News Intel next-generation Lunar Lake CPUs launching in Q3, Arrow Lake in Q4 — mobile chips claimed to be 1.4x faster than Qualcomm's X Elite processors

[Admin]

Intel announced its upcoming Lunar Lake CPUs will launch in Q3 and released additional details regarding the processors. It claims they'll outperform AMD and Qualcomm chips while delivery better power efficiency and battery life.

Intel next-generation Lunar Lake CPUs launching in Q3, Arrow Lake in Q4 — mobile chips claimed to be 1.4x faster than Qualcomm's X Elite processors : Read more

 

[Neilbob]

'Ingrained AI software services are also now appearing in applications. McAfee software uses the NPU to detect deepfake videos and images 3x faster than the CPU in real-time.'

Is that before or after McAfee causes a 3x slowdown just by being installed?

 

[peachpuff]

Was this article written by pat?

 

[shawman123]

Its good to see desperation from Intel. This means they will get LNL out as soon as they can.

Looking at how many laptops from OEMs for Oryon, this is an existential moment for x86.

 

[bit_user]

I can believe Lunar Lake is faster, but at what power levels? For work, I have an i7-12850HX laptop and the thing is an absolute boat anchor to lug around and it's only a 15" model IIRC (definitely not 17"). Plus, it's super loud when you run it under heavy load. I hate it.

 

[Deleted member 2731765]

The previously rumored Arrow Lake-S desktop series SKUs I suppose could be the only upcoming models IMO.

• Core Ultra 9 285K (supposed Intel Core i9-14900K Successor)
• Core Ultra 7 265K (supposed Intel Core i7-14700K Successor)
• Core Ultra 5 245K (supposed Intel Core i5-14600K Successor)

3 "K" SKUs in total

 

[Deleted member 2731765]

Oh Btw, thanks for the article Paul. A really nice read !

 

[JamesJones44]

Line item two from the power slide is interesting

Source: Intel. Based on performance estimated with measurements on Microsoft Teams conferencing 3x3 on Lunar Lake including memory power against OEM production system with Snapdragon 8CX Gen3 excluding memory power with no PSR.

Disabling PSR might have a fair sized impact considering Apple claims they get massive savings on their mobile devices from reducing the overall refresh rates for slow changing content (I guess we won't know for sure until later next month). I'm sure it was to get an "apple's to apple's" comparison, but I'm curious to see how a system configured with default settings matches up overall.

 

[usertests]

I don't know about all of Intel's Lunar Lake claims, but it should have a great iGPU.

Intel was claiming only 30 TOPS for the Lunar Lake NPU previously, which would have been silly. Now they are shooting for 45+ TOPS, which I take it is around the minimum recommendation for Copilot+ and matching Strix/Kraken Point and Snapdragon X Elite.

 

[thestryker]

I know it's silly because they're largely niche unimportant products, but I'm really curious what this will do regarding handheld and minipcs. If it can really run peak performance at 30W that would do wonders for efficiency with regards to actually using the IGP. On the minipc side that would allow for much quieter gaming than existing solutions.

Of course if LNL can actually deliver I fully expect Intel to milk every possible dollar out of it so that would put reasonably priced versions of these likely at end of 2025.

 

[danny009]

A word of advice these days: Stick with older hardware as long as one can.

Using 4th gen CPU since decades and never had any problems. Todays tech designed to be faulty,problematic on purpose, but hey: call me boomer instead.

 

[Notton]

Its good to see desperation from Intel. This means they will get LNL out as soon as they can.

Looking at how many laptops from OEMs for Oryon, this is an existential moment for x86.

I disagree. This problem only exists for Intel.

AMD might have a smaller market share, but their products are doing okay for being a fab-less chip company.
AMD's main problem is that they are fab-less, and can't secure enough capacity from TSMC to pump out the required number of chips to meet OEM demands.
The same can be said of Snapdragon, also a fab-less chip company.

 

[CmdrShepard]

So... does anyone know when is Intel going to run out of lakes? Naming is getting tiresome really.

 

[JRStern]

I don't want faster. Not even sold yet on "AI". Want quiet, fanless most of the time, good idle-down. Even the slowest new architecture chip should be 2x faster than what I have now, which is already plenty fast. Long battery life if it's in a laptop, but even in home desktop, leave it plugged in and on all the time.

 

[watzupken]

This is a desperate attempt from Intel in my opinion. If Snapdragon succeeds here, Intel is going to lose even more market share. Looking at Apple’s M1 success, and the likes of Qualcomm, MediaTek and Samsung all looking to jump onto this bandwagon, Intel has a lot to worry about. AMD will also be impacted, but given the fact that they have a much lower market share than Intel even at this point, and their willingness to compete on price, I feel the impact to them will be lower.

 

[usertests]

I know it's silly because they're largely niche unimportant products, but I'm really curious what this will do regarding handheld and minipcs. If it can really run peak performance at 30W that would do wonders for efficiency with regards to actually using the IGP. On the minipc side that would allow for much quieter gaming than existing solutions.

Of course if LNL can actually deliver I fully expect Intel to milk every possible dollar out of it so that would put reasonably priced versions of these likely at end of 2025.

I don't think mini PCs are a niche. They are steadily growing segment that can offer the performance most people are looking for at 5-10% the size, lower power, etc. x86 handheld gaming PCs on the other hand, while interesting, look like a bubble. And if it pops I will definitely buy one at a discount.

https://www.globenewswire.com/news-...-2032-at-4-5-CAGR-Allied-Market-Research.html

Using 4th gen CPU since decades and never had any problems. Todays tech designed to be faulty,problematic on purpose, but hey: call me boomer instead.

If we were allowed to, I would. But I will enjoy my 10th gen PC I got for under $100.

I don't want faster. Not even sold yet on "AI". Want quiet, fanless most of the time, good idle-down. Even the slowest new architecture chip should be 2x faster than what I have now, which is already plenty fast. Long battery life if it's in a laptop, but even in home desktop, leave it plugged in and on all the time.

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-lunar-lake-mx-to-use-tsmc-n3b

Lunar Lake is a successor to other low TDP dies from Intel, like Alder/Raptor Lake-U and Meteor Lake-U, but also the ~7W TDP chips like Amber Lake. It should use around 17-30 W with a fan, but it will apparently be configured as far down as an 8W TDP for fanless devices. Mandatory memory-on-package is one of the changes cutting the power consumption.

On the AMD side, we'll want to look at either Sonoma Valley (drop-in Mendocino successor) or Kraken Point (similar to Lunar Lake with 4+4 cores, decent iGPU, full NPU).

 

[thestryker]

I don't think mini PCs are a niche. They are steadily growing segment that can offer the performance most people are looking for at 5-10% the size, lower power, etc. x86 handheld gaming PCs on the other hand, while interesting, look like a bubble. And if it pops I will definitely buy one at a discount.

https://www.globenewswire.com/news-...-2032-at-4-5-CAGR-Allied-Market-Research.html

The mini market might be big, but the vast majority of it is industrial and lower cost which isn't where LNL will appear. I meant more the high performance market which makes up a rather small portion of sales.

 

[Notton]

There is also speculation that AMD is working on an ARM chip with the code name "Soundwave" for 2026.
I think it's plausible. Jim Keller designed wanted an AMD ARM chip back in the day, but AMD didn't have the finances at the time.
Now that they do, it seems like they are ready to modify Ryzen for ARM.

 

[usertests]

There is also speculation that AMD is working on an ARM chip with the code name "Soundwave" for 2026.
I think it's plausible. Jim Keller designed wanted an AMD ARM chip back in the day, but AMD didn't have the finances at the time.
Now that they do, it seems like they are ready to modify Ryzen for ARM.

Just link the vid:

What do you mean by "Ryzen" (Zen?) being modified for ARM? For all we know AMD won't even customize the ARM cores, focusing on the iGPU instead, like the Samsung partnership.

 

[rluker5]

Seems like these chips are coming out according to plan.

Maybe I'm getting old, but it seems like just last year that Intel came out with Meteor Lake that changed a lot, and just a couple years further back when Intel came out with heterogeneous chips. And their node is just in the process of dropping. Things are going fast.

Edit: This doesn't have anything to do with the potential performance, but "Sound Wave" is a terrible name for a CPU arch that has little if any extra to offer in terms of sound waves. It was even a lame transformer, only the cassettes were any good. There are a ton of better names they could have chosen like Orange Julius, Ginko Leaf or Rex the Dog. Pretty much anything would have been better.

 

[bit_user]

What do you mean by "Ryzen" (Zen?) being modified for ARM? For all we know AMD won't even customize the ARM cores, focusing on the iGPU instead, like the Samsung partnership.

100% likelihood AMD will use custom ARM cores. The reason is obvious, if you look at ARM's penetration of the cloud market. x86 is getting squeezed out of that space (and it looks likely to face new pressure from Qualcomm in laptops), so AMD designing ARM cores would mean they can continue to play in both laptops and cloud.

Plus, it's not like it's a particularly heavy burden for them. K12 was Jim Keller basically swapping out the front end of Zen 1 with an ARM frontend.

 

[TerryLaze]

100% likelihood AMD will use custom ARM cores. The reason is obvious, if you look at ARM's penetration of the cloud market. x86 is getting squeezed out of that space (and it looks likely to face new pressure from Qualcomm in laptops), so AMD designing ARM cores would mean they can continue to play in both laptops and cloud.

Plus, it's not like it's a particularly heavy burden for them. K12 was Jim Keller basically swapping out the front end of Zen 1 with an ARM frontend.

AMD isn't even designing different chips for cloud and lap/desktop now with only x86 and you are dreaming of them doing it for arm...
Going arm would mean that they would have to pay yet another party for the license and then split their funds between making x86 and arm while they barely have enough funds to make x86 (and gpus) alone.

If they have a customers that will pay for all of it, like they did with consoles, then there might be a chance but then that product might never appear as an amd product on the market.

 

[thestryker]

I wouldn't be surprised if AMD's first modern foray into ARM would be with Neoverse cores like Intel is doing.

 

[TheHerald]

Better battery life, sure. There is no way that x86 can get anywhere near arm in terms of battery life - especially with windows being the way they are. Ain't happening.

 

[Notton]

Just link the vid:

What do you mean by "Ryzen" (Zen?) being modified for ARM? For all we know AMD won't even customize the ARM cores, focusing on the iGPU instead, like the Samsung partnership.

yeah, that vid
From what I've read, turning ryzen x86-64 into ARM64 is as simple as a decoder swap.