Revolutionary is always going to be controversial. The first iPhone was dismissed as nothing special. There were touch screens before, after all, and it didn't even have a proper keyboard. The first 64-bit ARM SOC was argued not to be revolutionary because it offered only evolutionary levels of performance comparable to previous Apple CPUs.
I don't think it's arguable that the M1 wasn't a game changer though. M1 firmly established Apple's design prowess at the laptop/desktop class chip game. It was no longer arguable that mere phone chips weren't comparable to desktop class CPUs. That claim is dead. It also enabled performance and power efficiency levels years ahead of the competition, giving tangible immediate benefits to customers.
So revolutionary? It's a matter of opinion, but I think it was a watershed moment and permanently changed the technical landscape for CPUs running 'full blown' desktop class software.
The iPhone revolutionalized touchscreen smartphones. It was the first very succesful capacitive touchscreen smartphone. After that, UIs had to get ready for capacitive touchscreens. Before that, resistive smartphones existed, but did get popular. Websites, for example, hardly optimized for these. They did optimize for the new capacitive touchscreen paradigm, as did smartphone 'apps'.
Prior to the iPhone you could buy a $5 a month unlimited data plan addon from AT&T. The revolution was AT&T increasing unlimited data to $20 a month for the OG iPhone and $30 a month for the iPhones thereafter.
It's weird to look at this in the context of Google and T-Mobile almost shipping the first Android devices with a $10 a month unlimited data only plan...
> The first 64-bit ARM SOC was argued not to be revolutionary because it offered only evolutionary levels of performance comparable to previous Apple CPUs.
It sounds like you are conflating AArch64 with Apple. Apple had nothing to do with AArch64, it was developed by ARM in-house; Apple simply released the first AArch64-compatible core (outside of ARM's Cortex series).
That's not what I've heard. The rumor is that AArch64 is as much Apple's as it is ARM's. That's why they're able to flaunt the normal restrictions of the architectural license: creating custom instructions, and not implementing parts of the ISA.
There is no rumor. AArch64 was designed by and is owned by ARM, as is all of the ARM IP.
Apple is able to do what they want because they have an architectural license; not a core license. It's the same reason Nvidia, Cavium, etc are able to design their own cores irrespective of the Cortex series. That's what an architectural license is for. While MediaTek, HiSilicon, etc are limited to using the Cortex SIP.
The Cortex-A53/A57 was the first core to implement it. And a Mali+Cortex-A53 vanilla SOC is the first implementation.
Then AppliedMicro had a hardware version to demo.
Apple simply had the first to market consumer product with one. Them buying up a good chunk of the fab space needed to produce them at the time probably contributed to that.
I don't think it's arguable that the M1 wasn't a game changer though. M1 firmly established Apple's design prowess at the laptop/desktop class chip game. It was no longer arguable that mere phone chips weren't comparable to desktop class CPUs. That claim is dead. It also enabled performance and power efficiency levels years ahead of the competition, giving tangible immediate benefits to customers.
So revolutionary? It's a matter of opinion, but I think it was a watershed moment and permanently changed the technical landscape for CPUs running 'full blown' desktop class software.