Apple did some really groundbreaking work by launching its own M series processors for laptops and desktop computers. By moving away from x86 Intel chips to an ARM-based in-house design, the company was able to offer higher performance and, more importantly, extremely much longer battery life on laptops.
While Samsung's Galaxy Book 3 laptops offer extremely good performance, they are not nearly as good as Apple's new MacBooks in terms of battery life. However, that could change as soon as next year.
Galaxy Book 4 laptops would most likely use Intel Meteor Lake chips
Last week, Intel announced its Meteor Lake series of processors for laptops, and Samsung's Galaxy Book 4 series will likely use these chips. These are Intel's first processors that feature a chiplet design. Similar to AMD's and Apple's current-generation chips, Intel Meteor Lake processors have chiplets (or tiles) of different components—CPU, GPU, NPU, and I/O—on the same chip. These tiles can be turned on and off independently. These are also Intel's first chips with the company's new Intel 4 (7nm) semiconductor fabrication technology.
Meteor Lake chips represent the biggest shift in Intel's processor design and architecture in over four decades. Thanks to the new design, Intel Core Ultra chips are claimed to offer improved performance and battery life. The Compute tile on Meteor Lake processors has CPU cores that promise much higher power efficiency. This tile also features an NPU for AI and ML-related tasks. Intel claims it is optimized for Generative AI tasks like ChatGPT. This is the first time an NPU is a part of an Intel processor.
According to CNET, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger said, “We look at the aggregate capability that we’re delivering between those three, and we think these platforms get very competitive, the best that Mac or anybody else offers. We’re feeling very, very good about the road map.”
Intel Meteor Lake processors feature native support for raytracing and HDMI 2.1
These upcoming high-end processors also feature dedicated GPU and I/O tiles. The GPU is called the Xe LPG, and it has eight Xe cores that support raytracing and XeSS graphics upscaling technology. The I/O tile has integrated Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4, HDMI 2.1, DisplayPort 2.1, PCIe Gen 5, and Thunderbolt 4. Interestingly, Intel hasn't equipped its upcoming chips with Thunderbolt 5, which was announced a few days ago.
Intel said that Meteor Lake chips will launch on December 14, and laptops based on these chips will be announced around the same time. So, we expect Samsung to launch Galaxy Book 4 laptops with some of these chips sometime in Q1 2024. These chips would suit Galaxy Book laptops really well and could offer excellent battery life and higher performance compared to existing Galaxy Book laptops.
