At Computex 2024, Intel has officially announced details about its forthcoming Lunar Lake chips, set to power Copilot+ AI PCs this fall. These new chips will deliver up to 48 TOPS (tera operations per second) of AI performance, supported by an upgraded neural processing unit (NPU).
This represents a significant leap from Intel’s previous Meteor Lake chips, which offered a 10 TOPS NPU, and positions Intel in the ongoing AI performance race against competitors like AMD and Qualcomm.
Unveiled at Computex, Intel’s Lunar Lake chips promise substantial advancements. Alongside the impressive AI performance, they will feature a new Xe2 GPU, providing 80 percent faster gaming performance compared to the previous generation.
Additionally, an AI accelerator in the chip will contribute an extra 67 TOPS of performance. Despite these enhancements, Intel faces competition from AMD’s Ryzen AI 300 chips, launching in July with 50 TOPS NPUs, and Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite and X Plus chips. These competitors highlight the aggressive push within the AI PC market.
In a notable development, Lunar Lake chips will include on-board memory, akin to Apple Silicon. Options of 16GB or 32GB of RAM will be available, but like Apple’s design, these will not be upgradable.
This integration allows for a reduction in latency and a 40 percent decrease in system power usage, although it limits users needing more RAM until Intel’s next chip family, Arrow Lake, is released.
Lunar Lake will also feature eight cores, split between performance and efficiency (P-cores and E-cores). The chip includes an “advanced low-power island” for efficiently managing background tasks, contributing to a claimed 60 percent improvement in battery life over Meteor Lake.
Despite these enhancements, Intel faces competition from AMD’s Ryzen AI 300 chips, launching in July with 50 TOPS NPUs, and Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite and X Plus chips. These competitors highlight the aggressive push within the AI PC market.
Qualcomm’s chips, known for their power efficiency, reportedly achieve over 20 hours of battery life on Copilot+ Surface devices, although independent testing is pending.
Connectivity for Lunar Lake will include Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4, PCIe Gen5, and Thunderbolt 4. However, Intel has not yet committed to integrating Thunderbolt 5, which is expected to launch later this year.
During a media briefing ahead of Computex, Intel shared benchmark results, indicating Lunar Lake’s superiority over Meteor Lake in tasks like running Stable Diffusion. Lunar Lake completed 20 iterations in 5.8 seconds, compared to 20.9 seconds for Meteor Lake, despite drawing slightly more power.
Specific chip models and deeper specifications for Lunar Lake are yet to be disclosed, but Intel’s latest offerings mark a significant stride in AI and PC performance, setting high expectations for their launch this fall.
