From your smartphone to your gaming rig, silicon is the silent conductor making all of your computing possible, and the driving force behind modern technology. Laptop Mag's Silicon Survey meets with the minds behind some of tech's most powerful computer chips. However, today's processors target more than Moore's Law. CPU, GPU, and APU designs are only half of the story following the emergence of powerful generative AI software, after all.
Join us as we take a deep dive into the latest trends shaping the next wave of computing and gain insight into how companies like Apple, AMD, Intel, Qualcomm, MediaTek, and ARM see this space evolving over the coming years, and the architecture, engineering, and innovation needed to make it happen.
Welcome to Laptop Mag's Silicon Survey 2025.
The only constant is progress
Opening words from special issue writer, Madeline Ricchiuto
Whether or not Moore’s Law is actually dead, all of our interviewees for this special issue agreed that performance gains will continue long into the future.
But what that means, and how we get there differs by chip maker. Intel’s Robert Hallock tells Laptop Mag, when it comes to hardware performance and efficiency, “You can't go backwards.”
The only constant is progress. (Read more)
"Boring stuff changes the world": AMD's Jason Banta on what to expect from AI and AMD in the future
Team Red had a clear lead on Intel in 2024, but can AMD maintain the momentum?
“Boring stuff changes the world,” AMD’s Jason Banta, Vice President and General Manager of the Client OEM group, tells Laptop Mag, insisting that what we’ve seen from AI and Microsoft’s Copilot+ suite is only the beginning.
While Microsoft's initial suite of AI tools and features for Windows 11 may seem boring, they're part of a growing snowball effect that could (one day soon) drastically impact the performance and potential we eke out from our hardware and, in turn, the experiences we gain from it. (Read more)
AMD in action: Recently reviewed AMD laptops
The Asus Zenbook S16 (UM5606) is our number-one AMD Ryzen laptop in 2025, offering a solid OLED panel, excellent performance, great gaming, and 11 hours of battery life.
The Razer Blade 14 (Early 2024) is by far the best high-end AMD gaming laptop in 2025. It offers an incredibly sturdy exterior, a colorful display, and phenomenal gaming metrics. It's pricey but worth it.
The Asus ProArt P16 is an outstanding choice for video or photo editors. Its AMD Ryzen performance is bolstered by a discrete Nvidia RTX 4070 GPU. Content creators need to look no further.
There's still more to come
Laptop Mag's Silicon Survey is just getting started. Stick with us throughout the week for exclusive interviews with Apple, Intel, Qualcomm, ARM, and MediaTek as we continue to probe the world's biggest chip makers for their thoughts and outlook on the processor landscape going forward.
As a former lab gremlin for Tom's Guide, Laptop Mag, Tom's Hardware, and Tech Radar; Madeline brings a wealth of technical, in-depth expertise on computing, and over a decade of experience writing about tech and gaming hardware to Laptop Mag as a Staff Writer.
Rael Hornby is a Special Projects Editor for Laptop Mag and designed and edited the Silicon Survey 2025 special issue.
