Mobile processors have undergone unprecedented changes in the past five years, from Intel's absolute right to speak to AMD Ryzen processors landing on mobile and gaining a firm foothold, to Apple's announcement that its Mac product line no longer uses Intel processors and uses self-developed M-series chips, the market pattern of mobile processors has undergone unprecedented changes, and Intel's position in this field has been challenged one after another.
Last year, Qualcomm announced the new Snapdragon X Elite platform for PC, and Intel once again welcomed a strong opponent. On the performance side, AMD Ryzen processors continue to impact Intel in the mainstream thin and light laptop and gaming market segments with high performance and high cost performance. On the low-power side of office learning, Qualcomm also rushed to the scene, intending to take a share of the ultra-thin, high-quality, high-battery life and other characteristics of the product, in the face of the menacing two, the "leader" of mobile consumer-level processors Intel can still hold this time?
1. Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite, anchoring low-power use scenarios
This is not the first time Qualcomm has set foot in the PC field, for example, the previous generation of Snapdragon 8cx is a computing platform dedicated to PC, but its performance is far from the mainstream echelon, and it has not made any waves, and this time Qualcomm X Elite is very ambitious.
A brief look at the specifications, Qualcomm X Elite is still Arm architecture, but this time the core of the CPU part is not the Arm public version of the architecture, but the self-developed Oryon core, a total of 12 large cores, the memory is up to 64GB LPDDR5 8488MHz, the integrated GPU is its own Adreno GPU, and there is also a Qualcomm Hexagon NPU with a computing power of up to 45TOPS.
The specific model is shown in the figure below:
According to Qualcomm's official statement, Qualcomm X Elite's product highlights are "first-class performance, breakthrough terminal side AI, long-lasting battery life", Qualcomm also emphasizes the theoretical performance and AI computing power of Snapdragon X Elite in various announcements, and also compares it with competitors Intel, AMD, and Apple's products, but I personally believe that compared to performance, "battery life" is Qualcomm X Elite's killer feature and core competitiveness in the face of Intel and AMDIt is also one of the biggest improvements in the user experience for consumers after switching to Qualcomm X Elite products.
Arm architecture compared with X86 architecture,It already has the inherent advantage of higher energy efficiency,Historically,X86The power consumption performance of the X86 processor has gone through many generations of process and architecture improvement,Even if the upstream manufacturers claim on the PPT how strong the energy efficiency ratio of their processors is,The terminal manufacturers continue to increase the battery capacity,But the x86 platform Windows notebook except for some processors,The performance in this regard is not satisfactory,Mainly in:
1. The battery life cannot fully meet the all-day unplugged office;
2. Some models have a large loss of performance in the off-power state.
These two points are the core pain points in business office, travel and learning scenarios, and there have been few products on the Windows X86 platform that can dispel battery life anxiety. Just imagine, when you are in a different place and traveling on a business trip, where can you find a free socket to charge your laptop? Even if you are lucky enough to find it in a café, will time permit? Therefore, for users who often use computers without power, if they want a long battery life, they can almost only choose the M-series chip MacBook equipped with MacOS in the past few years.
In recent years, the performance of the game volume is understandable,Thin and light books have also begun to roll up performance,H suffix standard pressure processor has become the mainstream of the mainland thin and light book market,All manufacturers have also improved the performance release,The upper limit of performance release has become a hard standard for judging whether a thin and light book is good or bad,From the past, there will be only in the high-end game book"Horn double fan heat dissipation"Entered the mainstream thin and light book,U series low-voltage and low-power processors are almost extinct,X86The power consumption situation itself is not optimistic, Except for a small number of products that have been specially optimized in terms of battery life or use a 99.9Wh battery with the maximum boarding capacity, the battery life is really not particularly satisfactory for various reasons.
Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite is deeply anchored in this segment, and with the inherent advantages brought by the architecture, it brings a choice with high battery life to the Windows ecosystem. Judging from the current test of the X1 Elite model on the Internet, in the case of daily use, the battery capacity is not advantageous (most of the current Snapdragon X Elite models have a battery capacity of about 70Wh, while the mainstream models of Core Ultra and AMD Ryzen are around 85Wh, and some even reach 99Wh), equipped with a more power-hungry OLED screen, its battery life is better than that of the current mainstream X86 processor models, but here I still have to make a special note that Snapdragon X Elite's battery life performance can only be said to be an improvement on Windows notebooks so far, rather than a cliff-like huge improvement, but in view of the fact that the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite platform is still the first generation, it has a lot of advantages in this regard, if the follow-up Qualcomm normal iteration, terminal manufacturers and some optimizations, X Elite follow-up products have a stable improvement, then the X Elite platform will gain a firm foothold in this segment, It has gradually become the preferred platform for Windows users who pursue high battery life.
Of course, in addition to battery life, performance and compatibility are also extremely important for a computer, especially for Arm processors like Snapdragon X Elite. Performance under native ArmSnapdragon X Elite is fully able to catch up with the current first echelon, but if it is translated to X86 conditions, then whether it is the CPU part or the GPU part, Snapdragon X Elite can not keep up at all, but for ordinary learning and office, commonly used software such as Office, WeChat, WeChat, WPS, DingTalk and other software currently have WOA versions, and this kind of software has very low performance requirements, so in terms of performance and compatibility,For ordinary office needs,Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite is theoretically enough to cope,But in useCompared with the more stable x86 platform,There may still be all kinds of small bugs and small problems,Not to mention entertainment and games,Translated performance and compatibility issues do not allow Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite platform to get better frame rates compared to competitors,This is somewhat inconsistent with Qualcomm's own propaganda,But who would buy a Snapdragon X for playing games What about Elite's products? In short, Qualcomm still needs to do more in terms of ecology and compatibility.
In addition to the above-mentioned battery life, performance, ecology, Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite also needs to face the lack of adaptation to the mainland market, as mentioned earlier, the current mainland market thin and light book in the past two years has been crazy performance, in addition to the competition between terminal manufacturers, there is also the consumer's purchase preferences and habits, most consumers for performance are more "I don't want it, but you can't do without" and "low price and high performance = high cost performance" cognition, so we want to make consumers' purchase cognition turn" Sex can be used, and other aspects are also quite important", at least it will take time to change.
Finally, we can take another look at the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite launch lineup, which includes but is not limited to:
联想ThinkPad T14s 2024、华硕无畏Pro 15 2024、微软Surface Pro、微软Surface Laptop、戴尔XPS 13 9345、戴尔Lattitude 7455、Acer非凡Go Pro AI、联想YOGAAir 14s、惠普EliteBook Ultra
Judging from the starting lineup, I don't know how you feel when you look at these models, that is, most of the models are high-end thin and light books from various manufacturers, high-end business book models, the core features of these products are very compatible with the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite platform: high quality, low performance release, high battery life, light office, it is a model suitable for high-end business people, and it can also be said that it is a housekeeping product at the bottom of the box in terms of workmanship and technology, which can also be seen from the fact that each manufacturer is interested in Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite is very confident in the application of business office and learning, and you must know that Qualcomm's previous generations of PC processors are basically wait-and-see except for Microsoft's slight dim sum. Finally, I want to mention that such a lineup of high-end thin and light laptops has never appeared on the AMD platform.
So what does Intel do to deal with the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite?
Intel released a new processor architecture for mobile terminals at the just-concluded ComputeX, Lunar Lake, and LNL will focus on low-power platforms, which is directly counterparted with Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite.
In terms of core scale, LNL will have 4 high-performance P-cores and 4 high-performance E-cores, a total of 8 cores, the P-core will be upgraded to the Lion Cove microarchitecture, which is 14% higher than the previous generation IPC, and the E-core will be upgraded to the Skymont microarchitecture, which will increase the single-threaded performance by 1.68 times compared with the LPE core in MTL, and the GPU will also have a 1.5 times performance improvement compared with the Arc core in MTL.
In terms of saving power consumption, in addition to the core scale that is very restrained compared with previous generations of products (for example, i5-12500H and i5-13500H are 4 large cores + 8 small cores), Intel has added PMIC integrated power supply to LNL, which can adjust the voltage and power supply some parts of the entire chip separately, thereby saving power consumption; In addition, there is a thread scheduler specifically suitable for LNL, and the principle of the thread scheduler this time is relatively simple, that is, the E core is preferred, and then moved to the P core after the load is high, so that the simple and crude size core scheduling strategy can theoretically achieve smaller power consumption, which is in line with the positioning of LNL itself.
In the past, whether it is a mobile low-power product, a high-performance standard voltage product or a desktop high-performance product, Intel is basically a unified architecture, only in TDP and core scale, frequency is differentiated, but this time LNL is only for low-power and low-voltage platform, although we have no way to verify Intel LNL and Qualcomm X Elite who was the earlier project, but they did form a competitive relationship at almost the same time, at present, LNL in battery life, It is not known how the performance will be in terms of performance and other aspects, but if it can achieve the same score as Qualcomm X Elite in terms of battery life, coupled with better compatibility with the X86 platform, then the battle between Intel and Qualcomm will be the final result of Intel's victory.
Of course, Intel's LNL will also face the same situation as Qualcomm X Elite, even if LNL is a better and more cost-effective choice than Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite, but the current performance-first environment in the mainland market is not very friendly to LNL.
Despite this, in this segment, Intel, the consumer CPU boss, naturally can't just give it away, and who will die in the first round of low-power battlefields will be known after LNL is officially released.
Second, in the high-performance field, AMD Ryzen continues to attack the city
AMD continues to hit Intel's front in the high-performance field, and with higher cost performance, AMD may further eat into Intel's market share in the consumer market.
Also on ComputeX, AMD officially announced the next-generation mobile high-performance processor Strix Point, which is designed with the same architecture and large and small cores, and upgraded to the Zen5 architecture, with up to 4 large cores + 8 small cores; The GPU is changed to the new RDNA 3.5 architecture, and the scale is upgraded to 16Cu, codenamed Radeon 890m, which is expected to improve both CPU and GPU performance, and will be officially released on July 15.
AMD directly announced the first two models of Strix Point, namely AI 9 HX370, with 4 large cores + 8 small cores, and 16Cu RDNA 3.5 core graphics; AI 9 365, with 4 large cores + 6 small cores, 12Cu RDNA 3.5 core graphics.
Strix Point is a performance-level processor for the current mainstream thin and light laptops, providing T1-level CPU performance and core graphics performance, which is more suitable for the needs of the current mainland market and consumer preferences.
Can Intel ARL make a big move?
Intel's first-generation Core Ultra processor has undergone great changes and upgrades in architecture and process, more advanced Intel 4 process, modular design, P+E+LPE triple cluster core, etc., and also took the lead in shouting the slogan of AIPC, but despite this, the CPU performance of the first-generation Core Ultra processor and the 13th-generation Core of the previous generation have come and gone, and AMD just took out the skinned 8000 series Ryzen to easily deal with it.
And Strix Point will come out in mid-July, at this point in time, Intel's only the opposite products are MTL and the previous generation of RPL, in the face of Zen4, it is difficult to parry the two, it is likely to be more powerless to parry Strix Point's offensive, coupled with AMD's consistent cost-effective policy, MTL may really not be able to count on.
So it may all depend on Intel's next generation of high-performance processors Arrow Lake, but at present, Intel has not officially announced this architecture, and it is likely to be released at the end of September this year at Intel Innovation 2024, which means that whether it is mobile or desktop, in at least three months, Intel will face the impact of the new Zen5 architecture from competitors.
The desktop Zen5 is also domineering
In addition, for Intel, for a long time, its greater voice in manufacturers and the market has allowed Intel Core's terminal products to have a stable product line update from entry to high-end, and the choice of models on the market is wider, and it is easier for consumers to find their own models.
As for how Arrow Lake performs, whether Intel will stabilize the situation and regain lost ground, or AMD will continue to attack the city and encroach on Intel, we will see at the end of the year.
3. Write at the end
In 2020, Apple announced that it would abandon the use of Intel processors in its Mac product line and use self-developed M series chips, and then Intel also carried out a series of marketing campaigns to show the advantages of Intel processors over M series chips, but Intel's main battlefield is not actually on Apple, the main audience groups of the two are very different, Apple's move to abandon Intel is definitely a big loss for Intel, but it can't hurt Intel's foundation, Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite, which is also the same Arm architecture, is not the same, the same Windows ecology, the same terminal PC manufacturer support, the natural architectural advantages in terms of battery life, and the strong help from Microsoft, the degree of trickiness for Intel is much higher than Apple, Intel's LNL can be supported, Qualcomm can continue to update and optimize, for consumers, it is better to see the competition between giants.
The battle at one end of the performance side seems to have been in a white-hot situation in the past few years and has never stopped, AMD has started the core war since the release of a generation of Ryzen, Intel has no choice but to improve the core processor has been "inherited" 2c4t, 4c4t, 4c8t core scale, and even in the 12th generation of core, it is introduced on the X86 processor The large and small core core architecture is introduced to deal with the core war, this time the new Zen5 will seize the opportunity in time, ahead of Intel's Arrow The Lake-based products are on the market, and the strength or weakness between the two may also be the most talked about topic in computer hardware this year.
Consumer-level CPU giant Intel may be passive or active this year, and the other two giants are fighting in two subdivisions.