APPLE SILICON

Apple’s M4 Max Claims the CPU Crown

Relentless Innovation in the Platinum Age of CPUs

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As a software engineer, I’ve loved the escalating volleys of silicon lobbed by Apple, Intel, and Qualcomm in their Sisyphean quest for CPU supremacy. As I type this I am surrounded by an M2 Pro Mac mini (macOS), a Raptor Lake Lenovo IdeaCentre Mini (Linux), and a Snapdragon X Elite Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x laptop (Windows). Forty years into a storied career¹ I’ve never had it so good. And the hits just keep on coming.

Intel

Since I purchased a Raptor Lake PC in August 2023, Intel has launched Meteor Lake, Lunar Lake, and Arrow Lake CPUs, progressing from the Intel 7 process node (Raptor Lake) to Intel 4 (Meteor Lake) to TSMC N3B (Lunar Lake and Arrow Lake). While the pace is impressive, outsourcing the manufacturing of its two newest processors to rival TSMC is a bitter pill for the company as reported in PCMag:

In a blow to the company’s chip prowess, Intel has decided to fully outsource manufacturing for its Arrow Lake desktop CPUs to a third party, likely Taiwan’s TSMC.

The company originally envisioned building the Arrow Lake family using both Intel’s 20A manufacturing process and the 3-nanometer fabrication tech from TSMC. But on Wednesday, Intel…