Bloomberg says that Apple is designing a new chip in 2021 which will outperform Intel’s fastest chip. Last we looked, Intel’s fastest chip was Intel Core i9-10980XE Extreme Edition Processor with 18 cores, 36 threads and 4.60 GHz Max Turbo Frequency. But such is the genius of Apple’s chip makers that they will overtake Intel as early as 2021.
The M1 chip is a mobile-centric design built around four high-performance processing cores to accelerate tasks like video editing and four power-saving cores that can handle less intensive jobs like web browsing.
The newspaper said that Apple’s superior chip team is working on several successors to the M1 custom chip, Apple’s first Mac main processor that debuted in November. If they live up to expectations, they will significantly outpace the performance of the latest machines running Intel chips, according to people familiar with the matter who asked not to be named because the plans aren’t yet public.
What is even funnier is that Wall Street actually believed them. Intel’s shares slid 2.9 percent in New York Monday after the news. Apple shares were up 1.3 percent at 9:46 am. All Apple had to do was produce a fairly average laptop chip and hype the shit out of it.
Bloomberg said that Apple’s roadmap indicates Apple’s confidence that it can differentiate its products on the strength of its own engineering and is taking decisive steps to design Intel components out of its devices. The next two lines of Apple chips are also planned to be more ambitious than some industry watchers expected for next year.
“ The company said it expects to finish the transition away from Intel and to its silicon in 2022”, wrote Bloomberg
Hang on. Does that mean that Apple will design and operate a superior chip by 2021 and yet continue to use Intel chips for another year?
To be fair, an Apple spokesman declined to comment about the overreaching fanboyism in the story, but it does appear that Apple is working on designs with as many as 16 power cores and four efficiency cores. So well behind Intel at the moment.
Of course in a year that will be nothing like what Intel has on the shelves so Apple will effectively be nearly two years behind Intel, assuming that it can get its 16 cores to go without catching fire.
Bloomberg claims that Apple is working on a 28-core system for 2022 but even if that were true, and Apple got it going, Intel’s top PCs should be ahead by that point with Alder Lake expected to have a 24 core top out and coming out next year. It should be pointed out that AMD already has high-end chips for gaming PCs going as high as 64 cores.
