It is cool to see Intel reclaim the performance crown with an innovative new architecture. After years of stagnation at the high-end, the intensified competition between Intel and AMD is a big win for the customer in terms of both performance and price.
However, I do wonder whether they are going for the wrong thing. They are not competing against AMD's Zen 3 desktops at anything but the very high end, and their power consumption numbers are pretty insanely high. In both the laptop and server market, the thing that matters most is performance per watt rather than performance per dollar, and they aren't ahead in that metric.
My sense is that Apple's M1 and other ARM-based designs are getting to the point where they are "good enough" for the vast majority of use cases, even if they are insufficient for a few high-end applications. This is classic disruptive innovation, and we are seeing it reach its logical conclusion. It's kind of interesting that Alder Lake's dominance is due to them adopting something very similar to ARM's big.LITTLE
However, I do wonder whether they are going for the wrong thing. They are not competing against AMD's Zen 3 desktops at anything but the very high end, and their power consumption numbers are pretty insanely high. In both the laptop and server market, the thing that matters most is performance per watt rather than performance per dollar, and they aren't ahead in that metric.
My sense is that Apple's M1 and other ARM-based designs are getting to the point where they are "good enough" for the vast majority of use cases, even if they are insufficient for a few high-end applications. This is classic disruptive innovation, and we are seeing it reach its logical conclusion. It's kind of interesting that Alder Lake's dominance is due to them adopting something very similar to ARM's big.LITTLE