So qualcomm has nice efficiency plots for both intel and amd comparisons, but not for m2. Sounds fishy to me - though I guess anybody can take the numbers and make an educated guess of what that would look like.
Who are Qualcomm's actual customers? System Vendors. How many Elite X SoCs is Apple going to buy? Zero.
So are they a customer? No. Are they even a rational possible customer? no.
"Fishy" would be some sales pitch to sell SoCs to people who are never going to buy it. "I've got this great sell ice to Eskimos in December-January pitch ... want to hear it". errr not really. Is Apple going to sell M-series to the Windows guys ? Nope.
The other part that is not fishy at all is that both Intel and AMD iGPUs are about to take a substantive step function increase in performance in 2024. To even be a creditable option in mid 2024, Elite X has to beat the 2021-2023 options. The other sales pitches these same system vendors are hearing from AMD and Intel as also talking about how much better their iGPUs are. If Qualcomm doesn't present substantive improvements here , they may not even get invited to a 'bake off' to be a contender.
the AMD/Intel gaps Qualcomm presented here are going blackside by the time Qualcomm ships.
The other major shift that is happening in Windows laptop market is a shift to fewer dGPUs systems. It isn't about king of the mountain GPU output. If folks want to get into a tech spec porn war on that iGPUs are going to loose anyway. Apple mandated them all gone. For the system vendors it is really not going to work from a single mandate from top-down to do that.
At these tech summit presentations Qualcomm gave HP , Lenovo, Honor, Microsoft , Asus , etc
GOBS of stage time. In both the key and the tech session that covered the Elite X. There is a 'herd' factor that Qualcomm is trying to capture here. If several of the major Windows System vendors have systems with Elite X in them then some other vendors may be some FOMO (fear of mission out) and sign up also. If Qualcomm can't displace AMD/Intel on some significant wins then there will be no FOMO factor at all. AMD and Intel iGPUs are their primarily competitors. Period.
However, none of these system vendor are going to 100% to Qualcomm only. ( nobody is going to do what Apple did. Apple Silicon doesn't have to complete for macOS system adoption. ) . The best case outcome is for Qualcomm to get some deploy to a subset of systems in the Windows laptop/All-in-one market where they are a good fit. Vast majority of folks do not buy macOS systems. Worry about selling to some of those folks first.
So far nothing presented looks like Qualcomm is going after systems that are focused on dGPUs being present. ( not trying to entirely displace Nvidia ) . That is a far more prudent approach. They don't have to display 'everything for everybody' on the first generation. They have probably thrown more at CPU and NPU than a 'main focus primarily on GPU ' approach would do (i.e., Apple 'Max' dies. Which are pretty close to a GPU with other stuff wrapped around it. ).
For windows laptops where battery life has a top ranked priority a 'more than decent' iGPU will get traction on dGPU systems on bill of materials and power consumption. It is going to be attractive to Windows System builders. Qualcomm's best hope is that the savings on power consumption from their CPU/NPU/mini-NPU/etc are also addition on top of what the iGPU brings so there is a substantive aggregate system level impact. The iGPU doesn't have to be the absolute king of the mountain at any cost. It can't be horrible , but 'competitive enough' is going to suffice to contribute to the more holistic overall win.
[ Pretty likely AMD is going to win the 'max performance' iGPU in 2024 , but not at the same power levels. ]
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