[theta_d]

Pedantry incoming: Intel processors are also made of silicon.

"Apple Silicon" is just a way to say chips designed by Apple vs a 3rd party like Intel.

The instructions are Arm vs x86. This has nothing to do with the underlying substrate of silicon.

[andsoitis]

To add more color.

There are two kinds of ARM licenses. One is for chipset designs (e.g. Cortex - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_Cortex-A) that you get fabricated to get your CPUs.

The other ARM license is an ISA license. You get no chip design. All you get is the instruction set architecture but you have to design the chip yourself. That's what Apple has been doing.

[kelnos]

I know that I have a general bias against Apple, but it has generally annoyed me that Apple has decided to take a generic industry term like "$FOO Silicon" and turn it into a marketing title.