Apple Silicon

Purpose

Guide agents through Apple Silicon (M-series) development: unified memory architecture, AMX matrix coprocessor access via Accelerate, Metal Performance Shaders for GPU compute, sysctl hardware queries, Instruments profiling, command-line leak tools, Rosetta 2 translation behavior, and 16KB page size implications.

When to Use

• Optimizing native ARM64 apps on macOS for M1/M2/M3/M4
• Using GPU/NPU compute without discrete GPU PCIe transfers
• Profiling memory and CPU with Instruments or command-line tools
• Understanding Rosetta 2 compatibility for x86 binaries
• Adapting code for 16KB page size on Apple Silicon
• Accessing matrix acceleration via Accelerate/vDSP/BLAS

Workflow

1. Unified memory architecture