Ex-Apple engineers are helping Qualcomm build new chip to rival M1

Qualcomm sign outside a company office in San Diego

(Prototype credit: Reuters / Mike Blake)

The performance and power efficiency of Apple's M1, M1 Pro and M1 Max chips accept astounded us over the past year, and now chipmaker Qualcomm has appear plans to debut a rival chip in 2023 with the help of some former Apple employees.

This is a big deal, considering, until recently, laptops packing SoCs (system-on-a-chip) with unified CPU/GPU architecture tended to deliver underwhelming performance. This is compared to the more traditional discrete CPU/GPU arrangements seen in nigh PCs. Apple'southward bespoke M-series SoCs changed all that, delivering incredible leaps in power and efficiency in laptops like 2020'due south MacBook Air M1 and the MacBook Pro 2021 with M1 Pro and M1 Max. If Qualcomm tin can deliver on its hope to debut SoCs that rival Apple'southward M-serial fries, nosotros may come across a new wave of Windows laptops in 2023 that are far more powerful and battery-efficient than what's on the market place today.

An image showing a slide detailing Qualcomm's plans for a next-gen CPU being shown during its 2021 investor day event, as captured by The Verge — This photograph (captured by The Verge) shows the telltale slide detailing plans for an Apple M-series rival during Qualcomm'south 2021 investor day result (Prototype credit: The Verge)

Of class, we'll have to await and see whether Qualcomm can evangelize on that promise, which The Verge reports was made by Qualcomm CTO Dr. James Thompson during the company's 2021 investor event. Specifically, Qualcomm plans to scroll out a new ARM-based chip to hardware makers in 2022 that it claims volition be competitive with Apple tree's M-serial chips and set a new standard for power and efficiency in Windows PCs. If that pans out, Qualcomm says we should run into this new fleck arrive in new laptops and other PCs in 2023. It also plans to accommodate that chip for mobile devices, cars and data centers if it makes sense.

This new chip is existence designed by the folks at Nuvia, a startup founded by three former Apple engineers with backgrounds in chip design. Qualcomm acquired Nuvia for approximately $1.iv billion before this year, and not long afterward Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon told Reuters that the visitor was planning to build an M1 scrap killer with its newly-hired ex-Apple experts.

We know when information technology plans to launch that fleck, though we'll have to wait and encounter how well it stacks up against the latest Apple tree silicon. By 2023 we expect that the long-rumored Apple tree M2 bit (which we expect to see debut in 2022 inside a new MacBook Air) will exist one-time news, and Apple may take something even improve on the market place.

Qualcomm has also promised to better the performance of its Adreno GPUs, which provide the graphical muscle for its Snapdragon mobile chipsets. Snapdragon-powered Windows laptops take more often than not proven to be long-lasting but underpowered compared to notebooks with discrete Intel/AMD CPUs. But that could all change if Qualcomm's plans to debut an Apple M-series chip-killer in 2023.

Alex Wawro is a lifelong tech and games enthusiast with more than a decade of experience covering both for outlets like Game Developer, Black Hat, and PC World magazine. He currently serves every bit a senior editor at Tom's Guide covering all things computing, from laptops and desktops to keyboards and mice.