Leaked Intel Roadmap Reveals More Efficient Chip Than M1 Pro and Max to Launch Within Two Years

[cmaier]

“We’ll use our own manufacturing” and “we’ll use CISC” are still tradeoffs that they’ve picked.

I suppose, though I’m not really sure that they have a choice but to sell x86. They could also sell something else, but that wouldn’t solve their x86 problem.

 

[pasamio]

That’s a really interesting point. Apple really does rely on innovating their chips *a lot* and if that section falters, every part of their business will suffer

I’d rephrase it differently: Intel were so far ahead that they were able to outperform their immediate competitor, AMD, for the longest time on performance benchmarks. Apple’s considerations have been around power usage with reports in 2019 of undervolting the Intel chips in their laptop lines. Intel had a lot of runway to falter within but that has run out with AMD making chips that are competitive and Apple, who clearly saw Intel’s delivery challenges for a while now, making a move away to control one more layer down in their product stack to their advantage.

It’s not like Intel’s engineers have been sitting around doing not a lot, they’ve pulled a lot of tricks to try to work within their existing process limitations to still improve their chips but at an increasing thermal cost. They’re also beholden to the x86 ISA and it’s legacy in a way that Apple isn’t. Apple’s product isn’t a CPU, it’s the whole package.

 

[cylack]

Yeah ok Intel Apple is just going to sit around and not make improvements on its chips waiting for you to catch up.

 

[quarkysg]

Apple doesn’t own them, do they? No?

Having the tools and knowing how to build furniture according to customer specifications doesn't equate to knowing how to build furniture that customer will want on their own. Just saying.

 

[PC_tech]

Having the tools and knowing how to build furniture according to customer specifications doesn't equate to knowing how to build furniture that customer will want on their own. Just saying.

What’s with the stupid analogies? This isn’t furniture.

 

[cmaier]

What’s with the stupid analogies? This isn’t furniture.

That’s the point of an analogy.

 

[kyykesko]

Comparing two laptop cpus based solely on cpu power is pointless. Hook them up to a similar battery and see then what the max power output is (and for how long). They see how long they survive on that said battery under a normal work load and you have something to compare. Being able to beat the max power at significantly reduced battery life is useful for ... pretty much nobody.

That said, it's nice to see competition. That's the best way to drive progress. I do hope Intel comes up with something truly interesting, but so far they've been beated by both AMD and Apple so easily it's not even funny. That only means they haven't bothered to really do much lately. My desktops run almost solely AMD CPUs while my Macbook's still an intel one as I haven't seen a good enough reason to jump over to M1 models. They're nice, but way overpriced as they are. Give me a decent enough swap offer from this i9 MBP 16" and I'll consider it. Ask me to pay 5k+ for a new one and you can hold your breath waiting for that to happen. And only because that's an insane amount of money to pay for a laptop that wouldn't really change enough for me.

 

[idob]

Hi everyone,

Currently as a non Apple OS user (have had iPhones in the past) I feel that this nechip has actually made me sit up and consider a Mac as a replacement for an aging AMD based PC. It has lots to offer, if I can deal with the learning curve of a new OS at my time of life. This is really good for competition.

Surely, Intel will struggle to match or beat the M1 and it's successors because to do so will require Microsoft to move Windows away from x86 code. Intel will have to do something really special to match Apple AND stick with the aging x86 architecture.

To me the MacBook Air or Mac Mini is looking quite tasty.

 

[deconstruct60]

Surely, Intel will struggle to match or beat the M1 and it's successors because to do so will require Microsoft to move Windows away from x86 code. Intel will have to do something really special to match Apple AND stick with the aging x86 architecture.

" ... Windows 10 is the final version of Windows which supports 32-bit processors (IA-32 and ARMv7-based) and devices with BIOS firmware. Its successor, Windows 11, requires a device that uses UEFI firmware and a 64-bit processor in any supported architecture (x86-64 for x86 and ARMv8 for ARM).[27] ..."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_10

Microsoft moved Windows off of being solely on x86 a long while back. It is more them putting more emphasis on moving forward than on dragging around legacy pre x86_64 code. True for Intel/AMD and Microsoft. Less focus on keeping boat anchors and more effort into trying to optimize for code written in the current century ( e.g., 2010-2017 and later).

x86 is more constipated than aging. It isn't because is "old", it is holding onto every holding on to every tangent approach to doing 'X' than now has one to two more well thought out implementations that is the problem. x86 has expanded in scope over its evolution. Same thing with Windows... run some Excel plugin written back in 1998 that is basically abandoned by the software developer at this point. Both sides don't need to throw everything out and start over from scratch, but some redundant, obsolete stuff should go. The business model of "keepers of every previous century program possible" is at this point a liability , not a feature. ( One reason why Windows 11 cut some x86 platforms loose. Same thing should probably happen around 2024-25 where AMD/Intel cut loose so legacy old DOS/Windows versions too; at least in a 'best performance" mode. )


Microsoft Windows 1.0 , 2.0 , and then 3.0 finally worked out many issues. Windows Vista , 8 , and then 10 worked out many issues. Windows RT , 10 , 11 for Arm ... they should be getting pretty close. They've had three shots at it. ( probably helps also that Intel now also has "big not-as-big"/"big little" SoCs so dealing with heterogenous cores is not a 'corner case' for the OS core. )


Apple will 'nuke' your 10-15 year old software if they fell like it. A large bulk of macOS software from 2007 era is now dead on M1 and future M-series generations (without running in a deep emulation virtual machine that Apple doesn't put much effort into; Sheepshaver/QEMU/etc. ). Apple dumps legacy boat anchors.

 

[qube_TA]

A leaked roadmap by Intel suggests that the company is developing a new lineup of CPUs that are targeted at outperforming Apple's 14-inch MacBook Pro with the M1 Pro and M1 Max chips by late 2023, or early 2024, which would be almost two years after the new chips and laptop made their debut.

The roadmap by Intel, initially leaked by AdoredTV and interpreted by Wccftech, explicitly states that Intel wants to compete with Apple's 14-inch MacBook Pro with its Arrow Lake series. According to the roadmap, Intel's 15th generation Arrow Lake processors could be ready to ship by late 2023, or early 2024 with a priority on delivering high-performance while using minimal energy.

Leaked Intel roadmap shared online by AdoredTV​

The roadmap also says that Intel will utilize TSMC's 3nm process. Apple currently utilizes the 5nm process for its latest chips and is expected to adopt the 3nm chip architecture in 2023 with the "M3" Apple silicon chip and A17 chip in the iPhone 15.

Intel has already beaten Apple's M1 Max chip on paper if you ignore high-energy consumption and poor battery life. Benchmarks show that Intel's latest Core i9 processors received a higher score than Apple's M1 Max chip in tests, but that 4% increase in performance is offset by a marked reduction in battery life compared to Apple's chips. Tests show that a laptop with Intel's latest i9 Core chip only lasts six hours for video playback. In comparison, Apple advertises the latest 16-inch MacBook Pro as getting up to 21 hours of battery life for offline video playback.

Ever since Apple announced its transition away from Intel during the summer of 2020, it has been slowly transitioning its Macs to custom-made chips. So far, Apple has released four laptop computers with Apple silicon, alongside two desktop computers. In just a few weeks, Apple is expected to announce at least one new Mac with Apple silicon, with possibilities being a new high-end Mac mini and an update to the low-end 13-inch MacBook Pro.

Article Link: Leaked Intel Roadmap Reveals More Efficient Chip Than M1 Pro and Max to Launch Within Two Years

For any new desktop CPU to be successful it'll need to have Windows compatibility and offer a good user experience. Given how difficult it's been for Microsoft to get a proper 64 bit environment and their desire to maintain compatibility with every piece of software over the lest 25 years it's going to be hugely challenging for them to shift to a new architecture. Maybe if Intel make a Rosetta type emulator that enables 100% compatibility then great. Of course Linux will be there straight away and will probably kill it on a server or whatever but whilst I'm a big Linux fan they've yet to really capture the desktop market more servers and IoT. If Microsoft sacked off Windows in favour of something new and offered an emulator for the old OS then it could be significant. But it's all a bit irrelevant in that whether a PC or 'droid is faster or slower makes no difference to me as I'm not using that hardware or software. As long as my MacOS and iOS devices are great for what I use them for then what anyone else might be doing isn't of any consequence.