A few months ago, Pat Gelsinger, CEO of Intel, confessed his intention to try to recover Apple by creating better processors than those that the Cupertino firm includes in its new Macs. It seems that the semiconductor manufacturer maintains this purpose. At least, this is what the company's leaked roadmap reveals, which shows information about a new range of CPUs focused on surpassing the efficiency of the current M1 Pro and M1 Max. Its launch , yes, it is not planned until next year.
Until now, Intel has tried to compete against Apple's ARM chips by creating powerful processors, but they weren't exactly noted for their efficiency. It is precisely one of the points where the SoCs developed by Tim Cook's company take off.
In fact, the M1 Pro and M1 Max chips not only claim to offer higher CPU performance than their competitor processors (Intel, in this case), but also offer higher power consumption. So it makes sense for Intel's future range of 15th generation CPUs, which are called “Arrow Lake”, to focus and try to outperform Apple in this area.
To do this, the semiconductor company could collaborate with TSMC to have chips that include a 3-nanometer manufacturing process, a larger architecture than that offered by Apple in its current chips (5 nanometers) . However, and as Wccftech assures after interpreting Intel's roadmap, it will not be until the third quarter of 2023 when the company begins to produce these CPUs. Its final launch, therefore, could be at the end of 2023 or the beginning of 2024.
Intel hopes to win Apple back, but is it too late?
There is no doubt that Intel's mission with these next generation CPUs is to win back some of the business that Apple has managed to take away from them by developing their own processors. Now, “late 2023 or early 2024” is a long way off. Especially if we take into account that Apple could soon announce new ARM chips.
Intel, yes, plays with a point in favor: the 3-nanometer manufacturing process. Tim Cook's company also plans to adopt this architecture in its M3 chip, and reports from DigiTimes indicate that it will not be until the end of this year when TSMC begins to produce them. In this way, Intel's goal would not be to compete against the M1 Pro and M1 Max, but against those Apple SoCs that are announced during 2023.
However, it does not seem that Apple intends to return to Intel, despite the company's efforts to recover the market share that they may lose over the next year, according to DigiTimes. The Cupertino firm could announce this year a more powerful M2 chip than the current M1, which in turn is more powerful and efficient than other high-end Intel processors. They could also announce a vitaminized variant of the M2 Max chip, which would be available in the future Mac Pro scheduled to be announced later this year.
