Intel unveils its Lunar Lake processors and introduces a promising new graphics chip

Intel has just lifted the veil on its new Lunar Lake processors for laptops. There is talk of a significant increase in performance, especially for the graphic part. Artificial intelligence has not been forgotten. The icing on the cake: Intel confirms the arrival of a more powerful Arrow Lake platform at the end of the year.

Intel has finally partially lifted the veil on Lunar Lake, its new architecture that will be found in laptops from the second half of 2024. The first deliveries are scheduled to take place during the third quarter of this year. We will have more details during Computex, but the American company has already revealed some interesting information.

Strong performance increase (on paper)

The performance (Lion Cove) and efficient cores (Skymont) are all new, which, according to Intel, results in improved performance per cycle (IPC) and performance per watt. The founder specifies that its processor will be faster than the AMD Ryzen 7 8840U or Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite. It's unfortunate that Intel doesn't give an exact number.

As for power consumption, Intel specifies that the chips will consume less than Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 (-20% in Teams), and is no longer referring to the Snapdragon X Elite. We imagine that the latter will be better than Intel chips in this field. Above all, Intel announced a “record for x86” in terms of power efficiency, and neglected to talk about Apple's ARM chips. Certainly because Palo Alto's performance is better than Intel's with the new Apple M4 chip.

In terms of graphics chips, the GPU will be much more powerful, as Intel announced 1.5 times higher performance than the current generation of Meteor Lake. All this thanks to the new GPU, called Xe2 (Battlemage) with power announced at 60 TOPS, and XMX acceleration.

Of course, Intel is processing AI with a brand new NPU. We're talking about 1.4 times higher performance than the Snapdragon Or at the same level as Qualcomm's NPU, and already meets Windows specifications to be “PC AI” certified. The official name appears to be “Copilot+PC”.

Meteor Lake and Arrow Lake in the game

But that's not all, as some new features appear for the current Meteor Lake suite. AI-powered security features are now available. The chips are now optimized for multiple LLM certification holders and are compatible with native personal assistants (Acer Experience Zone and Lenovo AI Now).

On the Arrow Lake side, the futuristic platform of powerful laptops and desktops is making noise. Intel is announcing its arrival in the fourth quarter of 2024. We will have to make do with this information, the rest will be revealed during Computex at the beginning of June.