Alder Lake, the 12th generation of Intel processors, does wonders in terms of raw performance… but with much lower power management than its Apple counterpart. And that, the blue team intends to remedy soon.
A snippet of Intel’s roadmap for the coming years has recently leaked; the document confirms that the blue stable indeed holds Apple’s M1 chip in very high regard, especially the Pro and Max variants. Today, defeating it is one of the brand’s priority objectives. Apparently, the founder will try to win the battle for energy performance… with its 15th generation of processors.
In this document initially spotted by AdoredTV and relayed by MacRumors, we see that the brand has clearly focused on energy consumption. This is indeed a priority area of work. Because if Alder Lake has generally been a great success and honors all its promises in terms of raw performance, this 12th generation still suffers from a major consumption problem.
To illustrate, let’s look at the recent Core i9 12900K. This is an excellent processor at all levels, but it has a crippling flaw for some users: a maddening TDP of 241 watts at full throttle ! And this is far from being an isolated case at Intel. Remember that its Core i9-10990XE, custodian of the old generation Cascade Lake X, could siphon up to 380 W…
Today, Apple remains unbeatable on this criterion
As things stand, Apple’s chips simply remain unbeatable on this point. For comparison, Apple estimates that the TDP of its M1 Max chip would be around 60W. This figure can still climb beyond 110 W in extreme conditions, according to Mtech’s tests.
But this maximum consumption is not the only relevant metric for estimating the consumption of a processor. M1 chips are also renowned for their spectacular efficiency at low revs, another point on which Alder Lake is struggling to compete. Intel is therefore betting everything on its 15th generation Arrow Lake, which it will try to make as efficient as possible.
This is information that will certainly raise some eyebrows. Indeed, at present, the release of Arrow Lake is not expected until early 2024 at the earliest. And knowing the trend in this industry, where delays can accumulate very easily, it’s a delay that seems very long to try to compete with a product already on the market.
A clash of the titans to come?
We obviously imagine that Intel is not only referring to the M1 chips. The founder will probably try to compete with the next generations of Apple chips. But in the meantime, the Apple will certainly not stop there. Admittedly, it lost Jeff Wilcox, the great craftsman of these exceptional chips who joined the blue team. But that will certainly not prevent it from making further progress on this criterion, which has been one of its priorities from the start.
It is therefore not excluded that Arrow Lake, once it arrives on the market, will compete with new chips with even more breathtaking performance. Some rumors especially expect that the chip M2 announced heiress to the M1, arrives in 2022… And this is only the tip of the iceberg, since we have not even approached AMD’s question which also prepares real weapons of mass destruction.
Intel has generally negotiated its transition to the 12th generation very well, but it will undoubtedly have to remain vigilant over the years to come, because the competition promises to be very tough. And that is a great news for hardware buffs.
