As we round out of 2023 steaming ahead toward CES2024 and the year ahead, there appears to be a chip maker war brewing. With Intel announcing its upcoming Intel Ultra Core, and Apple finally debuting 3nm TSMC chips in it's iPhone 15 lineup, foundries are diligently churning out new chipsets. Even Qualcomm has an upcoming event where it is expected to announce new, faster chips.
Reported earlier by Digital Trends, TSMC founder Morris Chang threw some literal shade at Intel and its CEO Patrick Gelsinger based on comments he made about Intel's upcoming chips, stating the maker would soon not only catch up to TSMC made Apple chips, by next year, but in the near future will surpass them.
Chang respnded that even if Intel is able to improve its chips, and technology, while offering competitive prices, they would still be left in TSMC's shadow, unless geopolitical give it a boost. Chang appears to be extremely confident that nothing Intel is working on is a threat to them as chipmakers, and definitelly not a threat to Apple. Which is sort of an odd statement when you realize that Mac's only make up 8.6% of the overeall computer market share. Could this bravado just be the first salvo in an upcoming chip war?
What to expect
We know that in 2024, Apple will unleash its M3 chipset using TSMC's 3nm process. We're expecting performance and battery life improvements that may be challenging for Intel to equal, specifically in battery life.
However, at Intel's Innovation event in September, the maker announced its upcoming Intel Ultra Core, which is meant to take on Apple's M series of chips, thanks to an infusion of AI. We're hoping that the Ultra Core and the rest of Intel's 14th Gen chips will meet and beat expectations, especially in battery life, but we don't know.
Although Apple's M series of cores have been a revelation, they can't compete with Intel CPU's pure power. However, when it comes to cooling and battery life, Apple's M series delivers more than enough CPU/ GPU performance while averaging 10 to 15 hours of battery life.
Intel's Meteor Lake is expected to shake things up as it sets the stage for the next three to five years from Intel. The question remains: can Intel catch up and surpass TSMC-designed Apple M series chipsets?
After visiting with Intel during Innovation, I am taking a positive stance and will say, yes, I have high expectations of what Intel will bring to the market in the next few years. Although I like Chang's confidence, his outright dismissal of Intel says the only thing that can help Intel is the shaky political situation Taiwan finds itself in with mainland China. It is like a built-in excuse, considering that TSMC has built a foundry in Arizona, where it's having issues with its American workforce.
If you're going to make bold statements, don't build an excuse within to fall back on just in case Intel achieves its stated goal of surpassing Apple and its chips.
When you add other makers like Qualcomm into the mix, 2024 is shaping up to be a battle between chip makers, and at the end of the day, it will all come down to benchmark resulreviewers ' experience and consumers.
2024 could end up being the year PCs reverse the current trend while setting up 2025ase, the year Intel overtakes Apple in the battle for consumer dollars.
