[4] The M1 chip initiated Apple's third change to the instruction set architecture used by Macintosh computers, switching from Intel to Apple silicon fourteen years after they were switched from PowerPC to Intel, and twenty-six years after the transition from the original Motorola 68000 series to PowerPC.

The M1 Max is a higher-powered version of the M1 Pro, with more GPU cores and memory bandwidth, a larger die size, and a large used interconnect.

[6] The initial versions of the M1 chips contain an architectural defect that permits sandboxed applications to exchange data, violating the security model, an issue that has been described as "mostly harmless".

[12] The M1 Ultra consists of two M1 Max units connected with UltraFusion Interconnect with a total of 20 CPU cores and 96 MB system level cache (SLC).

The M1 integrates an Apple designed[13] eight-core (seven in some base models) graphics processing unit (GPU).

In total, the M1 GPU contains up to 128 EUs and 1024 ALUs,[14] which Apple says can execute up to 24,576 threads simultaneously and which have a maximum floating point (FP32) performance of 2.6 TFLOPs.

In total, the M1 Max GPU contains up to 512 execution units or 4096 ALUs, which have a maximum floating point (FP32) performance of 10.4 TFLOPs.

The M1 recorded competitive performance with contemporary Intel and AMD processors in popular benchmarks (such as Geekbench and Cinebench R23).

[34] The devices that are reported to cause this issue were third-party USB-C hubs and non-Thunderbolt docks (excluding Apple's own dongle).

[34] Apple handled this issue by replacing the logic board and by telling its customers not to charge through those hubs.

Two sandboxed applications can exchange data without the system's knowledge by using an unintentionally writable processor register as a covert channel, violating the security model and constituting a minor vulnerability.

[38] In June 2022, MIT researchers announced they had found a speculative execution vulnerability in M1 chips which they called "Pacman" after pointer authentication codes (PAC).

[40] An exploit named GoFetch[41] is able to extract cryptographic keys from M-series chip devices without administrative privileges.