I think the folks at PA Semi had some chops too.

PA Semi group did the logic designs. I think they're talking about physical design though.

The way I heard it PA Semi was the singular driving force that led to Apple Silicon, but I'm not any kind of insider that's just the chatter I heard.

Whoever it was, whooo, that's hot shit. I remember an M1 MacBook Air just cleaning the clock of an Intel MacBook Pro and thinking "x86_64 has real competition again".

Great silicon. I'm over it with not having root on my own machine, so I've left the ecosystem, but it's really nice hardware, can't dispute that.