Intel to Launch "Lunar Lake" Core Ultra Chips on September 3rd
by Ryan Smith on July 31, 2024 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
- Intel
- Lunar Lake
- Core Ultra
- Lion Cove
- IFA 2024
Intel’s next-generation Core Ultra laptop chips finally have a launch date: September 3rd.
Codenamed Lunar Lake, Intel has been touting the chips for nearly a year now. Most recently, Intel offered the press a deep dive briefing on the chips and their underlying architectures at Computex back in June, along with a public preview during the company’s Computex keynote. At the time Intel was preparing for Q3’2024 launch, and that window has finally been narrowed down to a single date – September 3rd – when Intel will be hosting their Lunar Lake launch event ahead of IFA.
Intel’s second stab at a high volume chiplet-based processor for laptop users, Lunar Lake is aimed particularly at ultrabooks and other low-power mobile devices, with Intel looking to wrestle back the title of the most efficient PC laptop SoC. Lunar Lake is significant in this respect as Intel has never previously developed a whole chip architecture specifically for low power mobile devices before – it’s always been a scaled-down version of a wider-range architecture, such as the current Meteor Lake (Core Ultra 100 series). Consequently, Intel has been touting that they’ve made some serious efficiency advancements with their highly targeted chip, which they believe will vault them over the competition.
All told, Lunar Lake is slated to bring a significant series of updates to Intel’s chip architectures and chip design strategies. Of particular interest is the switch to on-package LPDDR5X memory, which is a first for a high-volume Core chip. As well, Lunar Lake incorporates updated versions of virtually every one of Intel’s architecture, from the CPU P and E cores – Lion Cove and Skymont respectively – to the Xe2 GPU and 4th generation NPU (aptly named NPU 4). And, in a scandalous twist, both of the chiplets/tiles on the CPU are being made by TSMC. Intel isn’t providing any of the active silicon for the chip – though they are providing the Foveros packaging needed to put it together.
| Intel CPU Architecture Generations | |||||
| Alder/Raptor Lake | Meteor Lake |
Lunar Lake |
Arrow Lake |
Panther Lake |
|
| P-Core Architecture | Golden Cove/ Raptor Cove |
Redwood Cove | Lion Cove | Lion Cove | Cougar Cove? |
| E-Core Architecture | Gracemont | Crestmont | Skymont | Crestmont? | Darkmont? |
| GPU Architecture | Xe-LP | Xe-LPG | Xe2 | Xe2? | ? |
| NPU Architecture | N/A | NPU 3720 | NPU 4 | ? | ? |
| Active Tiles | 1 (Monolithic) | 4 | 2 | 4? | ? |
| Manufacturing Processes | Intel 7 | Intel 4 + TSMC N6 + TSMC N5 | TSMC N3B + TSMC N6 | Intel 20A + More | Intel 18A |
| Segment | Mobile + Desktop | Mobile | LP Mobile | HP Mobile + Desktop | Mobile? |
| Release Date (OEM) | Q4'2021 | Q4'2023 | Q3'2024 | Q4'2024 | 2025 |
Suffice it to say, no matter what happens, Lunar Lake and the Core Ultra 200 series should prove to be an interesting launch.
It’s worth noting, however, that while Intel’s announcement of their livestreamed event is being labeled a “launch event” by the company, the brief reveal doesn’t make any claims about on-the-shelves availability. September 3rd is a Tuesday (and the day after a US holiday), which isn’t a typical launch date for new laptops (for reference, the lightly stocked Meteor Lake launch was a Thursday). So Intel’s launch event may prove to be more of a soft launch for Lunar Lake; we’ll have to see how things pan out in the coming weeks.
Source: Intel Newsroom
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whatthe123 - Wednesday, July 31, 2024 - link
what? they report losses every quarter on manufacturing because they merged manufacturing spending with external customer revenue (of which there is very little) rather than manufacturing being part of general expenses. it's quite literally a part of their recent restructuring. Did you just start following them yesterday?whatthe123 - Wednesday, July 31, 2024 - link
Also why do you have multiple accounts? You still type the same way so it's obvious who you are (and no I'm not talking about naik). Will spamming anandtech really move the stock market in your favor?JayNor - Thursday, August 1, 2024 - link
Ireland is now building Intel-3 products ... Sierra Forest mainly, and will be busy building Granite Rapids as well.Arizona has a fab that will be building Intel-20A later this year.
Oregon is in charge of bringing up the new processes ... so doing mainly 18A at this point ... Panther Lake and Clearwater Forest.
Those are the only fabs that could have built another EUV product. They look booked to me. Looks like use of TSM for Lunar Lake was a good way to expand capacity while they are still bringing up EUV fabs.
PeachNCream - Thursday, August 1, 2024 - link
"Lunar Lake is significant in this respect as Intel has never previously developed a whole chip architecture specifically for low power mobile devices before – it’s always been a scaled-down version of a wider-range architecture..."Wow, how did this totally off-the-mark fluff land in an article. Intel Atom says hello:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Atom_p...
EthiaW - Thursday, August 1, 2024 - link
Intel must be secretively regretting not putting more CPU cores in Lunar Lake. Were Lunar Lake in a 6+6 instead of 4+4 configuration, it could provide raw performance comparable to Strix Point at similar TDP (and perhaps better actual performance/watt). Now Lunar Lake is arriving with puny 8 cores while everybody else is aiming for 10 or more in the same segment, OEMs will whip it beyond the optimal frequency to provide performance comparable to rivals, which may ultimatly turn out futile simply due to a lack of cores. It does not well for Intel. For ultrabook as mostly premium products, it's always nice to have more transistors running at lower frequency.meacupla - Thursday, August 1, 2024 - link
Yeah, it'll be interesting to see where Lunar Lake will end up in performance per watt when it comes out.Strix Point is surprisingly efficient and performs well at 15W, despite being an "HX" chip and easily beat the Z1 extreme at similar power levels.
sharath.naik - Thursday, August 8, 2024 - link
You are right and wrong at the same time. lunar lake is a huge jump, and yes, they could have beaten the competition soundly with this with higher core counts. But they cannot put more cores in this as it will make anything they make in their own fabs irrelevant for some time. It's not regret it more of a business move to limit this to only 8 cores and only 32GB ram max. They do not have a choice here.But for laptops I would still say this looks more than sufficient in good ways. CPU was already fast enough at 7840u performances (which is where this will be at may be a bit more). It was always GPU and efficiency that has been a problem for x86 this should solve that finally.
And no Zen 5 does not count as they really did not fix the battery life issue, they just changed to higher core count running at lower Freq to improve performance per-watt for fully multi threaded benchmarks, but would do poorly in low thread load like browser badly test given they pushed single core clock too high.