Forget M1 MacBooks: Now Chromebooks are ditching Intel, too

1. Home
2. News
3. Laptops

Forget M1 MacBooks: At present Chromebooks are ditching Intel, too

(Image credit: Tom's Guide)

Intel's crude calendar month merely got worse. First Apple tree unveiled a new MacBook Air with M1 and MacBook Pro with M1 powered by Apple Silicon that blows away Intel-based laptops on benchmarks and bombardment life.

And now comes discussion that AMD could exist muscling in on Chromebooks in a big mode. That's because information technology looks similar AMD is prepping more Ryzen processors for Chrome Bone-based machines.

• The best Chromebooks right at present
• Chromebook Black Friday deals: All-time early on sales
• Just in: iPad Pro killer upgrade revealed — and information technology'southward coming next year

If new findings in the Chromium Gerritt, a web-based lawmaking collaboration tool for software developers, is to be believed, and so Google'southward Chromebooks are looking to sport AMD's Ryzen fries in 2021. That could be  a huge accident to Intel.

New Chromebook baseboards, dubbed Guybrush, Mancomb, and Majolica, are probable to be powered by AMD'due south new Zen iii Cezanne chipset. Per a leak by Twitter user ExecutableFix, three Ryzen 5000 U-serial chips based on Cezanne will exist available next twelvemonth.

While Intel yet holds sway over a lot of the laptop chip arena, AMD has been snapping up some of the market share. On the depression end the Ryzen 3000 series of mobile processors have been finding their way into more affordable WIndows 10 laptops.

While on the college end, AMD has pushed its 7-nanometer Zen two architecture into its Ryzen 4000 series laptops chips. While these aren't prolific in laptops yet, they have shown off superb operation in the likes of the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14.

Currently, Intel is on the 10nm procedure node with its Tiger Lake chips, which offer solid performance. But they oasis't quite blown us away in generation-to-generation performance in the results we've seen so far.

So Intel is already under an increased threat from AMD. And with Apple dropping Intel to create its own line of ARM-based chips for its Mac machines, Intel could be challenged from all sides.

Intel has long offered depression-powered fries for Chromebooks. But if this leak is anything to go past then we could encounter Chromebook makers ditch Intel chips for AMD CPUs congenital around a new and improved third-generation Zen architecture

According to Statista, 20 million Chromebooks have been shipped in 2020 so far. That'south 2.4 meg more than than Macbooks Apple tree shipped in 2019 at 17,684,000. So information technology'due south clear that there'southward a big opportunity here for AMD.

Ryzen up

It's worth noting that this isn't the first time AMD Ryzen processors have found their fashion into Chromebooks, every bit the HP Pro c645 came with Ryzen processor options. Merely it was an enterprise-class Chromebook, so AMD has plenty of telescopic to dig into the consumer CHromebook market. And next-gen Ryzen chips could be just the vehicle to bulldoze that in-road.

While they've not been officially revealed - in fact AMD hasn't even released desktop processors based on Zen three - Ryzen 5000 laptop processors based on Zen 3 promise a significant boost in operation, with improve efficiency and the ability to handle more instructions per clock.

If AMD can offering a high level of operation - according to the leak the Ryzen 7 5800U offers viii cores, 16 threads, and a boost clock speed of 4.4GHz - at a good price for laptop makers, then we could indeed encounter such chips in more laptops.

This performance arguably overkill for a Chromebook. Simply it could be the performance Google might be afterward is information technology plans to build out Chrome Os machines with capabilities beyond Google Docs and spider web browsing.

Per a written report by Kent Knuckles at Android Police, while scrubbing the Gerritt, he found show that a touchscreen will be available on upcoming Chromebooks, suggesting a convertible tablet configuration.

However, even if future Chromebooks don't become Zen iii-based Ryzen processors, the leak detailed how the CPUs will offer a load of cores and significant clock speeds with reasonably constrained power draws. For case, the Ryzen iii 5400U is tipped to have four cores and eight threads, and hit a clock speed of 4GHz all with a thermal design ability of 10 to 25 watts. That's some pretty promising performance for a laptop chip.

Information technology's worth taking such leaks with a healthy dose of scepticism. But all this hints that 2021 could exist a very interesting year for AMD processors, Chromebooks and laptops. And information technology serves equally a warning that Intel needs to keep working on innovating, otherwise it could start to see its position equally the king of the CPUs get eroded further.

Imad Khan is news editor at Tom's Guide, helping direct the solar day's breaking coverage. Prior to working at the site, Imad was a full-time freelancer, with bylines at the New York Times, the Washington Post and ESPN. Outside of work, you can discover him sitting blankly in front of a Word certificate trying desperately to write the starting time pages of a new volume.

Source: https://www.tomsguide.com/news/forget-m1-macbooks-chromebooks-may-abandon-intel-too

Posted by: carvajalyoughtley.blogspot.com

Share this post