APR 2022MAXIMU MPC 13
TRADE CHAT
Jeremy Laird
© INTEL
18 months of awesomeness
NOT LONG AGO, it was fashionable to write snarky, knowing obituaries to
the PC. Tiring, redundant, past its best... the personal computer’s fate was
assumed to be death by a million tiny cuts. The culprits? Smartphones,
tablets, thin clients, you name it, anything that’s not actually a PC. I mean,
who wants to TikChat their Facegram flunkies on a clunky old beige box?
In the next year, it’s going to be a
spectacular fight between Intel
and AMD for CPU dominance.At least, that was the usual refrain. Not only did
it never happen, but if anything the PC is in ruder
health than it’s ever been. What’s more, the next
18 months or so are set to be even more special.
A rapid-fire product assault is coming from AMD,
Intel, and Nvidia, the likes of which we’ve never
seen. Arguably it all started in 2014 when Lisa
Su took over AMD and set about knocking PC
hardware’s perennial underperformer into shape.
AMD’s renaissance has forced Intel and Nvidia to
up their game and PC enthusiasts are set to benefit.
On the PC processor side, Intel will follow up the
impressive Alder Lake architecture with Raptor
Lake later this year. There’s a chance it might arrive
less than a year after Alder Lake and bring with it
another big leap in performance, comparable to the
boost Alder Lake delivered over the disappointing
Rocket Lake family. Then, in the first half of 2023—
again, under a year after Raptor Lake—Intel hopes
to roll out another new architecture in Meteor
Lake. Critically, this is no incremental overhaul.
Instead, it will be the first CPU architecture based
on the new Intel 4 process node.
As for AMD, the latest rumors suggest it may
release Zen 4-based Ryzen 7000 chips as early
as August this year. Zen 4 is expected to be a big
step up on existing Zen 3 processors thanks to an
enhanced architecture, TSMC’s 5nm technology,
and 5GHz-plus clock speeds. Even better, Zen
5 could follow Zen 4 in less than a year, bringing
with it even more performance. In other words, it’s
going to be a spectacular fight between Intel and
AMD for CPU dominance with a combined total of
four new families of chips in the next 18 months.If that wasn’t enough, the
graphics market will see almost
as much action. Of course, it’s not
exactly news that the big boys of
GPUs, Nvidia, and AMD, are tooling
up new graphics architectures.
After all, both AMD’s RDNA 2
and Nvidia’s Ampere chips are
over a year old. But if the rumors
are to be believed, AMD RDNA 3
and Nvidia Lovelace, otherwise
known as the Radeon RX 7000
Series and GeForce RTX 40 Series
respectively, are set to bring huge
leaps in performance.
AMD is widely reported to be
going with a radical multi-chip
approach with RDNA 3, while
Nvidia’s Lovelace will benefit from
a shift from Samsung’s arguably
underwhelming 8nm production
process to TSMC’s cutting edge
5nm node. All told, don’t be
surprised if certain GPUs in the
new product stacks deliver double
the performance of the chips theyreplace. RDNA 3 and Lovelace
could be that spectacular. Both are
due before the end of this year.
Before that, however, is Intel’s
new Arc graphics, Chipzilla’s first
real attempt at modern gaming
graphics. Nobody is expecting
Intel to blow the competition
away immediately but the smart
money says the fastest of the
first generation of Arc GPUs will
be a match for Nvidia’s RTX 3070
chipset, giving gamers an option
in the mid- and upper mid-range.
What’s more, Intel says it plans to
ship at least four million gaming
graphics cards in 2022.
Given that AMD and Nvidia sell
a combined 10 to 15 million GPUs
per quarter, that’s not quite as big
a number as it first seems. But
those GPUs will be largely back-
loaded into the latter half of this
year. So, they should make a dent
in the supply-side issue that’s
been pushing GPU pricing to such
insane levels of late.
Speaking of which, the signs
are that the GPU market is finally
beginning to normalize. It won’t
happen overnight. But sticking
with that 18-month time frame, a
return to something resembling
affordability is plausible. I can’t
remember the last time things
looked so promising for the PC.Intel’s Arc graphics should ease
the gaming GPU supply shortage.Six raw 4K panels for
breakfast, laced with extract
of x86... Jeremy Laird eats and
breathes PC technology.