Apple silicon - Concepts

Apple silicon

Apple silicon is Apple’s own design of processor. It is the basis of Mac computers, as well as many other Apple products.

Apple silicon as-a-service

Scaleway Apple silicon as-a-Service uses Apple Mac mini hardware. These devices rely on the power of Apple’s silicon technology, ensuring exceptional performance and energy efficiency.

Apple silicon as-a-Service is tailored for developing, building, testing, and signing applications for Apple devices such as iPhones, iPads, Mac computers and more. The Mac mini boasts a sophisticated neural engine that significantly enhances machine learning capabilities.

Mac mini

The Mac mini is a physical hardware designed by Apple, powered by the Apple silicon chip. It is the basis for Scaleway’s Apple silicon as-a-service offer.

Region and Availability Zone

A region is a geographical area, such as France (Paris: fr-par) or the Netherlands (Amsterdam: nl-ams), in which Scaleway products and resources are located. It can contain multiple Availability Zones.

An Availability Zone refers to the geographical location within a region, such as waw-1 (Warsaw, Poland), in which your Scaleway resource will be created. The latency between multiple AZs of the same region is low, as they have a common network layer.

For an extensive list of which regions and AZ a resource is available in, refer to our Product availability guide.

VNC

Virtual Network Computing (VNC) is a remote desktop-sharing protocol. It allows you to visualize the graphical screen output of a remote computer and transfer local keyboard and mouse events to the remote computer using a network connection. The protocol is platform-independent, which means that various clients exist for Linux, Windows, and macOS-based computers. The VNC server used on the Mac mini is directly integrated with the macOS system without any restrictions from our side. Check out our documentation on how to connect to your Mac mini via VNC.