PC Tech Intel Strikes Back - Lunar Lake integrates memory and promises to beat Qualcomm

[TwinIon]

Only eight months ago, Intel showed off their Meteor Lake processors in what they called their biggest architectural shift in 40 years. Now, intel is responding to Qualcomm and AMD with their new laptop Lunar Lake processors that make some pretty significant breaks from the past. One of those breaks is that this new chip will be entirely built by TSMC, but the biggest change is that Intel is packaging 16GB or 32 GB of memory with the chip, with no ability to expand. Intel says that it reduces power consumption by 40% and increases bandwidth at the same time.

 

Intel is also getting rid of hyperthreading and simplifying their core count. Combined with some new workload scheduling built into Windows, MS and Intel claim that Lunar Lake processors will be much better at putting background tasks like Teams on the efficiency cores, rather than eating up power on the performance cores.

 

Intel is promising 50% more GPU performance over Meteor Lake, throwing in the (CoPilot + required) NPU of 48 TOPS, and including a minimum of two Thunderbolt 4 ports in every Lunar Lake system. There are tons more details in that Verge article or over at Anand, but  actual power and performance numbers are non-existent at this point. Intel has followed Apple and only put out vague numberless graphs showing how great they are, so we'll have to wait until Q3 of this year to find out if all this really is the revolution Intel is claiming.

 

My overall take is that we're finally seeing the PC response to Apple's M series chips and the PC chip market is actually interesting again. We're getting new designs, new technologies, new kinds of processors, new packaging, and some pretty significant claims as to how efficient these new chips will be. Qualcomm's chips should be out this month, followed by AMD's new Ryzen AI chips in July, and then these Lunar Lake chips later in the year. If any or all of them live up to their claims, Windows laptops could see a real leap in quality and efficiency.

 

This is probably a step or two ahead and clearly not where these exact chips will be used, but it also excites me to think about what of all this will make it into the next wave of handheld PCs. While I doubt a Steam Deck 2 will need an NPU, I very much like the idea of whatever chips they use being vastly more efficient. It's a good reminder what some competition can do to a healthy market and how innovation in one area can trickle down across an ecosystem.

[CitizenVectron]

Good to see Intel compete with M1 (hopefully). 

[AbsolutSurgen]

I missed that these are primarily intended to be for laptops.

[cusideabelincoln]

Glad to see they are removing HT from the P-cores to make the more performant and fully shifting the multithreading bandwidth to the E-cores.

[Nokra]

And yet the stock barely moved today. 

[Massdriver]

On 6/4/2024 at 9:44 PM, Nokra said:

And yet the stock barely moved today. 

I've been thinking about scooping some Intel up. They seem to be executing on their plan reasonably well so far.

[Nokra]

6 hours ago, Massdriver said:

I've been thinking about scooping some Intel up. They seem to be executing on their plan reasonably well so far.

FWIW, and I'm not particularly knowledgeable about financial or business issues by any means so take this with a huge grain of salt, but... I do think Intel is generally well on the road to recovery, and I think the stock will improve. It very well may take a couple of years to get back to its semi-recent high in the $60s but I truly am optimistic about the future of the company. 

[ApatheticSarcasm]

I am eager to see this in more tablet style gaming devices, right now I'm seeing AMD be the preferred choice, the Onexplayer X1 being redone with an AMD chipset for example as opposed to the original Intel variant. Are the Xe2 cores they mentioned going to be just like the ones in Battlemage? It'd be a dream to have the ability to run those when I'm trying to game on a flight for example and I'm limited to a 65 watt AC plug.

[TwinIon]

Lunar Lake has officially launched at IFA.

 

Intel is promising that these new chips are faster than the new AMD HX 370 and more battery efficient than Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite. A ton of laptops in all sorts of thin form factors have been announced.

 

They're also claiming that gaming performance is significantly improved, beating out the Radeon 890M that is in the HX 370. That bodes well for the new MSI Claw that will utalize lunar lake.

 

Unfortunately, we don't have any third party benchmarks or performance testing yet, so at this point we kind of have to take Intel's word for it. Many of the new laptops should be shipping this month, so we should start to get real numbers soon.

 

 

It's an exciting time in the laptop chipset space. New ARM based windows machines, important new releases from Intel and AMD, and lots of lofty promises all around. I was excited at the idea of a new ARM laptop, but compatibility issues have me scared away for now, so I'm looking for a nice convertible laptop with an OLED screen and a fancy new chip. Right now I'm considering an Asus ProArt PX13, but I'm not sure if I want the dedicated GPU that one comes with. I'm also waiting to see if lunar lake really stacks up. If Intel really delivers, maybe the HP Omnibook Ultra Flip, though the port selection kinda sucks.