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Accelerator Engines

The SoC has several onboard accelerator units, this is a useful list of the names and what they refer to. Most of the accelerators run firmware that can be found in the pre-boot partition /System/Volumes/Preboot/[UUID]/restore/Firmware, packaged as im4p files which may be extracted with https://github.com/19h/ftab-dump/blob/master/rkos.py and some dd.

*Update none of the ANE, AVE, ADT im4p's extract with that. I'm not sure which ones do. You are better off following the im4p extraction steps in ADT. Can we make a progress matrix regarding firmware?

Names

Names can be formatted the following ways depending on their official-ness: * Names in quotes with a question mark like: "?" are inventions/uncertain in origin. * Names in bold like: are found in Apple official documentation. * Names in italics like: are either common unofficial names or have uncertain but safe sources.

A
  • AGX: "Apple Graphics? Accel(x)lerator?" (via gfx) The internal name for Apple's GPU series.
  • AMX: Apple Matrix eXtensions. A matrix coprocessor partially integrated into the ISA.
  • ANE: Apple Neural Engine Neural network execution acceleration based on convolutions. Think of Google's TPU
  • AOP: Always On Processor. "hey siri" activation and "other sensor stuff"
  • APR: APR ProRes. Handles ProRes video encoding + decoding.
  • AVE: AVE Video Encoder. Handles video encoding. Ostensibly the A is for Apple [citation needed], but I see a recursive acronym.
  • AVD: AVD Video Decoder. Handles video decoding. ^
D
  • DCP: "Display Compression Processor?"/"Display Control Processor?". Displayport/Display control of some sort.
P
  • PMP: "Power Management Processor?". Handles power functionality
S
  • SEP: Secure Enclave Processor. The M1's built-in HSM/TPM/etc device. Handles Touch ID and most crypto, as well as boot policy decisions. Harmless to Linux, but we can use its features if we want to. Contrast to AP.