 points on a single core and 2600 with multiple cores at the same time.
With this score, the Mac mini ARM is above a 2020 MacBook Air, which obtains results of 1005 points in single core and 2000 points processing multiple cores at the same time.
The data is really good, if we consider that it is a test Mac mini, with the processor of the current iPad Pro, the A12Z Bionic. Presumably the first Apple Silicon to be marketed will already incorporate a new processor somewhat more advanced than this and prepared for macOS Big Sur.