Intel pushes back against Windows on Arm

Windows laptops are starting to get exciting again. For the past few years, Apple has dominated the laptop performance and battery life conversation thanks to its move to its own silicon. Now, Qualcomm has shaken up the Windows laptop market with its new Snapdragon X chips, challenging Apple’s power efficiency to make Windows on Arm a success. With laptop makers increasingly eyeing AMD chips, it was really thought that Intel would be the loser in the laptop chip war, but this week it started fighting back with its Lunar Lake chips, criticizing Qualcomm in the process.

At the IFA trade show in Germany, it became clear that a fierce battle has begun between Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm over the future of Windows laptops. On one side, Intel and AMD are trying to catch up with Qualcomm on power efficiency and battery life, while on the other side, Qualcomm is trying to catch up with x86 on application compatibility and further reduce the prices of Windows on Arm laptops.

Intel kicked off the week with a bunch of details about its new Core Ultra 200V series, known as Lunar Lake. Intel claims Lunar Lake will be 18 percent faster at CPU tasks than its predecessor, while also delivering double-digit performance-per-watt increases. When Intel makes comparisons to AMD chips, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite is definitely in its sights.