"Lunar Lake delivers a faster core performance than ARM": Intel is on track to change the way you think about AI PCs

News
By
published

Intel says Lunar Lake is more than just TOPS, as it balances power, thermals, and bandwidth to steadily and responsibly grow AI PCs.

Michelle Johnston Holthaus unveils the Lunar Lake SoC on stage at the third Intel Tech Tour. (Image credit: Ben Wilson | Windows Central)

What you need to know

  • Executive team members unveiled specifics of Intel Lunar Lake mobile processors while hosting the company's third Intel Tech Tour in Taipei, Taiwan.
  • Across-the-board performance per watt improvements were demonstrated with in-house benchmark results and live demonstrations compared to previous-generation Meteor Lake devices.
  • Intel stresses that an AI advantage is not only related to Microsoft's Copilot+ and that anyone who bought a Meteor Lake PC is considered "future-proof," with further retorts to Microsoft's implied priority on Snapdragon X and ARM.

The most exciting technology shift in years is happening, and the laptop category is about to look dramatically different, thanks to Intel and its rivals. It stands alongside its major PC manufacturing competitors, gearing up to show off the latest innovations in raw computing power in its Lunar Lake chips, paired with genuinely revolutionary advancements in power efficiency made possible with locally processed AI in neural processing units (NPUs.)

Intel invited me to Taipei, Taiwan, to visit its most extensive Intel Tech Tour to date. Along with 280 other members of the press and partners, I heard from Executive Vice President and General Manager of Intel's Client Computing Group Michelle Johnston Holthaus and her peers as they laid bare the roadmap for the Lunar Lake system-on-chip (SoC) and the target to "win in performance, graphics, and AI." Comparisons to Qualcomm's Snapdragon X platform and AMD's next-gen plans are inevitable, so let's briefly dig into what I found, with deep dives to come later this week.

Disclaimer

Intel funded travel and expenses to Taipei, Taiwan, and provided confidential information under an embargo agreement. The company did not see the contents of this article before publishing.

Lunar Lake (almost) entirely unveiled

Rob Bruckner summarizes Intel's roadmap for Lunar Lake. (Image credit: Ben Wilson | Windows Central)

Intel provided a host of talks explaining how Lunar Lake has improved over its predecessor, Meteor Lake, which was responsible for the first batch of Intel Core Ultra mobile chips. Hailed as a "transition to the AI PC," Intel was keen to describe Meteor Lake as having brought users a "radical new experience" with its dedicated NPU running at a peak of 11.5 TOPS. It's the metric you'll continue to see for the foreseeable future, as targeting the highest tera operations per second while maintaining power efficiency is the new performance crown for PC brands to fight for.

At Intel, we're dedicated to (bringing) as much compute capability into the PC (as possible) while also maintaining that wonderful long battery life and quiet performance.

Rob Bruckner, Intel Corporate VP and CTO

Lunar Lake bumps up its NPU-specific score to an impressive 48 peak TOPS. This is beyond the requirement for running Microsoft's Copilot+ locally, and becomes part of the equation that provides the 120 total platform TOPS (PTOPS) when harnessing another 67 TOPS from the GPU with the rest provided by the rest of the compute tile. It's all about the intended use of AI computing, with batches of burst processing better suited to a new and improved Xe2 GPU while the next-gen NPU 4 handles tasks requiring faster acceleration while still offering double the efficiency compared to Meteor Lake.

Darren Crews highlights the performance advancements of the new NPU 4 in Lunar Lake. (Image credit: Ben Wilson | Windows Central)

The primary benefit of accepting an invitation to Intel's Tech Tour is seeing the fruits of Lunar Lake's upgrades in real-time. Senior Principal Engineer and NPU Lead Architect Darren Crews showed me live demonstrations of generative AI harnessing Stable Diffusion to create images in a rapid 5 seconds, with Meteor Lake coming up behind at what now seems a meager 22 seconds. It came with plenty of deep-dive explanations that I'll get into later this week, but seeing these results happen right in front of my eyes feels like enough proof to believe that Intel is ready to fight and retain its crown as the processing king of the hill.

However, performance improvements are only half of the puzzle. Intel is committed to maintaining a solid grip on power efficiency with its upcoming wave of Lunar Lake-powered devices from OEM partners. Another live demo showed a live-streamed 4K 24 FPS YouTube video running side-by-side on a Lunar Lake reference laptop and a comparable Meteor Lake model from Lenovo, with the former pulling consistently lower wattage. When quizzed about the potential for scaling its hardware for ever-higher TOPS scores, Intel clarified that it selected and refined everything for a perfect balance of performance-per-watt.

A side-by-side demonstration showed 4K 24 FPS video streaming with lower power consumption over Meteor Lake. (Image credit: Ben Wilson | Windows Central)

Despite all the fantastic promises, no Intel representative would reveal specifics to me regarding average or peak TDP when quizzed on any SoC component, so some numbers are still held secret until Lunar Lake OEM devices appear in preparation for a planned launch in the holiday buying cycle this year. Nevertheless, intricate explanations of the impressive new 'Skymont' architecture powering Lunar Lake's improved efficient cores (E-core) showed how the upgraded low-power island can handle most everyday computing tasks.

For battery life, Lunar Lake reduces the SoC power by up to 40%. This is a major step for mobile and you WILL notice it.

Arik Gihon, CPU SoC Architect Lead

That's not to discredit the next-gen 'Lion Cove' performance cores (P-core) as significant gen-on-gen improvements to single thread performance promise boosts while taking advantage of state-of-the-art power management allowed by Intel's Thread Director, alongside Intel's Foveros-powered memory on package integration offering up to 32GB of LPDDR5x DRAM directly on the SoC. Of course, better performance and improved efficiency would never come as a surprise in a new generation of mobile chips. Still, the sheer degree of breakthroughs Lunar Lake offers makes it feel like the most significant shift for Intel in a while.

Battlemage finally arrives with Xe2 GPU

F1 2024, a pre-release title during the tour, ran on Lunar Lake at 1080p with ray-traced shadows and XeSS enabled. (Image credit: Ben Wilson | Windows Central)

Since the Arc graphics platform made its way to laptops and desktops, I've been a big fan of Intel's GPU efforts, and I still keep an Intel Arc A750 in one of my home desktops for regular use. The in-house graphical tech launched with a somewhat rocky affair for Intel, as compatibility struggled and performance didn't fare much better. However, follow-up months have delivered significant improvements with game-specific fixes in new drivers.

Intel Arc has shaped itself into a big hitter against NVIDIA and AMD with its first-party XeSS image upscaling technology, and it's about to become even better as the long-awaited codename 'Battlemage' Xe2 engine comes to Lunar Lake mobile chips. Tom "TAP" Petersen, previously of NVIDIA, boasts that "(Intel's) graphics driver is now world-class," as he proudly revealed how the Lunar Lake SoC now supports the same AI-acceleration 'XMX' matrix engines previously found in its desktop cards.

We're doubling down on Intel Arc graphics (which are) foundational for our experiences.

Rob Bruckner, Intel Corporate VP and CTO

The depths that TAP reached when intricately explaining how the new microarchitecture for Lunar Lake's media and display engines benefits a system overall were almost bottomless. Still, he didn't avoid the topic of gaming. On the contrary, his delightful talk showed much promise for the future of AAA titles, showing a yet-unreleased copy of F1 2024 running on Lunar Lake at over 60 FPS while upscaling to 1080p with XESS and ray-traced shadows enabled in-game. "When we launch, you're gonna see dramatically better game compatibility," Petersen says with a smile, and I could have watched his charismatic talks all day long.

A host of exciting tech and hands-on demos

Wi-Fi 7 streaming on Lunar Lake had Death Stranding smoothly demonstrated with NVIDIA GeForce NOW. (Image credit: Ben Wilson | Windows Central)

While there was an undeniable focus on the compute tile and the supercharged cores within, Lunar Lake still had plenty to show in other areas as the Intel Tech Tour opened its doors to other hands-on demos. Intel gave examples of the ultra-high-speed Internet streaming enabled by next-generation Wi-Fi 7 tech as Death Stranding gameplay was being played live from NVIDIA GeForce NOW, alongside upcoming consumer routers designed to support the new standard.

Next door, a demonstration of 'Thunderbolt Share' showed fantastic examples of connecting multiple PCs with current-gen Thunderbolt 4 or next-gen Thunderbolt 5. Seamless file transfer and desktop sharing aren't exclusive to Lunar Lake with this tech but are an example of the continued evolution of Intel's modern chips. It was one of the fascinating Lunar Lake-adjacent booths hosted during the Intel Tech Tour during my stay in Taipei. I'll explain more throughout the week, so check back here at Windows Central to hear more soon.

Is Intel ready for Microsoft's Copilot+ PCs?

Michelle Johnston Holthaus touched on Intel's work with Microsoft and addressed ARM concerns. (Image credit: Ben Wilson | Windows Central)

Despite Microsoft's apparent prioritization of Windows on ARM, Michelle Johnston Holthaus says that Lunar Lake hardware is ready for Copilot+ and will go to market in Q3 of 2024. However, Intel is waiting for Microsoft's official word on when Copilot+ will be available as a same-day download. ARM might have been first in the Copilot+ AI PC category, but Michelle firmly believes that Intel will get to market and ship more than its competitors despite acknowledging a gap between Snapdragon X and Lunar Lake.

I think we can all agree that Lunar Lake will bring unmatched global scale to Copilot(+) PCs later this year.

Michelle Johnston Holthaus, Executive VP

Comparisons to ARM and Qualcomm's Snapdragon X platform were unavoidable during the Q&A portions of the Intel Tech Tour. In her opening keynote, Michelle stated, "Lunar Lake delivers a faster core performance than ARM." She followed with a not-so-subtle jab that Intel won't "cherry-pick a handful of apps that we know are compatible" to highlight Lunar Lake performance improvements, referencing the recent Snapdragon X Elite benchmarks shared by Qualcomm.

Pushed for clarification, Michelle explained that Intel primarily tested Lunar Lake against its previous-gen (Meteor Lake) hardware, accounting for the percentages and other metrics I saw during the tour. Regarding Snapdragon X Elite, Intel only compares Lunar Lake against data shared publicly by Qualcomm and will enter lab testing with Snapdragon X devices when they become commercially available.

Everything I've mentioned so far only touches on what I learned during this year's Intel Tech Tour, and I'll follow up with more insights soon, at least when my jetlagged brain returns to normal operation. Taipei is an incredible wonderland of technology, but it couldn't be further away from the United Kingdom, and I need some bland food and weak tea to recover.

CATEGORIES
Ben Wilson
Ben Wilson
Senior Editor

Ben is a Senior Editor at Windows Central, covering everything related to technology hardware and software. He regularly goes hands-on with the latest Windows laptops, components inside custom gaming desktops, and any accessory compatible with PC and Xbox. His lifelong obsession with dismantling gadgets to see how they work led him to pursue a career in tech-centric journalism after a decade of experience in electronics retail and tech support.

8 Comments Comment from the forums
  • jmurphy
    "significant gen-on-gen improvements to Hyper-Threading promise raw performance boosts "

    Are you sure about that?
    Every other tech site is saying there is no hyperthreading/SMT...
    Reply
  • Ben Wilson
    jmurphy said:
    "significant gen-on-gen improvements to Hyper-Threading promise raw performance boosts "

    Are you sure about that?
    Every other tech site is saying there is no hyperthreading/SMT...

    Correct, should have been worded "improvements over hyper threading." It is indeed dropped in favour of the new E-cores.
    Reply
  • Jcmg62
    That's great and all, but it's still x86.... Something that Microsoft seems determined to get away from, certainly at the consumer level.

    And understandably so.

    For all of Microsoft's missteps (and there have been many....so many) they at least have the foresight to know that the world has embraced Arm, and Windows will only survive if it's Arm focussed.

    I'm not sure where that leaves Intel, but I think they're really going to struggle if these Arm PC's take off.
    Reply
  • Ben Wilson
    Jcmg62 said:
    That's great and all, but it's still x86.... Something that Microsoft seems determined to get away from, certainly at the consumer level.

    And understandably so.

    For all of Microsoft's missteps (and there have been many....so many) they at least have the foresight to know that the world has embraced Arm, and Windows will only survive if it's Arm focussed.

    I'm not sure where that leaves Intel, but I think they're really going to struggle if these Arm PC's take off.

    Intel has the install base of x86, at least.

    But if Snapdragon X can prove capable enough with the x86-64 emulation it promises, then that install base could change, for sure!

    I certainly want to embrace Windows on Arm, it's been an exciting few months watching Qualcomm revive the platform, but Intel could still come out on top if the Lunar Lake laptops perform well. They wouldn't confirm any TDP metrics at all, but were open about everything else, so we'll have to wait and see. Sample units should be available "soon."
    Reply
  • dkstrauss
    Ben Wilson said:
    ...I certainly want to embrace Windows on Arm, it's been an exciting few months watching Qualcomm revive the platform, but Intel could still come out on top if the Lunar Lake laptops perform well. They wouldn't confirm any TDP metrics at all, but were open about everything else, so we'll have to wait and see. Sample units should be available "soon."
    The highlighted portion of your comment caught my eye. Even with my Surface Pro 8 LTE, with its lowly i5, hot bagging never ended, and during heavy sessions of the usual mix of Office 365 productivity applications, Adobe Acrobat Pro, and Chrome its fans would whine as heat built up to the point I needed to use external fans - and MS support insisted that was "normal." I'm going to give Windows one more try with Snapdragon X, if it fails then it is back for good to the silence and power of my used M1 Max MacBook Pro 14 that replaced the Surface Pro 8.
    Reply
  • realparadyne
    And how many times have we heard Intel proclaim that their next gen chips will run cool and with great battery life, only to find in the real world the fans keep coming on and the battery only lasts for 5-6 hours use and sleep mode drains 1% per hour so you can never have instant on from one day to the next. They said it for every single one of the last 6 generation at least, and every time it wasn't true. Just small incremental improvements at best.
    Reply
  • Geoff-37
    Windows Central said:
    At the third Intel Tech Tour in Taipei, Taiwan, its executive team revealed details about the upcoming Lunar Lake mobile processors and showcased across-the-board performance improvements.

    Lunar Lake delivers a faster core performance than ARM": Intel is on track to change the way you think about AI PCs : Read more
    I suspect many people are like me . . .
    We just don't believe Intel marketing anymore.

    Intel 13th gen (or is it 14, or 15, or what?) will be just like the half-dozen generations before it, and the half-dozen before that. Nothing significant to report. Just a number increment because the marketing department said so.

    ARM is going to take some of Intel's laptop market away. Finally!
    How much? We don't know yet, but it will be a lot.

    Qualcomm is going to dominate the Windows-on-ARM market at the start.
    But NVIDIA, and maybe others too, will join the market and grab a piece of the action.
    Will that be at the expense of Qualcomm, or will it be in addition to Qualcomm (and at the expense of Intel)?
    We don't know yet.

    And will AMD also continue to take market share from Intel? Probably.

    The PC industry hasn't had this much action since AMD-64 beat Itanium as the dominant 64-bit PC architecture!

    Good times!
    Reply
  • TechFreak1
    Intel have missed their target so often I'll believe their launch targets when they actually launch on time lol.

    I do wonder how much power Intels CPUs are drawing now given the fiasco with 14th gen... not to mention the ILM causing CPUs to bend upwards resulting in poor cooler performance. Used long enough the CPU might have contact issues with the pins in the socket.

    I do hope Intel have resolved this issue... we seriously don't need cooler manufacturers having to make multiple versions of the same coolers just so we can cool down Intel CPUs properly (given how secretive they were about the ILM at computex 2024 I'm not holding my breath). For example Noctua have released three versions of their long awaited air cooler - NH-D15 G2.

    Not only it wastes alot of materials, it's inefficient and extremely confusing to the average consumer who is looking to build their first PC. If they use the wrong cooler by mistake, they might just throw away the cooler... creating more e-waste (some folks have more money than common sense lol...) . Heck, they may end up switching to AMD given AMD CPUs don't suffer from this problem (yet) further damaging Intel's consumer marketshare.

    @Geoff-37 I don't think many OEMs will be using Tegra SOCs, the only notable OEM I can think of offhand is Nintendo. If OEMs want a cheap ARM SOC they can go to Mediatek or maybe Texas Instruments at a stretch. I doubt Nvidia would offer bulk discounts to OEMs haha.... anyway AMD is also working on ARM SOCs so the next few years will be very interesting.
    Reply