hackintoisier

Also, Intel is ramping Alder Lake-S which probably will exceed M1 Max performance (albeit while consuming much more power). Also alder lake will have up to 8 golden cove performance cores and 8 gracemont efficiency cores. Raptor Lake is rumored to launch in 2022 and double the efficiency cores to 16, for a total of 8 + 16 = 24 cores and 32 threads.   Intel is still selling a metric ton of processors to the ecosystem. 80 percent market share. Microsoft just announced that it updated the windows 11 kernel thread scheduler to schedule threads in a manner that takes advantage of the hybrid design. Intel might be coming back. 

Intel and AMD will be in trouble if and when ecosystem partners like Asus, Dell, Lenovo, Razer, Microsoft etc. introduce non-x86 designs. 

I don’t see x86 being in trouble until two things happen. 

First, An ARM vendor emerges that sells an ARM processor to the mass market with performance characteristics on par with Apple silicon or the upcoming x86 designs (or the ecosystem partners develop their own in house designs).  Qualcomm can’t compete with Alder Lake or Zen 4. And as good as Apple silicon is, it can’t run windows natively… and not only that, Dell, Lenovo, Asus can’t put an Apple silicon processor inside of their laptops because Apple doesn’t sell to other people. So for the billions of users out there who don’t use macOS, Apple silicon is not relevant to them.  Now if Apple got into the processor supplier game (it won’t) then that would spell serious trouble for AMD and Intel. 

Second, windows on arm needs to be licensed for broader non-OEM use, and it also has to seamlessly run the applications that people want to use like games, office suite software, content creation software, and so on. 

Until those two things happen, Intel and AMD will be fine. But Apple’s innovations could spur other laptop manufacturers to follow suit and ultimately press Microsoft for a windows on arm solution. Intel and AMD need to tread carefully, and continue to ramp x86 core design production on smaller nodes. ASAP. 

Hopefully intel (and amd) deliver their solutions on time. Intel really stumbled, it was sad to see. But Apple M1 is impressive. And M1x/m2 will be as well.  But hopefully intel is coming back with Alder Lake, Raptor Lake, and Meteor Lake.  Only time will tell. The next few years in tech will be interesting.