APPLE SILICON
Lunar Lake Splashes Down Ahead of the M4 Macs
Has Intel pulled ahead in the CPU wars?
For the first two decades of my software engineering career, the only processors that mattered were x86 CPUs. Intel, the company that developed the x86 architecture, was the runaway market leader. Other processor families vied for relevance (Motorola 68000, PowerPC, SPARC, Alpha, RISC-V, and many more) but Intel and its x86 reigned supreme.
Then the smartphone era arrived and bequeathed upon ARM the same market dominance that the IBM PC had granted to Intel. While Intel let the x86 grow stagnant, ARM processors grew ever more powerful. By 2020 Apple’s ARM chips were so formidable they leaped from the iPhone to replace Intel’s x86 chips across the company’s entire line of Mac laptops and desktops.
ARM Macs are not the only threat to Intel’s PC hegemony. Qualcomm has joined the fray this year with its SnapDragon X Series processors. According to a report on Tom’s Hardware, ARM CEO Rene Haas believes that multiple processor vendors will enter the Windows PC space over the next three years. The growing availability and capability of ARM PCs…
