These are good times for companies involved in the PC market. According to the consulting firm Canalys, during the second quarter of this year, 82.3 million computers have been distributed throughout the globe, thus consolidating the strong upward trend that this market has experienced in recent years, and especially since the beginning of the pandemic.
This figure includes both laptops, which are growing steadily, and desktops, which are growing more timidly, but consistently. In this context, Intel today held the annual event in which it released its analysis about the health of the PC market today, and also its forecast dedicated to its evolution in the short and medium-term.
According to Intel, more and more gaming equipment is being sold. The percentage of machines specifically designed to give us a satisfying experience with this software is growing. Intel makes no secret of its strategy to compete in an industry where AMD and NVIDIA have been very strong for years.
The question is whether Alder Lake and Arc will help Intel win this war
The company that Pat Gelsinger has led since last February is preparing to acquire a strong and positive momentum for the imminent future. Intel has confirmed that in just four years they have managed to double the production capacity of its semiconductor factories.
In addition, Intel is going to start manufacturing its substrates, and when it does, it will sell them to third parties because the demand for this component, which is essential in the integrated circuit manufacturing process, has also skyrocketed. Strengthening its manufacturing infrastructure is crucial for a company that, in addition to designing its chips, produces them, but this is only one of the ingredients of the recipe that Intel is simmering to develop its business.
If we stick to the PC market, the two strongest assets that Intel is going to launch in the coming months are Alder Lake and Arc. The first one, embodied in the 12th generation Intel Core processors with Alder Lake microarchitecture, will arrive next October, and it looks really good.
In the article dedicated to these chips that we published last month, we found that their hybrid microarchitecture allows them to combine high-efficiency and high-performance cores to increase their performance per watt and optimize their efficiency. This microarchitecture is new, and it is also scalable, so Intel will be able to easily port it not only to our laptops and desktops, but also to professional workstations and servers.
Arc, meanwhile, is the name of the new family of graphics solutions that Intel will put in stores in early 2022 . Alchemist GPUs will rule over graphics cards that aspire to compete head-to-head with the most advanced gaming solutions currently available from NVIDIA and AMD.
Until we get a chance to thoroughly test Intel’s first Alder Lake microarchitecture processors, as well as its new Arc graphics cards, we won’t know for sure if they will put their competitors on the ropes
In any case, there is no doubt that an exciting time is coming for PC enthusiasts. One in which the competition between AMD, Intel, and NVIDIA is going to be fiercer than ever. And the ones who will benefit the most will be us, the users. Cross our fingers.
