I think there's a couple things here. x86 defines a pretty strict ordering of memory operations, where ARM is more relaxed; as discussed elsewhere in the thread, this means atomic operations, used for synchronization, will need to wait for pending stores to finish on x86, but not on ARM.
The other thing is that the M1 processor seems to be a lot wider than contemporary processors. This means it can (potentially) do more operations per clock. Wider processors are harder to clock faster, but it works for Apple. Apple has no desire to put in the cooling you need to get chips running at 4+ GHz, so it's not a big deal if their chips are clock limited. On the other hand, Intel and AMD like their cores to approach 5 GHz at the top end.
The other thing is that the M1 processor seems to be a lot wider than contemporary processors. This means it can (potentially) do more operations per clock. Wider processors are harder to clock faster, but it works for Apple. Apple has no desire to put in the cooling you need to get chips running at 4+ GHz, so it's not a big deal if their chips are clock limited. On the other hand, Intel and AMD like their cores to approach 5 GHz at the top end.