We've run full circle there

ARC is not specific to M1, BUT have been widely used in ObjC & Swift for years AND is thus heavily optimized on M1 that perform "retain and release" way faster (even when emulating x86)

Perfect illustration of Apple software+hardware long term strategy.

That still doesn't mean that M1 Macs use less memory. If retain/release is faster then the M1 Macs have higher performance than Intel Macs. That is easily understood. The claim under contention here is that M1 Macs use less memory, which is not explained by hardware optimized atomic operations

And I never stated that. It's just more optimized.

Ok. However the posts in this thread were asking how the M1 Macs could use less RAM than Intel Macs, not if they were more optimized. The GP started with:

>This quote doesn’t really cover why M1 macs are more efficient with less ram than intel macs? You’ve got a memory budget, it’s likely broadly the same on both platforms

Well, if less memory is used to store garbage thanks to RC, less memory is needed. But that was largely discussed in other sub-comments hence why we focused more on the optimisation aspect in this thread.

>Well, if less memory is used to store garbage thanks to RC, less memory is needed

But both Intel Macs and ARM Macs use RC. Both chips are running the same software.