The Great Laptop Battery Life Race: Computex 2024 Recap
Computex 2024 was dominated by familiar themes, with Artificial Intelligence (AI) taking center stage once more. Intel and AMD unveiled their latest hardware – Lunar Lake and Strix Point respectively – both promising substantial leaps in AI performance thanks to upgraded neural processing units (NPUs) that are designed to meet, and even exceed, Microsoft’s Copilot+ PC requirements. This AI arms race is certainly exciting, but the undercurrent of conversation highlighted a different battlefield: battery life.
Qualcomm, with its upcoming Snapdragon X Elite-powered laptops, is boldly staking its claim on delivering significantly extended battery life compared to the offerings from Intel and AMD. This promise is a direct shot at the competition, hitting them where it hurts.
Intel, aware of the narrative, is openly addressing the issue. "We know we haven’t necessarily been the highest battery life design point," admitted Intel’s Dan Rogers in an interview at Computex. Intel is signaling a shift, suggesting they have found a solution to improve power efficiency. However, concrete battery life numbers remain elusive, leaving industry observers waiting for tangible proof.
The urgency of this battery life battle is amplified by Apple’s success. Arm CEO Rene Haas pointed out that Apple "woke up the industry on the art of the possible." Apple’s transition from Intel CPUs to its own, more power-efficient Arm-based chips in Macs serves as a stark reminder of the potential consequences of lagging behind. Intel and AMD are acutely aware that they must demonstrate improved battery life in laptops to prevent a similar market shift from occurring in the light-and-portable Windows laptop segment.
Microsoft, Qualcomm, Arm, and PC manufacturers are leveraging AI performance as a key selling point for the new Snapdragon X-powered Copilot+ laptops. It offers a compelling narrative, a "great kind of tailwind," as Arm’s CEO described it, incentivizing consumers to upgrade and explore these new machines. However, buried beneath the AI hype is the real story for many PC users: extended battery life.
While the Snapdragon X-powered PCs are still under wraps, the industry is buzzing with anticipation. Qualcomm is touting impressive figures, with manufacturers promising up to 22 hours of battery life on certain models. Leaked internal documents from Dell even suggest that Snapdragon-powered laptops could nearly double the battery life of their Intel counterparts.
AMD, in contrast, kept relatively quiet about battery life at Computex. The company’s primary focus was on high-performance desktop processors with the Ryzen 9000 series. On the laptop front, AMD is prioritizing both AI and overall performance with its Ryzen AI 300 series processors. While impressive, AMD isn’t actively promoting its new processors as a game-changer in battery life, a stark contrast to the approaches of Intel and Qualcomm.
AMD’s Donny Woligroski suggested that battery life is largely dependent on the choices made by their hardware partners. This approach allows AMD to concentrate on high-end performance, leaving Intel and Qualcomm to compete for the battery life crown. However, it could potentially position AMD as a less desirable option for manufacturers targeting the thin-and-light laptop market, unless they can deliver competitive power efficiency numbers.
Intel dedicated considerable attention to Lunar Lake at Computex 2024, emphasizing its focus on both power efficiency and AI performance. The messaging clearly positions these as the next generation of "AI PCs." However, memories of Meteor Lake linger. Despite earlier promises, many benchmarks revealed that Meteor Lake didn’t deliver the expected battery life improvements, and its NPU lacked the power to handle the new Copilot+ PC features.
To address these shortcomings, Intel is implementing various efficiency-focused changes. One example is the "OS containment zone," a feature that allows the operating system to force programs to run exclusively on low-power efficiency cores (E-cores), preventing them from utilizing the more power-hungry performance cores (P-cores). Intel claims this reduces power consumption by 35 percent for applications like Microsoft Teams on a Lunar Lake chip compared to Meteor Lake.
According to Intel’s Dan Rogers, the primary objective with Lunar Lake was to create "the most power-efficient x86 architecture there is – period." Intel highlighted various architectural improvements designed to boost energy efficiency, including on-package memory, changes to Lunar Lake’s core architecture, the elimination of hyperthreading, and modifications to the Intel Thread Director.
Despite this extensive discussion, concrete battery life figures were noticeably absent. Intel did not announce specific products (i.e., individual CPUs) and primarily focused on the underlying Lunar Lake architectural design. The closest the company came to a concrete figure was a mention of "up to 60% battery life in real life usage" in a fact sheet.
The industry is waiting for real-world testing of both Lunar Lake and Snapdragon X Elite to determine if they live up to the hype. Microsoft’s claim of 22 hours of battery life for the 16-inch Surface Laptop with Snapdragon is impressive. However, the company also claims 19 hours of battery life for the 15-inch Intel Meteor Lake-powered Surface Laptop 6 for Business. If these figures are accurate, the Snapdragon X Elite doesn’t offer a substantial leap over Meteor Lake – suggesting that the manufacturer-provided numbers might be overly optimistic.
The pressure is on Qualcomm to deliver. If it doesn’t, other companies might soon enter the fray. Rumors suggest that Microsoft and Qualcomm had an exclusivity agreement, restricting other companies from creating Arm hardware for Windows PCs. This agreement is allegedly expiring this year.
Arm CEO Rene Haas confirmed the validity of these rumors, suggesting a potential influx of Arm chips for Windows laptops, further intensifying the competition for Intel and AMD. To remain competitive, both Intel and AMD must present a stronger battery life story. Qualcomm has ambitions to capture half of the PC market within the next five years.
The race is on, and the coming months will reveal whether the promises of longer battery life will translate into reality.
