Chip Wars of 2024: Will a Cell Phone Take the Laptop Crown?

As industry leaders in chip manufacturing vie for supremacy, there’s mounting speculation that the capabilities of smartphones might soon rival the traditional dominance of laptops.

AMD, Intel, and Qualcomm are all focused on creating a technology that will make Apple’s M3 chip look outdated while fully embracing AI and increasing battery life.

Rumors suggest that even Nvidia is pursuing an Arm-based solution. This motivation was part of the reason for its failed attempt to buy Arm, which has since gone public.

RISC-V is in the wings, and as Arm struggles with its licensing model, that platform is looking ever more attractive, yet it hasn’t emerged as a threat to PCs.

Adding another twist to the narrative, OpenAI’s ChatGPT is exploring the development of a neural processing unit (NPU) that could supplant GPUs for high-performance large language models, such as generative AI and the like.

This activity will take place mostly late in 2024, suggesting there will be a battle royale. Yet, behind the scenes, companies are discovering that smartphones increasingly may be able to make laptops redundant.

So, the winner in 2024 will need to defend against the rise of smartphones, which would favor Qualcomm and Lenovo. Apple will resist this because it wants people to buy both products.

Let’s talk about the laptop chip wars of 2024 this week, and we’ll close with my Product of the Week, an affordable, high-end, 4K touchscreen and graphics monitor from Wacom.

Laying Out the Battlefield

Intel has been admirably recovering from its mistakes of the past decade. It’s an entrenched vendor, so all it really needs to be is good enough.

Challenging vendors must convince potential customers that Intel isn’t good enough, but that is a surprisingly high bar. Intel’s defense will depend heavily on its Lunar Lake part, which is, on paper, as powerful as what AMD has coming and as efficient as what Qualcomm has on the way.

However, Intel has lots of distractions. From the war in Israel, where one of Intel’s biggest FABs is located, to the fallout from layoffs and salary reductions, Intel has more distractions than its peers, which will stand against its timely execution. So far, I’m not seeing any issues, but if the OEMs do, they’ll hedge with one of the others.

AMD

AMD has been a shining star of execution.

Focused on PCs, the company continues to perform well and gain share. AMD’s Ryzen 8000 processors with Zen 5 are likely to outperform Intel’s Lunar Lake, but remember that Intel only has to be good enough, meaning that AMD’s performance must be high enough to convince buyers to convert to AMD.

Existing AMD customers will stay with the company, but for market growth, the bar for AMD is exceedingly high. It would require creating a highly competitive part and a major advertising campaign to make people less happy with Intel. Such campaigns are not something AMD typically funds, making it less likely AMD will take a significant share from Intel even if its parts significantly outperform Intel’s.

Qualcomm

Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite is a fascinating new processor, but it isn’t x86-based; it’s Arm-based. Because of this architecture, the processor must run an x86 emulator, which can reduce the user’s perception of performance. Such a requirement demands a far larger leap of faith than AMD requires.

While the battery life and AI performance numbers for the Snapdragon X Elite on paper are impressive, they might not be substantial enough to penetrate a market currently dominated by the x86 standard.