Windows PCs powered by future Intel chips will compete in performance with Apple Silicon Macs, says CEO Pat Gelsinger
No such announcement has been made for this year's Meteor Lake chip, which debuts on December 14, but Gelsinger says that will change with Arrow Lake, Lunar Lake and Panther Lake…
Intel is taking a similar approach to chip packaging Apple
Intel is already starting to use one of the key elements of Apple Silicon chips in this year's Meteor Lake chips, which will arrive in time for the latest Windows PCs this year. Namely, packaging: combining related chips into a single unit along with the main processor for greater efficiency.
Meteor Lake chips combine CPU, GPU and connectivity in this way, with Intel acknowledging that packaging technology is now at a high level. the size of the processor used is important.
Intel is also adopting Apple's core approach to performance and efficiency.
But even these steps won't allow Meteor Lake to come close to the performance or energy efficiency of the current generation of Apple Silicon chips.
Will match Apple's performance next year
Best comment from Exotica
Good to see information coming back. Perhaps Intel really needed an engineer like Pat at the helm. What Apple has done and is doing with Apple hands and silicon is very impressive. Intel definitely made a mistake with the 14nm process ->10 nm. But now the focus seems to be on energy efficiency. Perhaps now that the company is using EUV and advanced 3D layup/packaging, it will be able to produce chips that rival Apple's best products in terms of performance per watt.
Competition is always good for us , consumers. . I'm sure the departure of Apple and the development of Apple Silicon pushed Intel to improve. And if Intel does catch up or surpass Apple, it will push Apple to become better. And ultimately we, the consumers, win. Finally, it was sad to see Apple leave x86 behind after so many years. But I know why they had to do it. Apple's silicon is impressive.
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However, Gelsinger says Intel will catch up to Apple Silicon by next year. While the CNET headline says Intel claims it will surpass Apple, the CEO's actual quote is somewhat more muted.
As for the processor evolution from Meteor Lake to Panther Lake, Intel compares its performance with competitors, including Apple, across three speed tests: CPU (general computing central processing units), GPUs (graphics processing units) and NPUs (neural processing units for accelerating artificial intelligence) within a fixed power budget.
“We look at the combined capabilities that we provide between these three platforms, and we think that these platforms will become very competitive, the best that Mac or anyone else has to offer,” Gelsinger said at a press conference at the show. “We are very, very pleased with the plan of action.”
Hopefully beat TSMC in one technology
Intel says it will beat Apple's chips made by TSMC in one respect. Although it is lagging behind in the race to increasingly smaller processes using extreme ultraviolet (EUV) etching, the next generation of this technology is known as high numerical aperture (HNA) EUV.
B CNET report says that Compared to TSMC, Intel “expects to be ahead at least slightly.”
However, high NA EUV cannot yet produce chips of the size needed to compete with existing processors, so it will rely on advanced packaging techniques to combine smaller ones. Whether it will be competitive with Apple Silicon remains to be seen.
