Intel would offer Apple its best Ice Lake processors

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• Intel would offer Apple its best Ice Lake processors

Intel is apparently reserving its best 7th-generation Ice Lake mobile processors for Apple MacBooks in what could be a strategic move to keep the laptop maker happy, given all the rumours, and very strong rumours, d'Apple is moving to chips. ARM. At least according to a report from Tom's Hardware, this is all tied to an interesting change Intel made to its chip lineups, namely the removal of the Core i1068-7G1068 that was at the top of the stack as the flagship. of these Ice Lake mobile deals. Even if this 7G7 has apparently yet to appear in shipped laptops, it has been abandoned to be replaced by the Core i1068-7NG5 in Intel's chip database, as well as a new Core i1038-7NG28. These new additions have an additional "N" designation, and apparently, according to the right folks at Notebookcheck.net, this means the chip in question is made exclusively for Apple. Furthermore, this fact seems to be confirmed by the benchmarks that have been spotted for Apple's new MacBook Pro machines on Geekbench. Now these "N" parts are 7W mobile chips, which was the case with the aforementioned Core i1068-7G25, compared to the rest of these Ice Lake processors which are 15W or XNUMXW TDP. It seems that Intel is reserving the more powerful XNUMXth-generation Ice Lake processors for the MacBook, and that offering this first silicon to Apple could be a gesture to appease the laptop maker.

Disarm Apple?

Note that Apple has expressed dissatisfaction with Intel's supply issues, causing it to lose Mac sales in the past, and there's been a lot of talk about Tim Cook's adamant switch to using his own custom ARM chips. soon. Of course, we have to keep in mind that we should not get carried away with the theory of Intel's intentions with its Ice Lake processors here, and that is all pure speculation on our part. That said, it's far from a crazy proposition that could be part of an initiative by Intel to keep Apple in business, which certainly makes sense on a basic level. And furthermore, perhaps we could see more of this type of strategy in the future. Assuming it works, of course: because there are certainly those who would say it could be in danger of being too small, too late, amidst the threat of custom ARM silicon, or indeed AMD's mobile offerings. Extremely competitive Ryzen.