So they’re promising ARM-beating battery life while just beginning to incorporate the kind of custom silicon that Apple has been integrating for years now?
I’ll believe it when I see it.
Right now Intel and AMD have less to fear from Apple than they do from Qualcomm – the people who can do what they need to do with a Mac and want to are already doing that, it’s businesses that are locked into the Windows ecosystem that drive the bulk of their laptop sales right now, and ARM laptops running Windows are the main threat in the short term.
If going wider and integrating more coprocessors gets them closer to matching Apple Silicon in performance per watt, that’s great, but Apple snatching up their traditional PC market sector is a fairly distant threat in comparison.
Well, specifically, they’re promising battery life that beats Qualcomm’s implementation of an ARM laptop SoC.
Qualcomm is significantly behind Apple. I’m not convinced that the ISA matters all that much for battery life. AMD’s x86_64 performance per watt blew Intel’s out of the water in recent generations, and Qualcomm/Samsung’s ARM chips can’t compete with Apple’s ARM chips in the mobile, tablet, or laptop space.
Afaik most laptops with Qualcomm X chips seem to be even more efficient than Apple’s Macbooks, at least when running native code. The biggest problem they are having is platform maturity, Microsoft has spent the last decade doing all the wrong decisions, and now they are waiting for software developers to port their code to ARM, while Apple has had a 4-year head start.
The chips are not bad though. As for competing, there’s really no competition as Apple uses their chips exclusively on their laptops, so there’s literally no room for any competition.
The biggest problem they are having is platform maturity
Maybe that’s an explanation for desktop/laptop performance, but I look at the mobile SoC space where Apple holds a commanding lead over ARM chips from Qualcomm, and where Qualcomm has better performance and efficiency than Samsung’s Exynos line, and I’m thinking a huge chunk of the difference between manufacturers can’t simply be explained by ISA or platform maturity. Apple has clearly been prioritizing battery life and efficiency for 10+ generations of Apple Silicon in the mobile market, and has a lead independent of its ISA, even as it trickled over to the laptop and desktop market.
Yeah. I think they will struggle to match apple. By the time they do apple will have progressed further.
Another big issue, is these features need deep and well implemented software. This is really easy for apple, they control all the hardware and software. They write all the drivers and can modify their kernel to their hearts content. A better processor is still unlikely to match apples overall performance. Intel have to support more operating systems and interface with more hardware of which they have little control over. It won’t be until years after release that these processors even realistically reach their potential. By which time intel and apple with both have newer releasesed chips with more features, that intel users won’t be able to use for a while.
This strategy has intel on the back foot and they will remain their indefinitely. They really need a bolder strategy if they want to reclaim best desktop processors. It’s pretty embarrassing apple laptop and integrated GPU completely wipe the floor of intel desktop cpus with dedicated gpus in certain workflows, it can often be the cheaper option to buy the apple device if your in a creative profession.
Qualcomm will have similar issues, but they won’t be limited to inferior x86 architecture. x86 only serves backwards compatibility and intel/amd. Arm is used on phones because with the same fab and power restrictions it makes better processors. This has been know for a long time, but consumers would accept this till apple proved it.
I wouldn’t be surprised if these intel chips flop initially, intel cuts their losses and stops developing new ones. Then we will see lots of articles saying intel should never have stopped developing these, there really competitive relativel to their contemporaries, not realising the software took that much time to effectively utilise them.
