Intel Teases Lunar Lake CPU Ahead of Computex: Most Power…

The subsequent few weeks within the PC trade are going to return quick and livid. Between at the moment and mid-June are a number of conferences and trade-shows, together with Microsoft Build and the king of PC commerce exhibits: Computex Taiwan. With all three PC CPU distributors set to current, there’s lots occurring, and a whole lot of product bulletins available. But even earlier than these commerce exhibits begin, Intel is seeking to make the primary transfer this afternoon with an early preview on its next-gen cell processor, Lunar Lake.

While Intel hasn’t stated an excessive amount of about what to anticipate from their Computex 2024 keynote so far, it’s clear that Intel’s next-gen CPUs – Lunar Lake for cell, and Arrow Lake for Mobile/Desktop – are going to be two of the foremost stars of the present. At this level Intel has beforehand teased and/or demoed each chips (Lunar extra so than Arrow), and this afternoon the corporate is releasing a bit extra info on Lunar Lake even earlier than Computex kicks off.

Officially, at the moment’s reveal is a preview of Intel’s subsequent Tech Tour occasion, which is happening on the finish of May. Unofficially, that is the very same date and time because the embargo on Qualcomm Snapdragon X laptop computer bulletins, that are slated to hit retail cabinets subsequent month. Lunar Lake laptops, in contrast, won’t hit retail cabinets till This fall of this yr. So though the extra technical particulars from at the moment’s disclosure are nice to have, trying on the greater image it’s troublesome to interpret this reveal as something lower than a bald-faced effort to interdict the Snapdragon X launch (not that Qualcomm hasn’t additionally been crowing about SDX for the final 7 months). Which, if nothing else, goes to point out the present tumultuous state of the laptop computer CPU market, and that Intel isn’t almost as safe of their place as they’ve historically been.

And with that out of the best way, let’s dive into the meat of Intel’s announcement.

Lunar Lake: New Architecture Focused on Power Efficiency & AI

Ever because it was initially demoed by Intel final fall, the corporate has been selling Lunar Lake as a extremely environment friendly cell processor. And that continues to be the story at the moment. The low-power successor to Meteor Lake, Lunar Lake is Intel’s second mainstream tiled CPU, and can see Intel bringing new CPU and GPU architectures to bat in an iterative enchancment over Meteor Lake.

And whereas Intel isn’t throwing out Meteor Lake fairly but, by Intel requirements it’s going to have a comparatively quick shelf-life. From a high-level roadmap perspective, the groundbreaking tiled chip was late, and consequently as Intel Foundry works to catch up through its 5 Nodes in 4 Years (5N4Y) manufacturing technique, Intel isn’t going to attend to deliver out their subsequent chips. They can’t; not with AMD and now Qualcomm each making critical efforts to chop into Intel’s cell market share.

Development on Lunar Lake is already full, with Intel claiming that they meet or beat all of their manufacturing milestones for the chip. This additionally implies that Lunar Lake is already in manufacturing, utilizing a B-stepping design.

Intel expects to start delivery the SoC to OEMs in Q3 of this yr, which suggests completed laptops will attain retail cabinets in This fall – although at this level it’s unclear if that will probably be early or late into the quarter. Meanwhile, Arrow Lake, which goes to be each for desktop and cell utilization (as a better efficiency chip), is ready to ship from Intel in This fall. We’re instructed we’ll discover out extra about Intel’s plans there at Computex.