Intel says its next-gen Lunar Lake CPU will have 100+ TOPs of AI performance

Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger showed off the company's next-gen Lunar Lake CPU, ready for a new wave of laptops later this year, promising 100+ TOPS of AI workload performance, with 45 TOPS coming from the upgraded NPU alone.

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The current-gen Intel Core Ultra 100 series "Meteor Lake" CPUs have an NPU with 34 TOPS of AI performance, 5 TOPS from the CPU, 18 TOPS from the GPU, and 11 TOPS from the NPU. Lunar Lake is a big upgrade: 100 TOPS of AI performance in total, with around 5 TOPS from the CPU, around 50 TOPS from the upgraded GPU, and a huge upgrade from the NPU alone with 45 TOPS of AI performance. Impressive stuff.

Lunar Lake will be powered by Lion Cove and Skymont CPU architectures and aimed at the low-power laptop market. It features the same Lion Cove and Skymont CPU architectures as Arrow Lake (Intel's next-gen desktop Core Ultra 200 series CPUs) but a less powerful GPU.

Intel's upcoming Lunar Lake CPUs will be part of the new Core Ultra 200V series processors, using the Xe2-LPG architecture, a low-power version of Intel's upcoming Battlemage GPU. Arrow Lake on the other hand, will use the current-gen Xe-LPG GPU based on the Alchemist GPU architecture, which is used in the current Core Ultra 100 "Meteor Lake" series CPUs.

• Read more: Intel's next-gen Lunar Lake-MX: new CPU cores, Xe2 GPU, on-package LPDDR5X
• Read more: Intel's next-gen Lunar Lake CPU spotted in new Galaxy Book5 Pro laptop
• Read more: TSMC gets 3nm orders from Apple, Intel and AMD: Lunar Lake, Zen 5 CPUs
• Read more: Intel's next-gen Lunar Lake CPUs in very limited supply late 2024, more 2025
• Read more: Intel Lunar Lake CPU teased: 8-core, 8-thread at 2.8GHz boost benchmarked
• Read more: Intel's next-gen Lunar Lake Xe2 GPU rumored with adaptive sharpening filter
• Read more: Intel's next-gen Lunar Lake-MX mobile CPUs: on-package LPDDR5X memory
• Read more: Intel's low-power Arrow Lake-U CPUs: cheap alternative to next-gen Lunar Lake
• Read more: Intel's next-gen Arrow Lake is first gaming CPU with AI, Lunar Lake: 3x faster NPU

Back to the AI side of things, Intel estimates that Lunar Lake will burst over 100 TOPS of AI performance, which will make it the AI processor leader in the next wave of AI PCs, which is an incredibly important milestone for all these companies pushing into NPUs and AI.

An AMD spokesperson told Tom's Hardware: "We believe an AI PC requires strong CPU, GPU and NPU engines, which is what AMD has been delivering for more than a year with our Ryzen 7040 and now 8040 Series. At our December Advancing AI event, we disclosed our next-gen "Strix Point" mobile processors with XDNA 2 architecture would have up to 3x the generative AI performance of the current generation. We believe this performance will position us to remain the leading choice for next-gen AI PCs".

AMD isn't sitting on its hands when it comes to AI on its processors, with its next-gen Strix Point APUs to feature an upgraded XDNA 2 NPU that will offer somewhere around 48 TOPS of AI performance alone. Lunar Lake's new NPU with 45 AI performance TOPS will have major competition later this year.

The battle for AI supremacy is well and truly underway.

Intel's next-gen Lunar Lake CPU features:

• Designed For Thin & Light Notebooks
• Lion Cove P-Cores & Skymont E-Cores
• Battlemage "Xe2-LPG" GPU Architecture
• 4+4 Core Configurations (MX-Series)
• Up To 64 Execution Units
• On-Package LPDDR5x Memory
• Up To 3x Faster NPU Performance Versus Meteor Lake
• Late 2024 Launch, 2025 Volume