Last month, Apple unveiled its first in-house processor, the M1, which received industry praise and consumer acclaim. This is because the product equipped with the M1 did not cause the compatibility and performance problems found in the existing products released based on ARM. As a result, it seemed that Apple had an edge in the chip development competition.
However, it is unlikely that other chip competitors will remain at the forefront of the industry. Several manufacturers are implementing their own strategies to catch up with Apple’s M1. Several major chip makers are trying to confront M1 in their own way, from improving the performance and various problems of Windows for ARM to providing new chips.
Accordingly, the global monthly magazine Wired analyzed the strategies of major chip makers in the global market.
Qualcomm joins Microsoft
Microsoft relies on Qualcomm for the Surface Pro X, hardware with ARM chips. In fact, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chip is the most widely used ARM chip in the world. The Snapdragon chip was installed as a mobile modem in Samsung’s Galaxy smartphone as well as iPhone.
For this reason, Microsoft put Qualcomm’s Snapdragon on its back. Thanks to Qualcomm, Microsoft showed consumers a future that could be further developed, such as more portability than the existing Surface Pro product line and increased battery life.
In fact, Qualcomm and Microsoft announced that they are focusing on enhancing the user experience and improving performance prior to the launch of the Surface Pro X. As of yet, consumers have not seen any clear results from the efforts of the two companies.
Intel, what happened after breaking up with Apple?
Even after Intel decides to go its own way with Apple, it is mass-producing processors that deliver powerful performance in a notebook form factor. However, it did not show greater efficiency than the level of application of ARM chips or Apple’s plans for PC processors.
Accordingly, Intel sees the’Lakefield’ processor as a counterhorse to Apple’s M1 chip. Lakefield runs the existing Windows OS. Therefore, it seems hopeful in that there is no compatibility problem occurring in products with current ARM processors.
The Lakefield processor is the Intel version of Samsung’s Galaxy S Book, which was first installed in hardware. However, the actual product performance has not been significantly improved than the product equipped with Intel’s general chip. Lakefield did regrettable performance improvements, but boasted great battery life.
AMD, the dark horse of chip competition?!
AMD hasn’t completely changed the route with making ARM chips. However, this year, the Ryzen 4000 mobile processor was installed in the laptop, showing excellent performance at an affordable price, and it achieved excellent results.
From last month, rumors began to circulate that AMD started making ARM chips. However, AMD has not yet released a specific opinion on this.
However, AMD Product Chief Technology Officer Joe Macri said that AMD has researched big.LITTLE, a structure that is the basis of ARM chip development for over 15 years. This means that changing the direction of making any type of chip is not a completely new adventure for AMD.
Although McLee did not directly discuss whether to manufacture ARM immediately, this is why AMD’s possibility of developing ARM chips is raised.