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New Intel chips want to make your laptop connect, work and play better
New Intel chips want to make your laptop connect, work and play better
Intel is adding six new laptop CPUs to its lineup, the company announced at this year's IFA technology trade show in Germany. Three new U-series and three new Y-series processors are joining Intel's 8th generation of Core i-series parts. Previously, these chips were known by the code names Whiskey Lake and Amber Lake.
These are for laptops, tablets and two-in-one devices that range from mainstream clamshells to thin, fanless designs, and include support for integrated gigabit Wi-Fi, which Intel says is a first for this class of consumer PC. Those system will be labeled as "Optimized for Connectivity."
Intel
The six new CPUs are in the Core-m and Core-i families and include:
1.1GHz Core m3-8100Y
1.3GHz Core i5-8200Y
1.5GHz Core i7-8500Y
2.1GHz Core i3-8145U
1.6GHz Core i5-8265U
1.8GHz Core i7-8565U
In introducing the new CPUs, Intel says that its goal was to address pain points like low-battery anxiety. By encouraging further power efficiencies, newer laptops can hit up to 16 hours of battery life. The U and Y-series chips may also provide enough of a performance boost to convince people holding into older computers to upgrade. Intel claims there are a large number of users still working on PCs more than five years old, and that the latest 8th-gen CPUs can usually double the performance of that 5-year-old system.
Intel is also focused on gaming, which is somewhat surprising, as the integrated graphics chips in Intel platforms have not kept up with PC gaming needs over the years. For most gamers, low-cost laptops and desktop with Nvidia graphics hardware for as little as $799 have filled some of that performance gap.
But Intel says it wants to support casual gaming, which the company defines as games like World of Warcraft or World of Tanks. To help buyers figure out what games they can play, and what settings to use, check out Intel's existing gameplay.intel.com website, which provides a list of compatible games, and suggested resolution and detail level settings based on your exact hardware, including updated setting for these new CPUs.
Intel
More importantly, although these new CPUs don't offer any new integrated graphics hardware, Intel says the overall efficiency of these chips, especially compared to the laptops of a few years ago, will offer smoother pen and inking performance and near-real-time 4K video rendering.
Look for laptops and tablets with these latest 8th-gen Intel CPUs to be announced at IFA and shipping soon after.
Laptops with the best battery life : See the top 25 laptops and 2-in-1 PCs with the longest battery life.
Great games for your non-gaming laptop : No GPU? No problem. The best games to sneak onto your work laptop.
Choosing a new laptop, whether it's for work, home or going back to school, isn't an easy decision, but CNET's list of the best laptops for 2022 is a great place to start with our top picks across brands, operating systems, budgets and categories. Many of the models from 2021 have been updated for 2022 with the latest chips from Intel and AMD, and Apple's new M2 chips, too.
Our top laptop choice for most people is the updated Apple MacBook Air M2. It offers a great combination of everything we look for when we're testing: reliable everyday performance, long battery life and a design that works for a broad range of users. The latest MacBook Air starts at $1,199, which is why we still recommend the 2020 MacBook Air M1 as a lower-cost alternative to the newest Air model, as it's still an all-around excellent laptop. For those looking for a more value-oriented option, Acer's Swift 3 is our current recommendation. Well-configured older versions are available for under $550, while new models start under $800, and fully loaded with an OLED display it's right around $1,200.
At CNET, our laptop experts have collective decades of experience testing and reviewing laptops, covering everything from performance to price to battery life. This hand-curated list covers the best laptops across various sizes, styles and costs, including laptop computers running on Windows, MacOS and Chrome.
If you want more laptop brands and options for a particular category, we also have specialized lists you can look at, including the best gaming laptops, best 15-inch laptops, best two-in-ones and best Chromebooks, as well as the best laptops for college students, designers and the best MacBook Pro alternatives. If you need to stay as low as possible on the price of a new laptop computer, check out our best budget laptop and best budget gaming laptop picks.
This best laptop list is updated periodically with new models we've tested and reviewed. If you need advice on whether a particular type of laptop or two-in-one is right for you, jump to our laptop FAQ at the bottom of the list.
James Martin/CNET
Thanks to a new design, a larger display (13.6 inches versus the previous 13.3 inches), a faster M2 chip and a long-awaited upgrade to a higher-res webcam, the 2022 version of the MacBook Air remains our top choice for the most universally useful laptop in Apple's lineup, with one caveat. At $1,199, the $200 increase over the traditional $999 MacBook Air starting price is a disappointment. That's why you'll still find the M1 version of the Air retains a spot on our best laptop list. Still, we like everything else about it and is our first choice if you're considering an Air and don't mind spending more.
Read our Apple MacBook Air M2 review.
Josh Goldman/CNET
Available with either AMD Ryzen or Intel Core processors, this 14-inch laptop gives you more screen to work on than 13-inch laptops, but is still incredibly lightweight -- less than 3 pounds. The bigger display is nice, too, covering 100% sRGB color gamut (better than you typically find at its starting price under $700). It also has a backlit keyboard, a fingerprint reader and USB Type-C and HDMI ports, too. The 2022 version of the Swift 3 falls just under $1,000 with 12th-gen Intel Core i-series CPUs. But the 2021 models are still widely available for less than $600.
Sarah Tew/CNET
The Dell XPS 13 is a perennial favorite for its size, weight and performance and just overall good looks. In 2020, Dell made the laptop even smaller, while making the laptop screen larger and increasing performance for both CPU and graphics-intensive tasks. For 2022, it made the XPS 13 even smaller and lighter, kept its sub-$999 starting price the same and dropped in the latest 12th-gen Intel processors.
While we haven't had a chance to test the new model yet, we expect it to be a strong Windows alternative to the MacBook Air. Also, if you want to save money, the 2021 XPS 13 with 11th-gen Intel chips is available for less now.
This thin, 3-pound convertible is a solid choice for anyone who needs a laptop for office or schoolwork. The all-metal chassis gives it a premium look and feel, and it has a comfortable keyboard and a responsive, smooth precision touchpad. Though it's light on extra features compared to its premium linemate, the Yoga 9i, it does have one of Lenovo's sliding shutters for its webcam that gives you privacy when you want it. And it has a long battery life to boot at 12 hours, 45 minutes in our tests. The latest version with 12th-gen Intel processors starts at $999 (although you can find it on sale for less). The 2021 models are still available, too, at reduced prices.
Josh Goldman/CNET
Acer's Spin 513 is an update of sorts to one of the best Chromebooks from 2021, the Spin 713. It's a two-in-one convertible Chromebook with a 13.5-inch display that has a 3:2 aspect ratio. The extra vertical space means less scrolling when you're working. The screen size is also close to that of letter-size paper, making it comfortable for notetaking in tablet mode with a USI pen. Compared to the 713, it drops a couple of noncritical features like an HDMI output in favor of a more affordable price. It has amazing battery life, though, and a sturdy fanless design, making it silent -- perfect for quiet classrooms, meetings, lectures or video calls.
Joshua Goldman/CNET
Lenovo launched the Yoga line 10 years ago with Windows 8 and now, with Windows 11, the flexibility of the design has only gotten better. The company's flagship 14-inch Yoga 9i Gen 7 has an updated look with comfortable, rounded edges and 12th-gen Intel processors that give it a big multicore performance jump. A beautiful OLED display and improved audio make it excellent for work, video conferences and entertainment. Lenovo includes an active pen and a laptop sleeve to complete the premium package.
The powerful speakers do add some vibration to the palm rests when turned up and Lenovo has cluttered the laptop with pitches for optional services and software. But, overall, the latest Yoga 9i is the two-in-one convertible laptop to beat. Unfortunately, its availability is limited at the moment so you might have to wait to buy one.
Read our Lenovo Yoga 9i Gen 7 review.
Dan Ackerman/CNET
New Apple silicon, new display, new design and all the ports we've been asking for: The latest 16-inch Apple MacBook Pro is the best Pro ever. The combination of the larger MacBook Pro's hardware and MacOS extracts the maximum performance from the components while delivering excellent battery life. The new mini-LED high-resolution display is gorgeous. And if an HDMI output and SD card reader were on your shortlist for features, you'll find those here too.
You pay for it, though: Base price for the 16-inch model of this premium laptop is $2,499.
Read our Apple MacBook Pro review.
Josh Goldman/CNET
There are plenty of 15.6-inch laptops, but 16-inch models like the Dell Inspiron 16 Plus are something of a rarity. The 16-inch display is a great size since the laptop is barely bigger than a 15.6-inch model, but you get more room for work and a roomier keyboard and touchpad along with it. For this Inspiron, Dell packed in performance parts including Nvidia discrete graphics (though it's nearly half the price if you go with Intel integrated graphics) and the display covers 100% sRGB and 81% AdobeRGB color gamuts, which is good enough if you're getting started with creating web content. Also, the laptop has a more premium fit and finish than we're used to seeing in the Inspiron line.
Read our Dell Inspiron 16 Plus review.
Dan Ackerman/CNET
Although this Microsoft Surface laptop is not the Surface Laptop, the Surface Pro continues to hit all the right notes if you're looking for a do-it-all Windows tablet that doubles as a Windows laptop. Microsoft recently overhauled it for the Surface Pro 8, which has a larger 13-inch display, 11th-gen Intel Core processors and two Thunderbolt 4 USB-C ports. The Surface Pro 7 is still around for the time being at a discount, and an updated version called the Surface Pro 7 Plus will stay in the lineup, so you'll still be able to get the classic Pro design but with new processors.
Read our Surface Pro 8 review.
Sarah Tew/CNET
There's a lot to love with the Razer Blade 14, which incorporates one of the fastest mobile CPUs available (for now, at least), the AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX, and top-end mobile graphics with the GeForce RTX 3070 or 3080. Its display can go pixel-to-pixel with the MacBook's. And its high-quality build is up there with the best MacBooks but, like an Apple, it's not necessarily the best laptop deal, even compared to other premium laptops.
Read our Razer Blade 14 review.
HP
HP's Victus 16 is a surprisingly robust and powerful gaming laptop that keeps up with the latest games at a more affordable price. Compared to HP's high-end Omen gaming laptop line, the Victus is more of an all-purpose laptop but still configured for gaming with a price starting at less than $1,000. HP offers several configurations with graphics chip options ranging from Nvidia's entry-level GeForce GTX 1650 up to a midrange RTX 3060 or AMD Radeon RX 6500M.
Read our HP Victus 16 review.
James Martin/CNET
The XPS 17 combines the same slim, premium design of its 13-inch linemate but with increased performance possibilities. It can be configured with up to a 12th-gen Intel Core i9 processor, 64GB of memory and a 6GB Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 graphics chip. The best part: Dell trimmed up the chassis so much that you get a 17-inch display in a body that's the size of an older 15-inch laptop. You're getting a lot of power and a big screen in the smallest possible package.
Dell XPS 17 review.
Laptop FAQs
How much does a good laptop cost?
Setting a budget is a good place to start when shopping for the best laptop for yourself. The good news is you can get a nice-looking, lightweight laptop with excellent battery life at prices under $500. If you're shopping for a laptop around $500 or less, check out our top picks here, as well as more specific buying advice for that price range.
Higher-end components like Intel Core i-series and AMD Ryzen processors and premium design touches like thin-display bezels and aluminum or magnesium bodies have made their way to laptops priced between $500 and $1,000. You can also find touchscreens and two-in-one designs that can be used as a tablet or a laptop -- and a couple other positions in between. In this price range, you'll also find faster memory and ssd storage -- and more of it -- to improve performance.
Above $1,000 is where you'll find premium laptops and two-in-ones. If you're looking for the fastest performance, the best battery life, the slimmest, lightest designs and top-notch display quality with an adequate screen size, expect to spend at least $1,000.
Which is better, MacOS or Windows?
Deciding between MacOS and Windows laptop for many people will come down to personal preference and budget. Apple's base model laptop, the M1 MacBook Air, starts at $999. You can sometimes find it discounted or you can get educational pricing from Apple and other retailers. But, in general, it'll be at least $1,000 for a new MacBook, and the prices just go up from there.
For the money, though, you're getting great hardware top to bottom, inside and out. Apple recently moved to using its own processors, which resulted in across-the-board performance improvements compared to older Intel-based models. But, the company's most powerful laptop, the 16-inch MacBook Pro, still hasn't been updated to Apple silicon.
But, again, that great hardware comes at a price. Also, you're limited to just Apple laptops. With Windows and Chromebooks (more on these below), you get an amazing variety of devices at a wide range of prices.
Software between the two is plentiful, so unless you need to run something that's only available on one platform or the other, you should be fine to go with either. Gaming is definitely an advantage for a Windows laptop, though.
MacOS is also considered to be easier and safer to use than Windows, especially for people who want their computers to get out of the way so they can get things done. Over the years, though, Microsoft has done its best to follow suit and, with Windows 11 here, it's trying to remove any barriers. Also, while Macs might have a reputation for being safer, with the popularity of the iPhone and iPad helping to drive Mac sales, they've become bigger targets for malware.
Are Chromebooks worth it?
Yes, they are, but they're not for everyone. Google's Chrome OS has come a long way in the past 10 years and Chromebooks -- laptops that run on Chrome OS -- are great for people who do most of their work in a web browser or using mobile apps. They are secure, simple and, more often than not, a bargain. What they can't do is natively run Windows or Mac software.
What's the best laptop for home, travel or both?
The pandemic changed how and where a lot of people work. The small, ultraportable laptops valued by people who regularly traveled may have suddenly become woefully inadequate for working from home. Or maybe instead of needing long battery life, you'd rather have a bigger display with more graphics power for gaming.
If you're going to be working on a laptop and don't need more mobility than moving it from room to room, consider a 15.6-inch laptop or larger. In general, a bigger screen makes life easier for work and is more enjoyable for entertainment, and also is better if you're using it as an extended display with an external monitor. It typically means you're getting more ports, too, so connecting an external display or storage or a keyboard and mouse are easier without requiring a hub or dock.
For travel, stay with 13- or 14-inch laptops or two-in-ones. They'll be the lightest and smallest while still delivering excellent battery life. What's nice is that PC-makers are moving away from 16:9 widescreens toward 16:10- or 3:2-ratio displays, which gives you more vertical screen space for work without significantly increasing the footprint. These models usually don't have discrete graphics or powerful processors, though that's not always the case.
Which laptop is best for gaming or creating?
You can play games and create content on any laptop. That said, what games you play and what content you create -- and the speed at which you do them -- is going vary greatly depending on the components inside the laptop.
For casual browser-based games or using streaming-game services like Google Stadia, Nvidia GeForce Now and Xbox Cloud Gaming, you don't need a powerful gaming laptop. And similarly, if you're just trimming video clips, cropping photos or live-streaming video from your webcam, you can get by with a modestly priced laptop or Chromebook with integrated graphics.
For anything more demanding, you'll need to invest more money for discrete graphics like Nvidia's RTX 30-series GPUs. Increased system memory of 16GB or more, having a speedy SSD for storage and a faster processor such as an Intel Core i7 or AMD Ryzen 7 will all help you get things moving faster, too.
The other piece you'll want to consider is the display. For gaming, look for screens with a high refresh rate of 120Hz or faster so games look smoother while playing. For content creation, look for displays that cover 100% sRGB color space.
How we test computers
The review process for laptops, desktops, tablets and other computer-like devices consists of two parts: performance testing under controlled conditions in the CNET Labs and extensive hands-on use by our expert reviewers. This includes evaluating a device's aesthetics, ergonomics and features. A final review verdict is a combination of both those objective and subjective judgments.
The list of benchmarking software we use changes over time as the devices we test evolve. The most important core tests we're currently running on every compatible computer include: Primate Labs Geekbench 5, Cinebench R23, PCMark 10 and 3DMark Fire Strike Ultra.
A more detailed description of each benchmark and how we use it can be found in our How We Test Computers page.
More for people who spend all day on their computers
Intel tiger lake laptop intel tiger lake chipset intel tiger lake chipset driver intel tiger lake h intel tiger lake review intel tiger lake wiki intel core i5 1135g7 tiger lake intel sticker easter egg intel stock intel software update intel ssd
Intel's Tiger Lake chip delivers a long-awaited laptop speed boost
Intel's Tiger Lake chip delivers a long-awaited laptop speed boost
We knew Intel's Tiger Lake laptop chips were going to be better than last year's Ice Lake models. Now we know how much better. At a launch event Wednesday for the chips, formally called the 11th generation Core processors, Intel showed speedups that indicate it's got some of its mojo back after years of sluggish progress.
For productivity chores like word processing, it's 32% faster than Ice Lake and 24% faster than AMD's Ryzen laptop chip, Intel said, citing its own tests of systems with the same power consumption. For video editing, it's 49% faster than Ice Lake and double the speed of AMD. For streaming online games, it's got a 77% speedup over Ice Lake and 146% over AMD.
"It's the most significant leap forward in a laptop processor in more than a decade," said Gregory Bryant, general manager of Intel's PC group. At least 50 Tiger Lake laptops are set to ship this year, Intel said.
Higher-end Tiger Lake chips also get a big 68% graphics boost over Ice Lake through Intel's new Xe technology, designed for everything from lightweight laptops to supercomputers. It's good enough to play games like PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds or Battlefield 5, Bryant said. Tiger Lake has Thunderbolt 4 and USB 4 built in for peripherals like high-speed storage devices and high-resolution monitors, and Tiger Lake PCs will support the latest Wi-Fi 6 standard for fast and reliable networking.
The Tiger Lake chips come at an important time of change in the PC market. Intel manufacturing difficulties meant years of middling performance increases. That helped Intel rival AMD gain ground and influenced Apple's decision to eject Intel chips from its Macs and move to its own processors.
Now Intel has a chance at resurgence. Tiger Lake offers better performance and arrives as the coronavirus pandemic triggered a surge in PC purchases. PC shipments increased 11% to 72.3 million units in the second quarter of 2020, according to analyst firm IDC. That's a refreshing change of pace for a chipmaker that failed to cash in on the smartphone revolution.
Intel's slow progress
Tiger Lake offers a significant speed boost, particularly when it comes to graphics, Linley Group analyst Linley Gwennap agrees. But he's not impressed with how long it took Intel to deliver it.
"It's been three years since there's been a good bump in performance for these laptop processors," Gwennap said.
Intel will sell nine initial varieties of Tiger Lake chips ranging from low-end dual-core i3 models and higher-end quad-core i5 and i7 models. In a presentation at the Hot Chips conference in August, Intel detailed a quad-core model but left the door open for more processing cores. "You can expect we'll build out a family of products on Tiger Lake," Bryant said.
AMD, which already offers an eight-core Ryzen processor for laptops, didn't respond to a request for comment.
Look for the Evo logo
Intel's influence extends beyond the chip and surrounding electronics. In 2018, it unveiled Project Athena, a program to ensure high-end laptops offer both performance and good battery life.
Now Project Athena has grown into Evo, a logo you'll be able to spot on laptop boxes to make it more obvious. It signifies a laptop has passed tests proving it can:
Run for at least nine hours on battery for systems with modest screen resolutions.
Be responsive to clicks and scrolling even when on battery power.
Wake up from sleep in less than a second.
Get at least 4 more hours of battery life after 30 minutes of charging.
Intel PC partners, which cooperated on Athena, liked the idea but wanted something to make it obvious which laptops were certified, Bryant said.
Gregory Bryant, leader of Intel's PC chip business, holds a 300mm wide wafer with hundreds of Tiger Lake processors.
Intel
Intel's manufacturing woes
Intel struggled to advance its manufacturing from a process where electronics elements measured 14 nanometers to the more advanced 10nm process used to build Ice Lake and Tiger Lake. (A nanometer is a billionth of a meter.) Moving to a new manufacturing process lets chipmakers double the number of transistors on a chip. That circuitry increase makes it practical to add more speed-boosting features like processing cores, graphics engines, AI accelerators and high-speed cache memory.
Tiger Lake benefits from an upgraded 10nm process, called SuperFin, with better power efficiency and performance options. But Gwennap said the improvements came late.
"The problem is the original 10nm was so bad," he said. "This is what 10nm should have been from the start."
In July, Intel delayed its move to 7nm manufacturing by six months and reorganized its technology group. Rival chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp. now has about a two and a half year lead, Gwennap said.
14nm manufacturing still important
Intel hasn't even moved all its chips, like those running on desktop machines, to the 10nm process, added 451 Research analyst James Sanders. Instead, it's moving core Tiger Lake technology to the older 14nm process.
AMD and Apple use TSMC's 7nm manufacturing process. The denser circuitry lets AMD pack in more transistors, as in the case of its eight-core Ryzen chips or its more powerful desktop chips popular with gamers.
Now Intel has joined the TSMC bandwagon in earnest, too. That broadens its manufacturing options and shows just how serious its manufacturing problems have been.
Details, details
The usual horde of manufacturers were on board with laptop refresh announcements in conjunction with Intel's event, with at least one Evo-badged model for each. They include:
And while Dell didn't announce anything, it did have an XPS 13 Evo-stickered laptop on the table with the rest of the crew.
As for the actual chips Intel announced, they fall into the usual two camps: low power, 12- to 28-watt packages designed for mainstream laptops (such as the HP Envy 17, Surface Book 3 15, LG Gram 17, Lenovo Yoga C940 and so on) and ultra low-power, 7- to 15-watt parts for the ultrathin and light devices (which include the MacBook Air, Asus ExpertBook B9 and Acer Swift series). It's not a rigid demarcation, though. For instance, if a laptop requires better graphics it might run the higher-power CPU all the time at the lower wattage.
This go round, the chips with model numbers bearing "G7" are the ones incorporating Intel's new Iris Xe integrated graphics, the upgrade from the Iris Plus of the 10th-gen G7; G4 graphics is roughly the same as before, albeit with some gen-over-gen enhancements.
Apple m1 chip performance apple m1 chip cores apple m1 processor vs intel what is the apple m1 processor apple m1 processor apple m1 processor review apple s m1 chip review apple smartphone apple smart keyboard
Apple's custom-built M1 processor and the new MacBook Airs, MacBook Pros and Mac Minis that use it are a problem for Intel. The divorce proceedings will last about two years as the prestigious customer gradually ejects Intel's chips from its personal computers.
But Intel isn't doomed.
The Santa Clara, California, company has some advantages and options in the PC market that insulate it from Apple's threat. Other PC makers aren't going to have as easy a time as Apple in moving past Intel. Intel is still the leader in higher-end chips more powerful than the M1. And it's got enough money on hand -- $18.25 billion in cash, equivalents and investments -- to let it spend its way to a better situation.
"There isn't much near-term threat to Intel's PC business beyond losing one sizable customer," said Linley Group analyst Linley Gwennap. That doesn't mean it's going to be easy for Intel, though.
Giving Apple grounds for divorce is the latest of the chipmaker's whiffs. Earlier achievements, like charting decades of steady chip industry progress with Moore's Law, pioneering PC technology standards and powering Google's data centers, have been overshadowed by newer flubs. That includes losing its manufacturing lead and failing to tap into the smartphone market. Intel ultimately sold its cellular chip business to Apple for $1 billion.
Though Macs account for only about 8.5% of the PC market, according to IDC, Apple remains one of the biggest and most influential tech companies. Its MacBook Air models led the trend to slim but useful laptops, its MacBook Pro models remain popular with programmers and the creative set, and Apple profits from selling premium machines costing hundreds of dollars more than most Windows PCs.
Losing Apple's business will sting. New Street Research analyst Pierre Ferragu estimated in a Wednesday report that 4% to 5% of Intel's revenue comes from Apple. But it's just one of the concerns Intel will need to address.
Intel said it's "relentlessly" focused on building leading chips. "We welcome competition because it makes us better," Intel said in a statement. "We believe that there is a lot of innovation that only Intel can do," including supplying chips that span the full price range of PCs and that can run older software still common in businesses.
It's also built its first samples of the 2021 Alder Lake PC chips and expects improvements in 2022 and beyond. "We're increasingly confident in the leadership our 2023 products will deliver," the company said.
Intel faces several challenges along the way, though.
The Qualcomm worry
One of the biggest concerns tied to the arrival of Apple's M1 is that it could embolden another Intel rival, Qualcomm, which already sells mobile-based processors for PCs.
The M1 is a member of the Arm family of processors that are used in every smartphone today. Qualcomm, a leading designer of those chips for Android phone makers, is pushing more-powerful versions of its Snapdragon chips for PCs, too, and several PC makers offer Windows laptops using them.
So far, though, Arm-based Windows laptops have shown lackluster performance and remain a rarity among customers. Arm PC makers have to prove better value and performance before more people adopt the machines, said CCS Insight analyst Wayne Lam.
Apple's transition to Arm-family M1 chips is also very different from Windows PC makers using Qualcomm chips. No PC maker is dumping Intel the way Apple is, so software makers don't need to worry as much about adapting their products for the new chip architecture. Though it might be nice to have, Qualcomm PC support isn't really essential.
The AMD threat
Intel is the dominant manufacturer of chips in the x86 family, which are the kind of processors you'd find in a normal laptop. But it's not the only x86 chipmaker.
"AMD is a greater threat in the near term," said Tirias Research's Kevin Krewell, who noted that PC makers aren't going to be quick to drop the industry standard family of x86 chips.
AMD has done well with high-end desktop processors, chiefly for gamers, and is making inroads in the server market, too. It's using Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp. for manufacturing, taking advantage of its miniaturization progress to cram more circuitry onto new chips. Its new Zen 3 chip design offers a substantial speed boost.
In contrast, Intel, which manufactures its own chips, has struggled. It's only now moving in earnest from an earlier manufacturing technology with 14-nanometer features to a newer 10nm process after years of delays. Even next year's Rocket Lake chip for desktop computers will still be built with the 14nm process. (A nanometer is a billionth of a meter, and the smaller the measurement, the more transistors you can cram into a chip.)
AMD's Ryzen 5000 processor family, with up to 16 processing cores, challenges Intel in gaming PCs.
AMD
New manufacturing options
Intel is giving itself new options, including the ability to use other manufacturers like TSMC to build its chips. That's got risks, too, though, Gwennap said.
Moving some manufacturing to a partner makes it harder for Intel to justify the expense of trying to develop cutting-edge manufacturing, according to Gwennap. And the possibility that Intel could reclaim manufacturing once it fixes its problems could spook TSMC away from investing enough to meet Intel's massive demand.
Intel didn't comment on its manufacturing plan details. It said its integrated design and manufacturing approach helps competitiveness and in letting Intel assure customers it can supply the chips they need. "We've also been clear we will continue investing in leading process technology development," Intel said.
Apple, in contrast, has benefited from TSMC's steadily improved manufacturing. It's one reason it can fit a whopping 16 billion transistors onto its M1 chip, enough circuitry to power the main processor engines along with lots of extra abilities.
Apple's M1 starts small
Over and over during the new Mac launch event, Apple emphasized the performance per watt advantages of the M1. Translate that as being able to do useful work without draining a laptop battery fast.
Apple gets this advantage from the M1's lineage: the A series of processors that power iPhones. Smartphone chips have even stronger battery constraints than laptop chips. With the M1, a close relative of the iPhone 12's A14, Apple gets to add more transistor circuitry for more processing power and can run the chip at a higher clock speed than in phones, too.
Apple steadily increased A series chip performance for years, evolving the chip design and taking advantage of the prowess of TSMC, which manufactures the chips. Speed tests published by tech site Anandtech using the SPECint2006 benchmark show the A14 surpassing Intel's quad-core laptop chip, the 3GHz Core i7 1185G7 model that's a member of the new Tiger Lake processor family.
But the reality is that even Apple isn't ready to use the M1 in brawnier systems. The MacBook Air is all-in on M1, but Apple continues to rely on Intel for higher-powered 13-inch MacBook Pros. The 16-inch MacBook Pro, the iMac, the iMac Pro and the Mac Pro will continue to use Intel processors as Apple moves through a two-year transition to its own chips.
"It will get really interesting when Apple starts specifically optimizing its architecture for higher performance in a bigger thermal envelope and constant power for desktops," Techsponential analyst Avi Greengart said.
So yes, Intel has challenges. Apple's M1 is just the most obvious.
Nvidia's Grace AI chip leaves Intel processors behind
Nvidia's Grace AI chip leaves Intel processors behind
Nvidia has a new chip in the works for boosting artificial intelligence and other high-performance computing work: Grace, a design slated to arrive in mammoth supercomputers in 2023. Instead of accelerating conventional Intel-powered servers, though, the design includes its own built-in Arm processors.
Nvidia's current brainiest chip, the A100, is typically yoked to Intel Xeon processors. Nvidia chips do the grunt work, but Intel chips oversee it. With Grace, named after pioneering programmer Grace Hopper, the company opted to embed several Arm Neoverse processor cores within the chip to speed up processing, said Paresh Kharya, an Nvidia senior director. The chip news arrived at Nvidia's GTC 2021 conference this week.
The new chip should let AI customers run computing tasks that are vastly more complex than is possible with today's chip designs, a step toward the general artificial intelligence that is the holy grail of today's machine learning research, said Cambrian AI Researach analyst Karl Freund in a blog post.
The design illustrates Nvidia's dramatic ascent -- and Intel's struggles. Even decades of dominance in technology don't guarantee success when the rules of computing are constantly being rewritten. Your laptop likely comes with an Intel chip, but an Nvidia chip was more likely responsible for important AI work like filtering spam, improving image quality or recognizing your voice when you call your bank.
Not so many years ago, Nvidia was just a component supplier, a designer of graphics chips called GPUs to boost PC performance. Intel's family of processors, or perhaps compatible rival AMD chips, shouldered most of the computing work. Intel, though, has struggled in recent years to keep pace with chip miniaturization and to capitalize on the exploding use of AI.
The result: Nvidia's market capitalization vaulted over Intel's, reaching $357 billion compared with Intel's $278 billion. Much of the growth has been propelled by the fact that GPUs also turned out to be pretty good at AI work, specifically the computationally intense training process that builds the models that later run in data centers, PCs and phones.
Also in the ascendant is Arm, which licenses the chip designs and technology that power every smartphone, new M1-based Apple Macs and the world's fastest supercomputer. Nvidia is seeking to acquire Arm for $40 billion, a move some rivals like Qualcomm object to. Grace's integrated Arm chips let Nvidia read data from memory many times faster than with current designs, the company said.
Nvidia's Selene machine, currently the world's fifth-fastest supercomputer, pairs A100 chips with AMD Epyc CPUs. A 2023 Grace-based machine called Alps at Switzerland's National Supercomputing Center should be seven times faster, Kharya said. The Los Alamos National Laboratory in the US also will buy a Grace-powered supercomputer.
Under new Chief Executive Pat Gelsinger, Intel is working to reclaim its manufacturing lead, planning to tap into others' manufacturing abilities while it works on miniaturizing its circuitry inscribing technology.
Intel is building AI abilities into its main processors while working on dedicated hardware, too. It folded its Nervana chips operation, but its Habana AI acceleration processors are still under active development.
One hot area for AI chips is autonomous vehicles, whose self-driving algorithms rely on processing in camera imagery and other sensor data. It's a core focus for Nvidia AI chip work, for example with its Orin chip scheduled to debut in 2022 vehicles.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang announced new processors for AI, graphics and supercomputing at the company's GTC event.
Screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET
At GTC, Nvidia announced a new chip called Atlan with quadruple the performance. It should arrive in 2025 vehicles, said Danny Shapiro, Nvidia's senior director of automotive work. Like Orin and Grace, Atlan relies on Arm cores, too.
Nvidia also announced a grander autonomous vehicle technology package called Hyperion 8. It combines two Orin processors with a host of sensors: eight exterior cameras, four exterior wider-angle fisheye cameras, three interior cameras, nine radar scanners and one lidar 3D scanner. The technology should arrive later in 2021.
Nvidia extended a partnership with Volvo, the companies said. Volvo plans to use Orin chips in its next-generation vehicles.
Intel has its own autonomous vehicle division, Mobileye. Tesla develops its own AI chips for its cars.
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Nvidia's Grace AI chip leaves Intel processors behind
Nvidia's Grace AI chip leaves Intel processors behind
Nvidia has a new chip in the works for boosting artificial intelligence and other high-performance computing work: Grace, a design slated to arrive in mammoth supercomputers in 2023. Instead of accelerating conventional Intel-powered servers, though, the design includes its own built-in Arm processors.
Nvidia's current brainiest chip, the A100, is typically yoked to Intel Xeon processors. Nvidia chips do the grunt work, but Intel chips oversee it. With Grace, named after pioneering programmer Grace Hopper, the company opted to embed several Arm Neoverse processor cores within the chip to speed up processing, said Paresh Kharya, an Nvidia senior director. The chip news arrived at Nvidia's GTC 2021 conference this week.
The new chip should let AI customers run computing tasks that are vastly more complex than is possible with today's chip designs, a step toward the general artificial intelligence that is the holy grail of today's machine learning research, said Cambrian AI Researach analyst Karl Freund in a blog post.
The design illustrates Nvidia's dramatic ascent -- and Intel's struggles. Even decades of dominance in technology don't guarantee success when the rules of computing are constantly being rewritten. Your laptop likely comes with an Intel chip, but an Nvidia chip was more likely responsible for important AI work like filtering spam, improving image quality or recognizing your voice when you call your bank.
Not so many years ago, Nvidia was just a component supplier, a designer of graphics chips called GPUs to boost PC performance. Intel's family of processors, or perhaps compatible rival AMD chips, shouldered most of the computing work. Intel, though, has struggled in recent years to keep pace with chip miniaturization and to capitalize on the exploding use of AI.
The result: Nvidia's market capitalization vaulted over Intel's, reaching $357 billion compared with Intel's $278 billion. Much of the growth has been propelled by the fact that GPUs also turned out to be pretty good at AI work, specifically the computationally intense training process that builds the models that later run in data centers, PCs and phones.
Also in the ascendant is Arm, which licenses the chip designs and technology that power every smartphone, new M1-based Apple Macs and the world's fastest supercomputer. Nvidia is seeking to acquire Arm for $40 billion, a move some rivals like Qualcomm object to. Grace's integrated Arm chips let Nvidia read data from memory many times faster than with current designs, the company said.
Nvidia's Selene machine, currently the world's fifth-fastest supercomputer, pairs A100 chips with AMD Epyc CPUs. A 2023 Grace-based machine called Alps at Switzerland's National Supercomputing Center should be seven times faster, Kharya said. The Los Alamos National Laboratory in the US also will buy a Grace-powered supercomputer.
Under new Chief Executive Pat Gelsinger, Intel is working to reclaim its manufacturing lead, planning to tap into others' manufacturing abilities while it works on miniaturizing its circuitry inscribing technology.
Intel is building AI abilities into its main processors while working on dedicated hardware, too. It folded its Nervana chips operation, but its Habana AI acceleration processors are still under active development.
One hot area for AI chips is autonomous vehicles, whose self-driving algorithms rely on processing in camera imagery and other sensor data. It's a core focus for Nvidia AI chip work, for example with its Orin chip scheduled to debut in 2022 vehicles.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang announced new processors for AI, graphics and supercomputing at the company's GTC event.
Screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET
At GTC, Nvidia announced a new chip called Atlan with quadruple the performance. It should arrive in 2025 vehicles, said Danny Shapiro, Nvidia's senior director of automotive work. Like Orin and Grace, Atlan relies on Arm cores, too.
Nvidia also announced a grander autonomous vehicle technology package called Hyperion 8. It combines two Orin processors with a host of sensors: eight exterior cameras, four exterior wider-angle fisheye cameras, three interior cameras, nine radar scanners and one lidar 3D scanner. The technology should arrive later in 2021.
Nvidia extended a partnership with Volvo, the companies said. Volvo plans to use Orin chips in its next-generation vehicles.
Intel has its own autonomous vehicle division, Mobileye. Tesla develops its own AI chips for its cars.
Apple's M1 Pro and M1 Max chips mean new trouble for Intel
Apple's M1 Pro and M1 Max chips mean new trouble for Intel
A year ago, Apple announced it was taking on Intel's most efficient chips by introducing lightweight MacBook laptops powered by the M1, a homegrown processor. On Monday, the consumer electronics giant expanded its challenge, launching MacBook Pro laptops built around the new M1 Pro and M1 Max that take on Intel's beefier chips.
The new MacBook Pros bode well for Apple's attempt to take firmer control over its products. And they're bad news for Intel, whose chips Apple is ejecting from its Macs after a 15-year partnership. It's a loss of revenue, prestige and orders to keep its factories running at full capacity.
"Intel has completely lost the Mac and is unlikely to regain it any time soon," New Street Research analyst Pierre Ferragu said in a research note Tuesday.
Intel didn't lose this big customer overnight. The company that was once synonymous with consumer computers -- remember Intel Inside? -- fell on hard times because of difficulties upgrading its manufacturing. New CEO Pat Gelsinger has started an Intel recovery plan, including an effort to revitalize manufacturing progress. But turning around a behemoth requires patience.
Meet the Mac's new chips
Intel's troubles encouraged Apple to develop its own chip expertise and technology for computers. (It already designed its own A-series chips for the iPhone and iPad, and indeed the M-series chips capitalize on that investment.) The company's M1 processors, which came in last year's MacBook Air and low-end 13-inch MacBook Pro, were evidence it wanted to take control of its own future.
The M1 Pro and M1 Max demonstrate the company's increasing power as a chip designer. Both are designed for more capable models, the 14-inch and 16-inch Pros, geared for video editors, programmers and others with intense computing needs. The heft of the chips -- each of which sports eight performance and two efficiency cores, compared with the M1's four-by-four design -- is intended to sustain heavy work. They also come with much more powerful graphics processing power and memory, up to 16GB for the M1 Pro and 64GB for the M1 Max.
Miniaturization is what lets chip manufacturers economically squeeze in more transistors, a chip's electronic circuitry elements. The new M1 models are doozies of miniaturization, with 34 billion transistors in the M1 Pro and 57 billion in the M1 Max. That's how it could add special chip modules for graphics, video, AI, communications and security into its high-end MacBook Pros.
Intel's troubles
Intel, which for decades has led the world in chip technology, suffered for the last half decade as an upgrade to its manufacturing technology dragged on longer than the usual two years. The company's problem came as it tried to move from a 14-nanometer manufacturing process to 10nm, the next "node" of progress. (A nanometer is a billionth of a meter.)
Intel didn't respond to a request for comment. Apple didn't comment for this story.
Apple's chip foundry, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., took advantage of Intel's lag to the benefit of Apple, Nvidia, AMD and other Intel rivals. It now leads in electronics miniaturization and the all-important measurement of performance per watt of power consumed.
The result is the M1 Pro and M1 Max, which according to Apple's measurements are 1.7 times faster than Intel's current eight-core Tiger Lake chips, formally called 11th generation Core. Compared differently, the M1 Pro and Max consume 70% less power than the Tiger Lake chips at the same performance level.
Apple doesn't reveal which speed tests it uses, so the results are hard to validate at this stage. The consensus, however, is that the performance claims are valid in broad terms.
"I am overall impressed at what Apple has been able to do on the latest process from TSMC," said Patrick Moorhead, analyst at Moor Insights and Strategy. He estimates that Apple saves a few hundred dollars per laptop because it doesn't have to buy Intel processors, although it spends a lot of that money designing its chips.
Don't count Intel out yet
To be sure, Intel won't be hurt badly by the loss of Apple's business. The company has plenty of other business. The vast majority of Windows PCs still use x86 processors from Intel and AMD. And customers only rarely change from Windows to MacOS or vice versa.
It also doesn't have a lot of competition. Apple doesn't license its chips to others, and Qualcomm's efforts to sell processors to PC makers has been a limited success at best.
Intel mostly has to worry about AMD, which makes increasingly capable chips but still trails in market share.
Intel also has its Alder Lake processor, scheduled for later this year, and Meteor Lake processor, coming in 2023, to generate excitement. The chips will bring speed boosts in part by adopting a combination of performance and efficiency cores, just like the M1 does, and by adopting the new Intel 7 and Intel 4 manufacturing processes.
Still, Apple has taken wind out of Intel's sails. Intel may narrow the gap as its new chips hit the market. But in the meantime, Apple's M series could help it steal market share from Windows computers, Intel's stronghold.
