Intel Lunar Lake CPU at 17W Offers 50% Multi-Threaded Performance Uplift Over Meteor Lake 15W

Intel Lunar Lake CPUs will reportedly offer a major boost in multi-threaded performance with their new P-Core & E-Core architecture.

The latest information on Intel's Lunar Lake CPUs comes from Bionic_Squash who has teased the multi-threaded performance of the upcoming low-power CPU platform. The Lunar Lake CPUs are targeted at thin and light laptops with a focus on higher performance per watt and faster AI NPU performance. The chips are expected to feature the Lion Cove P-Core, Skymont E-Core architecture, and a brand new NPU that delivers 3x the performance gain over Meteor Lake.

MTL-U (15w)-> LNL(17w)Almost 1.5x MT perf increase (CB23, GB 5.4.5)

— Bionic_Squash (@SquashBionic) March 10, 2024

17w was the original PL1 for single fan config. They have extended cTDP to 30w pretty recently due to popular demand from OEM's

— Bionic_Squash (@SquashBionic) March 10, 2024

Nope

— Bionic_Squash (@SquashBionic) March 10, 2024

Now let's talk about the performance being shared. The Lunar Lake CPU used for comparison is a 17W SKU and is said to have no hyper-threading support. For comparison, a Meteor Lake-U (15W) chip was used which features 2 P-cores, 8 E-Cores, and 2 LP-E cores for a total of 12 cores and 14 threads. Based on previous information that we have reported, Lunar Lake CPUs will come with up to 4 P-Cores and 4 E-Cores so that's 8 cores and 8 threads.

There are no specific SKU details but it is mentioned that the 17W TDP was the original PL1 spec for the single-fan configurations based on Lunar Lake CPUs. Intel is said to have extended the cTDP up to 30W following popular demand from OEMs. But here, the 17W TDP was used for comparisons.

Some of the most popular multi-threaded CPU benchmarks were used such as Cinebench 23, Geek Bench 5, and Geek Bench 4.5. It is stated that the Intel Lunar Lake CPUs reached almost 50% multi-threaded performance versus the Meteor Lake CPUs which is a huge increase despite Lunar Lake chips having almost half the number of threads. This may give us a hint of the performance packed within the new Lion Cove and Skymont cores with the former also heading to Arrow Lake CPUs for desktops and notebooks later this year.

Following are some of the features of Lunar Lake CPUs:

Intel's Lunar Lake CPUs will be rolling out later this year in limited quantities with mass availability in early 2025. Besides the CPU and NPU side, the chips will be the first to incorporate the next-gen Xe2 "Battlemage" graphics architecture on the iGPU Tile, offering a major 2x performance uplift vs the existing Xe1 "Alchemist" architecture. Intel will also talk about its future client CPU families at Computex 2024 so we might hear more about these chips in June.