Intel Unveils Core Ultra 2 "Lunar Lake" Processors: A Leap in AI and Mobile Computing

Intel unleashes Core Ultra 200V 'Lunar Lake' AI processors to challenge Apple and Qualcomm

The Intel Core Ultra 200V lineup is set to debut in laptops starting September 24th. Intel is taking the fight to Apple and Qualcomm with its latest x86 Lunar Lake AI processors. At IFA 2024, the tech giant unveiled the Core Ultra 200V lineup, previously codenamed Lunar Lake, and it's making some bold claims. According to Intel, these chips not only match but surpass the competition in nearly every aspect. Set to debut in laptops starting September 24th, Intel promises "the fastest CPU core," "the world's best built-in GPU," and "the best AI performance" with the new Core Ultra 200V series. These claims set the stage for a heated battle in the laptop market, especially against Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite and AMD's Ryzen AI 300. Gaming powerhouse When it comes to gaming, Intel is flexing its muscles. Lunar Lake features an Xe2 GPU, capable of delivering 80 percent faster gaming performance compared to the previous generation, Intel says. The flagship Core Ultra 9 288V chip boasts a 68 percent better frame rate on average than Qualcomm's top-tier X1E-84-100. It also outperforms AMD's HX 370 chip in the Asus Zenbook S16 by 16 percent. Intel isn't stopping there -- its XeSS upscaling technology promises to make ray-traced games playable on its integrated GPU, delivering impressive frame rates without additional hardware. AI and connectivity AI performance is another area where Intel's Lunar Lake shines, at least on paper. The company claims its new chips deliver far faster performance in AI-heavy tasks, such as Adobe Premiere and Lightroom, compared to Qualcomm. Intel's Lunar Lake processors promise up to 48 TOPS (tera operations per second) of AI performance, a significant leap from the 10 TOPS NPU (neural processing unit) in previous Meteor Lake chips. With 50 TOPS, AMD's Ryzen AI 300-series stands out in the market with the highest TOPS among NPU-configured chips at the time of writing. Qualcomm's Snapdragon X series NPU can pull 45 TOPS while Apple's M4 boasts 38 TOPS. The chip also includes an AI accelerator boasting an additional 67 TOPS of performance, further enhancing its AI capabilities. Additionally, Lunar Lake-powered laptops will feature top-tier connectivity options, including Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4, and at least two Thunderbolt 4 ports, ensuring fast USB-C connections and support for up to three 4K monitors. The Lunar Lake trade-offs However, Lunar Lake isn't without its trade-offs. Each of Intel's nine Core Ultra 200V chips comes with just eight CPU cores and eight GPU cores, maxing out at 32GB of RAM. Intel has opted for a more efficient design by integrating memory into the CPU package, eliminating separate memory sticks or chips. While this boosts efficiency (by integrating memory closer to the processor cores, Intel has managed to reduce latency and system power usage by 40 percent), it limits expandability. Plus, Intel has ditched hyperthreading, which might make power users pause. Lunar Lake chips will include eight cores with improved performance and efficient cores (P-cores and E-cores). Intel claims they can deliver 1.4 times faster performance in Stable Diffusion 1.5 compared to the Snapdragon X Elite. Additionally, an "advanced low-power island" within the chip is designed to handle background tasks efficiently, contributing to a 60 percent improvement in battery life over Meteor Lake. Looking ahead For those craving even more power, Intel hints that its upcoming Arrow Lake chips, potentially arriving as soon as October 10th, will offer more cores, threads, and RAM. With major manufacturers like Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo, LG, MSI, and Samsung already lined up to launch 80 different laptops featuring these chips, Intel's Lunar Lake is set to make waves in the market. But only time will tell if it would be enough to bring Intel out of the major sales slump as well as the negative press from all the performance-related controversy around its 13th- and 14th-generation Core desktop CPUs.

'Lunar Lake' Leaves the Launch Pad: Intel Unveils Core Ultra 2 Laptop Chips at IFA

BERLIN -- The long version of Intel's pitch for its new Core Ultra 2 laptop processors involves charts and graphs of "P-Cores" and "E-Cores," and an array of benchmarking results. The short version amounts to this: lower odds of you looking nervously around the room for a power outlet as your laptop drops below a 10% charge level. And, Intel says, this advance in battery life will come coupled with performance upgrades -- the sort of "Why not both?" message that Qualcomm had for its unveiling of Snapdragon X Elite last October. And that Apple rolled out for its April 2021 introduction of computers with its first Apple Silicon chips. "This is a very special CPU," said Robert Hallock, vice president of Intel's client computing group and general manager for AI technical marketing, during an event Intel hosted here on Tuesday, in advance of the 2024 IFA tech trade show. Core Ultra 2, also known by its development moniker of "Lunar Lake," makes all that happen with a host of design changes from the previous "Meteor Lake" architecture. These updates include expanding the number of efficiency-optimized cores (E-Cores) in the processor's special low-power zone from two to four; ditching Hyper-Threading in the four power-optimized P-Cores to reduce their power draw; packaging up to 32GB of main system memory into the processor die itself; and reducing latency between those components. (For much more on what makes Lunar Lake tick, see my colleague John Burek's extensive writeup of Intel's June introduction of this processor architecture in Taipei.) The Big Pitch: Taking Shots at Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Intel's message Tuesday to computer buyers who have been eyeing laptops powered by Snapdragon X because of their outstanding battery life and speedy performance, especially with apps rewritten for their ARM-based architecture? Think again. "We're beating Snapdragon on performance per watt by about 20%," Hallock said. He showed off a series of charts showing Lunar Lake-powered laptops erasing the battery life and performance advantages of Snapdragon X Elite-powered machines from the same vendors with the same specifications and components (outside of the processor and motherboard). For example, a test with the UL Procyon Office Productivity benchmark showed a laptop from an unspecified manufacturer with a Lunar Lake Core Ultra 7 268V processor lasting 20.1 hours, versus 18.4 hours for the same chassis but with a Qualcomm X1E-80-100 processor. (Intel didn't win a test with a benchmark of Microsoft Teams video calling, with the Lunar Lake laptop running 10.7 hours and the Snapdragon X Elite machine lasting 12.7 hours. Hallock's quip: "I'm actually super-okay about not being on a Teams call for 12 hours.") Much of Intel's presentation emphasized a continuing issue with Qualcomm developing chips on the same ARM foundation that Apple used to develop Apple Silicon: Some software, including many game titles, doesn't run on Snapdragon X Elite chips at all. A series of slides showing frame rates across 45 games brought that home, showing Lunar Lake delivering a 31% improvement in frames per second over Meteor Lake and 16% over AMD's Ryzen AI HX 370. The figure relative to Snapdragon X Elite was 68%, except that only reflected the 22 of those 45 games that ran on this processor. "More than half Did. Not. Run. On Snapdragon," said Hallock, pausing for emphasis. Apple Silicon, however, didn't show up in any of these comparisons -- or in those conducted on test laptops in demonstration rooms after the presentation -- aside from a single appearance of the M3 processor in a graph comparing power usage for multi-threaded compute, in which that chip sat in the middle of the pack. AI TOPS: Here Comes the Next NPU Skirmish AI figured heavily in the presentation as well, with speakers and slides touting how Lunar Lake's CPU, NPU, and GPU each deliver performance that developers can easily exploit. "We are twice the performance of AMD and, once again, Qualcomm can't do it," Hallock said, chuckling before the last four words. "In every data type and in every engine, we are both faster than Qualcomm and AMD." Carla Rodríguez, vice president of Intel's client computing group and general manager for client software enabling, brought up a trio of software executives to offer their own testimonials. One, Eric Shulze, Trend Micro product-management VP, highlighted a less obvious benefit of AI: By allowing complex tasks to be done on-device instead of in the cloud, that security firm doesn't need to scare customers with privacy notices. "We used to do some scanning in the cloud, and to do that, we had to prompt the user with a data-collection notice," he said, referring to the EU's vast GDPR privacy rules. Now that data never leaves the laptop, and he expects far more people will opt into that scanning. The Core Ultra 2 Processor Lineup In addition to the Lunar Lake architecture, the nine different Core Ultra 2 processors will integrate Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4 and Thunderbolt 4 connectivity. Intel further plans to update its Evo laptop-quality initiative it launched in 2020 to add an updated Evo edition highlighting Core Ultra 2-specific benefits. The CPU lineup will comprise nine initial models, as follows... According to Intel, the new "V" at the end of the chip names is of no particular significance; it supersedes the usual U, H, HX, and P nomenclature in this new line. Laptop manufacturers will start taking preorders for Lunar Lake machines today, with hardware availability on Sept. 24. A slide in the presentation listed all of the usual suspects, among them Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo, LG, MSI, and Samsung. We'll have to see about prices -- which have been a weak point so far among Snapdragon X Elite laptops, with the cheapest existing models starting at $999 -- but Intel did confirm coming machines will include the sort of convertible laptops with 360-degree hinges that were absent from the initial lineup of laptops with Qualcomm's X Elite and X Plus processors. With Lunar Lake, Intel is talking a bigger-than-usual game. Can the company pull it off? Speaking after the presentation, Anshel Sag, a Moor Insights & Strategy analyst, voiced tentative confidence, especially about support from manufacturers. "This is easily one of the best showings I've seen for a new platform, in terms of OEMs showing designs ready to go," he said. He also credited Intel for not just sitting on its legacy advantage of software compatibility but making "a significant investment in AI from the get-go." But Apple and Qualcomm also deserve some credit for forcing Intel to up its game faster than it might have otherwise. "I can tell you definitely, we would not have this in the time frame that we have today," he said. "It was quite clear that Intel had to move up timelines, and they have."

Intel announces first batch of second-gen "Lunar Lake" Core Ultra laptop CPUs

Another mixed year for CPU speed, but battery and graphics upgrades are welcome. Intel has formally announced its first batch of next-generation Core Ultra processors, codenamed "Lunar Lake." The CPUs will be available in PCs beginning on September 24. Formally dubbed "Intel Core Ultra (Series 2)," these CPUs follow up the Meteor Lake Core Ultra CPUs that Intel has been shipping all year. They promise modest CPU performance increases alongside big power efficiency and battery life improvements, much faster graphics performance, and a new neural processing engine (NPU) that will meet Microsoft's requirements for Copilot+ PCs that use local rather than cloud processing for generative AI and machine-learning features. Intel Core Ultra 200V Further Reading The most significant numbers in today's update are actually about battery life: Intel compared a Lunar Lake system and a Snapdragon X Elite system from the "same OEM" using the "same chassis" and the same-sized 55 WHr battery. In the Procyon Office Productivity test, the Intel system lasted longer, though the Qualcomm system lasted longer on a Microsoft Teams call. If Intel's Lunar Lake laptops can match or even get close to Qualcomm's battery life, it will be a big deal for Intel; as the company repeatedly stresses in its slide deck, x86 PCs don't have the lingering app, game, and driver compatibility problems that Arm-powered Windows systems still do. If Intel can improve its battery life more quickly than Microsoft, and if Arm chipmakers and app developers can improve software compatibility, some of the current best arguments in favor of buying an Arm PC go away. Intel detailed many other Lunar Lake changes earlier this summer when it announced high-level performance numbers for the CPU, GPU, and NPU. Like Meteor Lake, the Lunar Lake processors are a collection of silicon chiplets (also called "tiles") fused into one large chip using Intel's Foveros packaging technology. The big difference is that there are fewer functional tiles -- two, instead of four, not counting the blank "filler tile" or the base tile that ties them all together -- and that both of those tiles are now being manufactured at Intel competitor TSMC, rather than using a mix of TSMC and Intel manufacturing processes as Meteor Lake did. Intel also said it would be shipping Core Ultra CPUs with the system RAM integrated into the CPU package, which Apple also does for its M-series Mac processors; Intel says this will save quite a bit of power relative to external RAM soldered to the laptop's motherboard. Keep that change in mind when looking at the list of initial Core Ultra 200V-series processors Intel is announcing today. There are technically nine separate CPU models here, but because memory is integrated into the CPU package, Intel is counting the 16GB and 32GB versions of the same processor as two separate model numbers. The exception is the Core Ultra 9 288V, which is only available with 32GB of memory. The Core Ultra 9 and 7 CPUs are all essentially the same chip: All have the same 12MB of cache, eight of Intel's Xe cores for the integrated Arc 140V GPU, and six cores (or "neural compute engines") for the NPU. The Core Ultra 7 chips use marginally lower clock speeds for the CPU, GPU, and NPU, but overall performance should be very similar. The Core Ultra 5 chips still have the same number of CPU cores, but with 8MB of cache instead of 12MB. The Arc 130V GPU has seven Xe cores instead of eight, and the NPU has five cores instead of six, though Intel says it still hits the 40 trillion operations per second (TOPS) baseline necessary to qualify for Microsoft's Copilot+ label. All of the chips except for the Core Ultra 9 default to 17 W base power, with a minimum of 8 W (if the manufacturer configures it that way) and a maximum Turbo Boost power of 37 W. It's slightly different for the Core Ultra 9, which has a default base power of 30 W and a minimum of 17 W. All of the Core Ultra 200V CPUs include four P-cores based on the Lion Cove architecture and four E-cores based on the Skymont architecture. This is a step down from the core counts offered for both Meteor Lake and some earlier 13th-generation Core CPUs (the fastest Meteor Lake chops had six P-cores and eight E-cores), and many of Intel's charts indicate that Lunar Lake's peak multi-core performance is lower overall. Lunar Lake mainly beats Meteor Lake's performance when power is constrained -- Intel's charts show Lunar Lake beating a Meteor Lake CPU by 10 percent when operating at a 17 W power limit, for example. Intel's charts were light on direct generation-over-generation performance comparisons using actual laptops, but the upshot is that this is Intel's second CPU generation in a row where peak CPU performance will stay similar to or even regress a little compared to the previous generation. This is, arguably, a welcome course correction, since 12th-gen Core CPUs seemed to prioritize multi-core performance gains at the expense of battery life. But it's a change from just a few years ago, when you could generally expect each new chip generation to be an across-the-board improvement from its predecessor. The Arc GPU is a more straightforward upgrade. Intel says that its fully enabled Arc 140v GPU, the first of Intel's graphics products to use its next-generation Battlemage architecture, will be 31 percent faster on average than the Arc GPU in Meteor Lake chips; 68 percent faster than the Adreno GPU in Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite chips; and 16 percent faster than the Radeon 890M in the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370. Intel also noted that about half the games it used for testing wouldn't run on the Snapdragon X Elite. Intel is launching the Lunar Lake chips several months ahead of its typical schedule -- it usually announces its first batch of new laptop chips in December, and the PC companies mostly refresh their systems at CES in January. But that timeline would put Intel at risk of being the only major CPU company whose PCs didn't qualify for the Copilot+ label during the fall and holiday shopping seasons. Copilot+ compatibility doesn't actually get you all that much right now, and the features still aren't actually available on x86 PCs as of this writing -- the features that do exist are currently exclusive to Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite and Plus CPUs, though they ought to be enabled on Intel and AMD PCs in an update to Windows 11 24H2 later this year. But it's a label that Microsoft is putting a decent marketing budget behind, and Intel needs all the help it can get right now; the company lost $1.6 billion last quarter, prompting a huge round of layoffs (which follows other rounds of layoffs that have happened within the last year). The company also said that it had previously undisclosed manufacturing issues with Meteor Lake, making it more difficult to meet demand.

Intel launches Lunar Lake: claims Arm-beating battery life, world's fastest mobile CPU cores

Intel finally revealed its performance benchmarks for its Lunar Lake Core Ultra 200V-series processors here in Berlin, Germany, touting 'historic x86 power efficiency' coupled with the world's fastest mobile CPU cores and 30% faster gaming performance than competing processors. Intel says the 50% reduction in package power consumption over its prior-gen models delivers twice the performance per watt, equating to up to 20.1 hours of battery life, beating Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite by almost two full hours, and beating AMD's competing chips by almost four hours. Intel also took shots at Qualcomm's compatibility issues, highlighting that 23 games and numerous applications it used for benchmarking refused to run on the X Elite chips. Naturally, we'll have to see those claims put to the test in reviews, but if the chips deliver Intel's promises, they'll be a strong retort to AMD's Ryzen AI 300 series 'Strix Point' chips and Qualcomm's X Elite. Intel provided plenty of other impressive performance claims against these competing chips, which we'll cover below, but avoided making any comparisons to Apple's M-series lineup. The new Intel Core Ultra 200V-series chips are now available for pre-orders in OEM systems from a wide range of Intel's partners, and units start shipping on September 24. Intel also had a plethora of OEM laptops on display at the event and provided plenty of benchmark demoes to underline its claims. We'll first dive into the product stack, then work through Intel's impressive performance claims. As mentioned, Intel has already shared the deep-dive details of the Lunar Lake architecture, but the company has now shared the actual SKUs that will come to market. The Lunar Lake processors fall into the Core Ultra 200-series, with a new 'V' suffix to denote that these chips feature the new architecture. (The V is merely a designator used for differentiation purposes - it doesn't stand for anything.) The Core Ultra 200V-series consists of nine different SKUs, all with four single-threaded Lion Cove P-cores and four single-threaded Skymont E-cores with different clock speeds for each model, spanning from a boost of 4.5 GHz to 5.1 GHz, along with on-package memory capacities of either 16GB or 32GB running at LPDDR5X-8533. Lunar's L3 cache capacities come in either 8MB or 12MB depending on the model, but all chips have the new 8MB Side Cache (akin to the system level cache found on Arm processors). The CPU delivers up to 5 TOPS of AI performance, which appears to be consistent for all models. The chips feature TDPs ranging from 8W to 17W for the bulk of the stack, with the flagship Core Ultra 9 288V being a lone 30W TDP model. However, peak turbo power draw tops out at 37W for all models. Intel's Arc 100V-series integrated GPU engines come with the Xe2 architecture and either seven or eight Xe2 cores/ray tracing units operating at peak frequencies ranging from 1.85 GHz to 2.05 GHz. This variation in clock speeds also impacts the amount of AI TOPS available from the XMX engine per model, which Intel has listed as ranging from 53 to 67 TOPS. Intel has also bifurcated the amount of AI performance from the neural processing unit (NPU) based on the model, with some chips only meeting the bare minimum for Microsoft's CoPilot+, which is 40 TOPS of performance. Higher-end SKUs range up to 48 TOPS, giving Intel a total of 120 TOPS from the entire platform. Intel has previously shared information on Lunar Lake's various connectivity options, but it now divulged that the chip supports five lanes of PCIe 4.0 and four lanes of PCIe connectivity, with the later most likely to be used for any system that comes with a discrete GPU. The chips also support up to six USB 2 and two USB 3 ports. Other amenities include integrated Wi-Fi 7 Thunderbolt 4 (no, not TB5) and Bluetooth 5.4 and LE audio. Lunar Lake also has four integrated security engines, with the new entrant being the "Intel Partner Security Engine," which is just a fancy way to say that this is Microsoft's Pluton security engine integrated directly into Intel's silicon, a first. As mentioned, Lunar Lake preorders start today, and systems from the likes of Asus, Dell, Acer, MSI and Lenovo, among others, begin shipping on September 24. Intel says 80+ Lunar Lake laptops will come from 20+ OEMs and be available at 30+ global retailers. Now, on to the performance and battery life claims. As with all vendor-provided benchmarks, take Intel's claims with a grain of salt, but Intel claims to have used all production systems for its benchmarks, often placing itself at a disadvantage in spec-to-spec comparisons of the laptops. The company also used physical measurements for the power draw figures. We've included the full series of test notes at the end of the article. Intel claims 'historic' x86 power efficiency, saying it delivers 1.2X more performance-per-watt than the Qualcomm X Elite X1E-80-100. Intel also says Lunar Lake delivers 2.29X more performance-per-watt than the prior-gen Meteor Lake Ultra 7 165H. On the gaming front, Intel claims Lunar has up to a 2.2X gen-on-gen improvement in power efficiency, and up to 50% lower package power than the previous-gen Meteor Lake even though it included power measurements with Lunar's 32GB on-package memory while not measuring memory power consumption with the Meteor Lake chip. The culmination of these advances results in an Intel claim of 20.1 hours of battery life with the Core Ultra 7 268V in the UL Procyon Office Productivity benchmark and 10.7 hours of battery life in a Microsoft Teams call. This beats Qualcomm's 18.4 and 12.7 hours of battery life with the X1E-80-100 chip. These numbers were generated with the same chassis from the same OEM, so battery size and screen size were identical - the only differences were the motherboard and chips. Intel switched to the highest-end Core Ultra 9 288V for the next series of battery life tests, in which it beat Qualcomm's X1E-78-100 by 4. 5hours and half an hour in the same two tests. Lunar Lake also beat AMD's HX 370 by 3.9 hours in the productivity test and 17 hours in the Microsoft Teams call. Intel says it has made a range of improvements to the design, most of which it has already shared. However, it also divulged new news that it shared during Hot Chips - the company has reduced its fabric latency by leaps and bounds. Intel reduced memory latency by 40% compared to its prior-gen, and Intel claims that gives Lunar a 30% latency advantage over AMD's Strix Point. Intel's fabric latency is as low as 23ns for E-core to E-core traffic and spans up to 55ns for E-core to P-core traffic. For comparison, Intel claims that Qualcomm's latency weighs in at 150 to 180ns. Intel discarded hyperthreading with Lunar Lake to both improve performance and power efficiency. Intel claims Lunar Lake offers 15% more performance with its P-Cores at the same power level as Meteor Lake, 10% more performance per square millimeter of die area, and a 30% generational gain in overall power/performance metrics. Intel claims the sum of the architectural changes give Lunar Lake the fastest CPU cores in the market, with anywhere from a 20% to a 64% advantage in single-threaded performance over the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite chips. They also beat the AMD Strix Point HX370 by 3% to 33% in single-threaded tasks. Intel also touted phenomenal improvements in compute efficiency, saying Lunar Lake provides between 2.1 to 3.0X more performance per thread than its Meteor Lake processors at different ISO power thresholds. This results in cumulative performance improvements that range from 6% more to 22% more performance, but with only eight cores and threads. In contrast, the Meteor Lake chips have 22 threads of compute horsepower. If true, impressive indeed. Intel also provided a performance-per-watt curve comparing its performance at various power levels against competing chips, all tested plugged into the wall. Here we can see the company's sole comparison to Apple's M3 chips. Overall, Intel claims it offers more performance than prior-gen Meteor Lake and comparable performance to the Apple M3 at their rated power levels, but Lunar Lake extends further up to 25W in this comparison. Intel used this chart to highlight that it offers the same performance as the Qualcomm X1E-80-100 but uses 40% less power - the Qualcomm chip tops out at 50W. Intel didn't miss a single opportunity to dunk on Qualcomm for the compatibility issues borne of its Arm architecture. Intel proudly showed a chart with its gaming tests highlighting that 23 of the games simply would not run on the Snapdragon X1E-84-100. Intel used a total of 48 games for its testing, all tested at 1080p medium settings. Using only the games that would run, Intel recorded a 68% advantage in gaming performance over the Qualcomm chip. Intel also claimed a 31% gain in gaming over its prior-gen Meteor Lake with Arc graphics. Intel also claimed a 31% gain in gaming over its prior-gen Meteor Lake with Arc integrated graphics, and a 16% advantage over AMD's HX 370 - a bold claim, indeed, given AMD's historically great performance with integrated graphics. Intel also touted the integration of XeSS support in over 120 games, and that the Lunar Lake chips have the same software feature set of its desktop GPUs. Intel also provided benchmarks that show the effect of XeSS, which offers additional performance gains. The company also claims impressive performance with ray tracing, saying it delivers 30% higher ray tracing performance than the AMD HX 370 and the Qualcomm X1E-78-100. AI is the rage, and the dawn of the 'AI PC' has spurred a new arms race. Intel's Lunar Lake has the highest full-platform TOPS rating in the industry, topping out at 120 combined TOPS from the CPU, GPU and NPU. Intel says the broad software developer ecosystem is interested in full platform TOPS, particularly as they will continue to leverage the GPU for heavy tasks, rather than just the sheer throughput of the NPU engine. Intel again highlighted that some AI programs, like Stable Diffusion 1.5, simply won't run on Qualcomm's GPU, and highlighted a small performance advantage with Lunar Lake's NPU. Intel also touted that its NPU retains support for higher-precision FP16 instructions, whereas AMD and Qualcomm top out at INT8. Intel also claims strong leads across all of its AI compute engines relative to competing processors, and the broadest software support for AI workloads.

Intel is back: Core Ultra Series 2 is here to take on Snapdragon X Elite and Apple Silicon

It feels like Intel has been talking about Lunar Lake almost from the day it announced Core Ultra, which was codenamed Meteor Lake. It's finally here, in the form of Intel Core Ultra Series 2. Here's the deal though: Intel is making some big promises with Core Ultra Series 2. It talked a lot about this back at Computex, promising to bust the myth that x86 can't be as efficient as Arm. But Intel Tech Tour at Computex was all about the architecture. Now, the company is taking the wraps off completely, showing real performance claims (and SKUs). Beating Arm at its own game Skymont E-cores aim to dethrone Arm as the efficiency king Close For a very long time, Intel's product releases generally demonstrated a modest improvement in performance and/or efficiency over their predecessors. But now, the company has real competition from Qualcomm, and even Apple, despite the latter being the more isolated Mac market. Intel took aim squarely at Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite chipset, specifically making claims against the X1E-78-100 and X1E-80-100 models. Firstly, it's promising 20% better performance-per-watt than the X1E-80-100, a bold claim. Remember, performance-per-watt is supposed to be Arm's thing. The firm showed off claims for everything from gaming performance with its new Arc graphics to Stable Diffusion, winning in every category. For AI, the NPU gets 48 TOPS, unless you're getting a Core Ultra 5, which we now know is 40 TOPS. Intel also talked about the package AI performance, which is 120 TOPS including the CPU, GPU, and NPU. Qualcomm's Snapdragon X series uses a 45 TOPS NPU across the board. I asked about total package TOPS, and was surprised to learn that it doesn't disclose that anymore. Up until very recently, it used to use the CPU, GPU, and NPU as the Qualcomm AI Engine. Intel says it has the fastest cores, which is probably true, but what's interesting is that it's also promising to win in multithreaded performance...with eight cores. Core Ultra Series 2 has four P-cores and four E-cores, none of which use Hyperthreading, and it's promising to beat Apple M3, Snapdragon X Elite, and Meteor Lake. Focusing on the best experience Intel was happy to point out Qualcomm's shortcomings If I had a nickel for every time someone at Intel said the words "did not run" during this presentation, I'd definitely have several nickels. While talking up gaming, the company cleverly pointed out that around half of the games it tried to test simply didn't work on the Snapdragon X Elite. After it was done talking about gaming, this became a theme with many of its claims. Intel isn't wrong. I've stated this in every Snapdragon review I've done. You simply can't buy it if you play games on your PC, even casually, because there's no way to tell if the thing you want to play is going to work, let alone work well. Related Surface Laptop 7 15 review: You don't have to wait for Windows on Arm to get good anymore It does most things right Snapdragon X Elite devices are not gaming laptops; we all know that. But people do play games on their PCs, and Intel knows that. While Intel has been under threat from Qualcomm for a while now, its strategy seems to have been to remind everyone that everything works on an x86 chip while developing the technology to compete. It's still reminding us that the PC ecosystem is built around x86, but now Lunar Lake is the technology it's been working on. Right out of the gate, Intel said that the thing that matters is a great PC experience, a message that's lost on many companies, not only including silicon vendors like AMD but also OEMs like HP. Lots of companies are talking up AI performance, but Intel seems to understand that consumers aren't buying PCs just for that, or at least that's what its messaging implies. Core Ultra Series 2 SKUs The all-new V-series Back in Taipei, Intel told us pretty much everything about Lunar Lake, except for the SKUs, so here they are. You'll notice that there are quite a few SKUs, all of them eight-core. But remember, Intel is doing on-board memory now, so each one has a variant with 16GB and one with 32GB. This is also where we learned that the Core Ultra 5 has a 40 TOPS NPU. Previous messaging was just that Lunar Lake is "up to 48 TOPS". There's an all-new 'V' suffix, which doesn't stand for anything. It's just a way to differentiate from the rest of its products, so a salesman can easily say that this thing is what it is. Intel confirmed that there will be a U-series and an H-series, and they'll still be called Core Ultra; they won't be Lunar Lake though. This is the third time in as many generations that the company has changed the suffix of "the thing to buy". Two years ago, it was the U-series; one year ago, it was P-series; today, it's H-series; tomorrow, it's V-series. As usual, Intel didn't go into detail about what those other chips would be, but it's safe to say that they won't be the ones that compete with Arm for performance-per-watt, and they presumably don't have the all-new Arc graphics. Core Ultra Series 2 is available to purchase now Alongside this, Dell announced a refreshed XPS 13 and HP announced its all-new OmniBook Ultra Flip, which you can preorder now. They ship on September 24. Every OEM is going to be announcing products with Core Ultra Series 2 though. Expect to hear more about those this week.

Intel takes on Qualcomm with Core Ultra Series 2 AI laptop chips launch - Times of India

Intel has unveiled its Core Ultra 200V series processors, which promise exceptional performance and efficiency. The new chips will be available in over 80 consumer laptops from brands such as Acer and Dell starting September 24. They offer enhanced graphics, security features, and AI capabilities while significantly improving battery life.Intel has launched Core Ultra Processors (Series 2) - its most efficient family of x86 processors ever. Called the Intel Core Ultra 200V series (codenamed Lunar Lake), the laptop processors are claimed to offer a balance of performance, power efficiency, graphics, security and AI computing. The announcement comes months after Microsoft announced Copilot+ PCs powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite Platform. Intel says that its Intel Core Ultra 200V series processors deliver "exceptional performance, breakthrough x86 power efficiency, a massive leap in graphics performance, no-compromise application compatibility, enhanced security and unmatched AI compute." According to the chipmaker, Intel Core Ultra 200V series processors will power AI PCs with more than 80 consumer laptops from more than 20 of the company's manufacturing partners, including Acer, Asus, Dell Technologies, HP, Lenovo, LG, MSI and Samsung. Pre-orders begin today with systems available globally on-shelf and online at over 30 global retailers starting September 24. Notably, all PCs that will be powered by Intel's latest processors and run the latest version of Windows are eligible to receive Copilot+ PC features as a free update starting in November. Intel says that the new Intel Core Ultra 200V series processors are aimed at meeting the consumers' demand for powerful performance, long-lasting battery life, wide application compatibility and enhanced security, along with AI support. Robert Hallock, who is the vice president and general manager of Client AI and technical marketing at Intel, said that the Lunar Lake chips have been designed keeping the efficiency in mind. He noted that all the innovation that has been put into the newest processors can reduce the power consumption by up to 50% - thereby providing double the running time - as compared to the last generation processors. Intel claims that the new processors can deliver up to 20.1 hours battery life as compared to Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite series' 18.4 hours. Intel Core Ultra 200V series processors have 8 cores (4 efficiency cores and 4 performance cores), up to 12MB of Intel Smart Cache, maximum Turbo frequency (performance core) up to 5.1GHz, maximum Turbo frequency (efficiency core) up to 3.7GHz, and up to Intel Arc 140V GPU. Connectivity support includes 3 integrated Thunderbolt 4 Ports, integrated Wi-Fi 7. Intel Core Ultra 200V series processors are claimed to offer up to 120 total platform TOPS (tera operations per second) across central processing unit (CPU), graphic processing unit (GPU) and neural processing unit (NPU) for AI performance. The fourth-generation NPU is claimed to be up to 4x more powerful than the previous generation while keeping the energy draw to a minimum. Intel also announced the Intel Evo Edition powered by latest Intel Core Ultra Processors. As per the chipmaker, most designs with Intel Core Ultra 200V series processors will be Intel Evo Edition laptops. "By combining key platform technologies with system optimisations, these laptops are engineered to help reduce lag, minimise distractions and decrease dependency on battery chargers - ensuring exceptional experiences from anywhere," the company said. As per Intel, Intel Evo chips features include cooler, quieter performance, long real-world battery life, built-in security and Intel Arc graphics, among others. Consumer devices powered by Intel Core Ultra 200V series processors are now available for pre-order and commercial devices built on the Intel vPro platform will come early next year.

Intel Core Ultra 200V "Lunar Lake" Launched: CPU, GPU & AI Leadership Over Qualcomm & AMD, Much Better Battery Life

A new beast is born at Intel in the form of Lunar Lake CPUs, powering the Core Ultra 200V lineup on thin & light platforms and bringing CPU, GPU, and AI leadership with leading performance, and efficiency versus Qualcomm and AMD offerings. Intel Core Ultra 200V "Lunar Lake" CPUs Bring A Historical Leap To Thin & Light Platforms, Brand New CPU, GPU, AI Cores With Leadership Performance & Efficiency In our deep dive back at Computex 2024, we detailed the chip itself and its newest Xe2 GPU, both of which are major upgrades over Meteor Lake. Today, Intel is officially lifting the curtains off of the Lunar Lake lineup which is called Core Ultra Processors Series 2 or Core Ultra 200V. Lunar Lake is designed first and primarily for thin and light platforms so let's start with what the chips have on offer and how they compare against the competition as per the official results. Thin & Light is a tricky segment, you need to have a chip designed to meet the low-power demand while keeping strong performance and efficiency. You can scale certain chips down to lower TDPs but Intel went a different route. Instead of taking this approach, Intel made a dedicated chip called Lunar Lake which embeds several new technologies that target several segments including gaming, creation, and AI PCs. For efficiency, Intel made several key energy innovations for Lunar Lake which will play a crucial role for next-gen thin and light platforms. These include: Intel's Core Ultra 200V "Lunar Lake" CPUs leverage two types of core architectures. There are the Lion Cove P-Cores which are tuned towards performance and then there are the Skymont E-Cores which are tuned towards efficiency. For Lunar Lake, Intel is using Low-Power variants of these E-Cores called LP-E which sit on a dedicated low-power island. This is an evolution over the Meteor Lake CPUs which came with 2 Crestmont LP-E cores with 2 MB of shared L2 cache. For Lunar Lake, Intel has doubled the LP-E core count to 4 while using the next-gen architecture which brings major IPC uplifts, and also increased the cache to 4 MB (shared L2). Intel then uses its various power management techniques including Thread Director to deliver big efficiency gains at low-power using this low-power island. In comparison to Qualcomm's X1E80100 and its own Meteor Lake Core Ultra 7 165H, the Lunar Lake CPUs deliver a 7% gain in performance while offering up to 2.29x improvement in perf/watt. Lunar Lake showcases almost half the power (package) versus Meteor Lake. These efficiency gains aren't limited to just the CPU cores as Core Ultra 200V "Lunar Lake" CPUs with Xe2 graphics architecture bring up to 2x the performance per watt improvement in a range of titles. In games like Cyberpunk 2077, the GPU onboard the Lunar Lake SoC runs 44% faster & sips at 22% lower power. Overall, the Lunar Lake CPUs use up to 50% lower package power than Meteor Lake and that's while featuring 32 GB of LPDDR5X-8533 memory onboard. The package power includes the LP5X memory so that's an astonishing leap within one generation. All of these efficiency tuning should make battery times great on Core Ultra 200V "Lunar Lake" PCs and that's what Intel showcases in its next slides which compare three systems from the same OEM, using 14-16" chassis, 1080p displays, and a ~75Whr battery against each other in various workloads such as UL Procyon Office and Microsoft Teams 3x3. Here, the Intel Lunar Lake CPUs sit ahead with up to 14 hours of battery life in UL Pryocon and up to 9.9 hours of battery life in Teams 3x3. That's a 39% improvement over a system with the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 and a 47% improvement over a system with Qualcomm's X1E-78-100 chip. Intel also showed another battery life comparison using the same OEM and the same chassis. One is running its Core Ultra 7 268V SKU and the other is running the Qualcomm X1E-80-100. The Lunar Lake chips offer up to 20.1 hours of battery life in UL Procyon which is an improvement of up to 9.2%. While we have discussed the architecture of the new Lion Cove P-Cores and Skymont E-Cores in the past, Intel dives deeper into the performance aspects of each respective architecture. Lunar Lake is adopting an all-new low-latency fabric which provides the following inter-core and DRAM latency figures: We also detailed the inter-core latency numbers from Hot Chips a few days ago but the most interesting highlight is that Lunar Lake SoCs offer 40% reduced DRAM latency versus Meteor Lake and 30% reduced DRAM latency versus AMD's Strix Point offerings. This is thanks to the on-package memory rather than relying on off-package DRAM. The inter-core latency being robust is essential for Core Ultra 200V CPUs as the way scheduling works is through a dynamic method that prioritizes the first single E-Core as long as it fits the work and then expands out to other E-Cores when multi-threaded performance is needed. The scheduler will then move to P-Cores based on higher performance demands. So in terms of performance, Intel showcases the performance of its top Core Ultra 9 288V against AMD's Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 and Qualcomm's X1E-80-100/X1E-78-100 offerings. Here, the Lion Cove P-Core stands out with up to 61% increase over the Qualcomm offering in Specrate 2017 (INT), up to 21% faster in Geekbench 6.3 1T, and up to 20% faster in Cinebench 2024 1T. The company also claims a 3x performance per thread improvement for Lunar Lake versus Meteor Lake CPUs and you can see the benefits at lower TDPs such as 17W which will be the baseline for most Lunar Lake platforms. The 8-Core design offers leadership perf/watt at each respective TDP limit, matching Qualcomm in performance with 40% lower power. Across various productivity applications, Lunar Lake either sits on par or offers almost double the performance improvement. Xe2 is a big component of the Core Ultra 200V "Lunar Lake" CPUs. This new Intel GPU architecture is shaping up to be a major deal, not just for the integrated graphics segment but also for discrete graphics which will come later in the form of "Battlemage" in the Arc lineup. The company has so far stated a 50% performance increase, much better ray tracing units, and better utilization of the GPU cores versus Alchemist Xe-LPG offerings. Intel kicks off the comparisons against its own Xe1 iGPUs on the Core Ultra 7 155H and compares it to the Core Ultra 9 288V across a wide variety of games. Do keep in mind that both architectures share the same drivers and here, Xe2 offers a 31% uplift which is over 60-70% in many instances. The next comparison is a brutal one. Against Qualcomm's Adreno GPU featured on the X1E-84-100, the Lunar Lake Arc 140V iGPU offers a 68% performance increase which is over 2x in several games but what's more interesting is that the Adreno GPU failed to even run 23 of the games in the full test suite which shows one of the key areas that Qualcomm's AI PC platforms lacks within. Just a few days ago, we posted the first benchmarks of an upcoming 8-core Qualcomm SOC which offers miserably low gaming and graphics performance and things aren't going to look great once Xe2 starts rolling out. The main comparison is against today's fastest iGPU solution which is undoubtedly the Radeon 800M series from AMD based on its RDNA 3.5 graphics architecture. This architecture has shown great gaming performance and efficiency across a range of tests and Intel claims that its Xe2 GPU sits 16% faster than the competing solution. In many games, the Arc 140V and Radeon 890M iGPUs were on par with the RDNA 3.5 chip even exceeding it in some instances but RDNA 3.5 has 12 CUs versus 8 Xe2 cores on Lunar Lake chips at max. Although both of these architectures are very different from one another, the Lunar Lake CPUs could've integrated a few more Xe2 cores like 10 or 12 to really solidify its graphics leadership but still, this is very good for a thin and light chip. On the software side, Intel's graphics division has done a phenomenal job and at launch, Xe2 will take advantage of over 120 games that are fused with XeSS support and this time, the iGPU will enable faster performance and upscaling quality thanks to the XMX hardware featured on the SoC versus DP4a units on previous architectures such as Meteor Lake. With upscaling applied (Performance Mode), you can get up to a 62% performance uplift and if you already have over 80-100 FPS, then you can go for the "Quality Mode" preset and use that extra FPS headroom for better higher fidelity. Ray Tracing is another big thing with Xe2 as we mentioned at the start and here, Xe2 cruises ahead of the competition, delivering up to 30% faster RT performance and 99th percentile over 30 FPS. It is mentioned that the Xe2 RT engine is a fully functionalRT implementation that runs via DirectX12 Ultimate API. The Core Ultra 200V SoCs include a new Media Engine which is part of the Xe2 iGPU. This new engine supports up to 8k60 10-bit HDR decide and encode, AVC, VP9, H.265 HEVC, AV1 (Encode / Decode) and VVC Decode. This solution provides strong transcode performance against the rivaling chips with better encode and decode engines, leading to faster media and higher-quality media playback. Intel is offering the most AI TOPS with its Lunar Lake "Core Ultra 200V" CPUs rated at 120 TOPS versus 80 TOPS on Strix Point and Qualcomm offering up to 45 TOPs with its NPU. The Lunar Lake SOC comes with three AI engines with the GPU offering the highest amount of TOPS rated at 67, the NPU offering 48 TOPS and the CPU offering an additional 5 TOPs. These three AI engines are essential for diverse workloads. The GPU is useful for gaming and creator AI workloads, the NPU is useful for AI assistants and creation workloads and the CPU is good enough for Light AI workloads. You can also use the combination of all three engines through Lunar Lake-optimized software platforms. So how is the AI performance looking on Lunar Lake? In Stable Diffusion, the Core Ultra 200V SoCs complete a 20 iteration run in 3.89 seconds on the GPU whereas the Qualcomm SoCs feature no AI acceleration via the GPU. Comparing the NPU to NPU, the Lunar Lake SoC completes the same run in 5.28 seconds versus 5.89 seconds on the Qualcomm SOC. In UL Procyon AI compute vision, the Lunar Lake SoC once again leads with Qualcomm and AMD failing to run the test due to insufficient support for data types or software. In Image Generation, the Lunar Lake SoC offers over 2x the FP16 performance against AMD's Strix Point GPU. Putting everything into perspective within the Geekbench AI suite, the Intel Core Ultra 200V drives the fastest AI performance, delivering substantial gains with multi-engine and framework leader-ship. Across a range of AI applications, the Lunar Lake SoC stands out with 58% better AI compute capabilities. Intel is all in on the "AI PC" ecosystem and has 300+ ISV features along with solid compatibility for various software applications. This software enablement scales across multiple operating systems, and 100s of applications and is the hard work of 1000s of developers who will be fine-tuning Lunar Lake and taking these features to the next generation. Some noticeable improvements for apps include: Intel will also be utilizing its OpenVINO framework for its Lunar Lake NPU & GPU Engines in CANVI which will be available via an update in November while MAGIX will be utilizing the ONNX-RT with OpenVINO EP framework for AI-based video edition (GPU) with the update rolling out in October. TREND will also leverage the OpenVINO framework (NPU & GPU) for data protection services via AI and the update is planned for October. These are some of the few examples of how Intel is working with ISVs and software developers to utilize its AI engines featured on modern "AI PC" SoCs such as Lunar Lake. In terms of SKUs, the Intel Lunar Lake "Core Ultra 200V" lineup will feature a total of nine unique chips. All chips come with the same 4+4 (P-Core + LPE Core) configuration but use different clock speeds, different GPU configs/clocks, and TDPs. The flagship is the Core Ultra 9 288V which comes with 4 P-Cores, and 4 LP-E cores, in an 8-core and 8-thread configuration. It rocks a base clock of 3.7 GHz and a boost clock of 5.1 GHz with 12 MB of L3 cache. The chip features the Intel Arc 140V iGPU with 8 Xe2 cores clocked at 2.05 GHz and there are 6 Gen4 Neural Compute Engines as part of the NPU. The chip packs 32 GB of LPDDR5X-8533 MT/s on-package memory and has a base power of 30W (min:17W) that goes up to 37W at MTP. The rest of the SKUs come with a mix of 16 GB and 32 GB (Dual-Channel) LPDDR5X-8533 on-package memory and the entry-level SKUs feature 7 Xe2 cores within the Arc 130V iGPU. The entry-level SKUs feature a base TDP of 17W that can be configured down to 8W but retain the 37W MTP rating. The NPU is also scaled down on the entry-level SKUs to 5x Gen4 NCEs. All CPUs come with 8 MB of Memory side cache, feature eDP1.5, DP2.1, and HDMI 2.1 outputs, offer integrated WiFi7 (5Gig), 3x integrated Thunderbolt 4 ports, Bluetooth 5.4 support, LE Audio and GbE LAN (1219-LM). The I/O side includes 5 PCIe 4.0, 4 PCIe 5.0 lanes, 6 USB 3.2 outputs, 2 USB 3 outputs, eSPI, SPI, MIPI, and CSI. The Intel Core Ultra 200V "Lunar Lake" CPUs will be available globally on the 24th of September in more than 80 consumer designs from more than 20 different manufacturers including Acer, ASUS, Dell, HP, Lenovo, MSI, LG, and Samsung. Pre-orders on these laptops begin today and all platforms will be eligible to receive the Copilot+ PC features through a free update starting in November. The main highlights of the EVO platform include:* Cooler, quieter performance, and responsiveness in ultra-thin designs.

Intel Unveils New Core Ultra AI Processors For Laptops That Promises Longer Battery Life Than Its Rivals: All Details

Intel is gearing up for the long AI PC battle against Qualcomm and AMD with its new Lunar Lake or Core Ultra laptop processors. The new-gen AI processors, as claimed by Intel, offer longer battery life for the laptops, more than what Qualcomm has shown recently with the Snapdragon X Elite series and the new AMD HX lineup. These Windows laptops manufacturers have one target in sight - beating or matching Apple's M-series Mac models. Intel says the new processors will be rolling out with new models by the end of this month. The company claims the Lunar Lake series offers the fastest CPU, best built-in GPU and best AI performance to top it off. It even claims the battery life on the new Intel processors will be longer than what Qualcomm and AMD offer. Most of the laptops with the new Lunar Lake processors will look identical to the existing models and the only change will be the Intel logo on the chassis. Intel says you can get 14 hours out of the new laptops doing office productivity work which is 5 hours more than Qualcomm's ability. When it comes to gaming, Intel says the frame rates are 68 percent better than its nearest rivals. And yes, AI is bound to be a big focus for Intel with these Core Ultra processors. The company says AI features in Adobe Premiere and other tools deliver 58 percent faster performance. These are some big claims from Intel and can only be taken with solid credibility once the reviews of laptops running on the Lunar Lake processors come out and we also get a closer look at the new processors powering brands like Asus, Dell and more in the coming months.

Intel's Lunar Lake: A New Moon Rises to Challenge Chip Rivals

Competitive Edge: Performance vs. Snapdragon X Elite and AMD Ryzen AI The announcement of the Core Ultra 200V series follows recent times when Qualcomm and AMD unveiled new processors. With all these updates, Intel's latest processors are sure to offer significant leaps in battery life and performance for such electronics, making for stiff competition within the AI PC market. Given the competition this presents, the Core Ultra 200V is ahead of its competitors Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite and AMD Ryzen AI chipset in many aspects, especially in improved graphics and power efficiency.