--- title: Last Week on My Mac: Why E cores make Apple silicon fast description: Apple silicon Macs achieve superior performance by using Efficiency cores to handle background processes, keeping Performance cores available for user... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/last-week-on-my-mac-why-e-cores-make-apple-silicon-fast-ljuyixzkx twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Last Week on My Mac: Why E cores make Apple silicon fast | daily.dev og:description: Apple silicon Macs achieve superior performance by using Efficiency cores to handle background processes, keeping Performance cores available for user... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/last-week-on-my-mac-why-e-cores-make-apple-silicon-fast-ljuyixzkx og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/lJuyIXZKX.png og:image:alt: Last Week on My Mac: Why E cores make Apple silicon fast og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Last Week on My Mac: Why E cores make Apple silicon fast **[Hacker News](https://daily.dev/sources/hn)** · 5 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Apple silicon Macs achieve superior performance by using Efficiency cores to handle background processes, keeping Performance cores available for user applications. The architecture leverages Quality of Service (QoS) metrics to segregate foreground threads (which run on P cores) from background threads (restricted to E cores). This design, inherited from iPhone development and based on ARM's big.LITTLE architecture, prevents background tasks like Spotlight indexing and system services from interfering with user apps, unlike Intel Macs where all processes compete for the same cores. The separation ensures responsive performance and better battery life, even when hundreds of background processes are running. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Boring Is What We Wanted](https://daily.dev/posts/boring-is-what-we-wanted-i9zbxvsme) · Hacker News · 114 upvotes · 6 comments --- Tags: [#hardware](https://daily.dev/tags/hardware), [#mac](https://daily.dev/tags/mac), [#performance](https://daily.dev/tags/performance) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/last-week-on-my-mac-why-e-cores-make-apple-silicon-fast-ljuyixzkx) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Last Week on My Mac: Why E cores make Apple silicon fast","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/last-week-on-my-mac-why-e-cores-make-apple-silicon-fast-ljuyixzkx","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/last-week-on-my-mac-why-e-cores-make-apple-silicon-fast-ljuyixzkx"},"datePublished":"2026-02-08T14:39:38.995Z","dateModified":"2026-03-15T03:58:34.792Z","description":"Apple silicon Macs achieve superior performance by using Efficiency cores to handle background processes, keeping Performance cores available for user...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/0fdbedf2fbd728801bd080e15564ab3f?_a=AQAEunF","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/0fdbedf2fbd728801bd080e15564ab3f?_a=AQAEunF","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Hacker News","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Hacker News","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/t_logo,f_auto/v1/logos/hn","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/hn"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/last-week-on-my-mac-why-e-cores-make-apple-silicon-fast-ljuyixzkx","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":0},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"hardware,mac,performance","timeRequired":"PT5M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Hacker News","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/hn"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Last Week on My Mac: Why E cores make Apple silicon fast"}]} ```