Intel Lunar Lake Previewed: Over 100 AI TOPS, 50% Faster Battlemage “Xe2” GPU, Faster CPU Performance Versus AMD Zen 4 & Snapdragon X Elite

Intel has previewed its next-gen Lunar Lake CPUs ahead of Computex which will be launching in Q3 with the latest AI NPU & Battlemage "Xe2" GPU cores.

Ahead of its own announcements at Computex 2024, Intel has given the press a preview of its next-gen Lunar Lake CPUs. The company unveiled that the Lunar Lake CPUs will set the foundation for the next generation of AI PC platforms and is already running production wafers with a launch planned for the third quarter of 2024.

Before getting into the Lunar Lake details, Intel states that its first generation "Core Ultra 100" CPU lineup, codenamed Meteor Lake, has shipped over 7 Million units. The blue ship is confident to hit its goal of 40 million units shipped by the end of 2024 through its Meteor Lake, Arrow Lake & Lunar Lake CPUs and eventually ship over 100 million units through 2025. The Intel Meteor Lake CPUs themselves are gaining immense recognition in the developer side of things with more experiences and optimizations coming to Intel's "AI PC" platforms which include AI-enhanced security, Client-Optimized LLMs, Local Personal Assistants, and more. The long-term goal of these would be to offer a robust AI PC experience on next-generation CPU platforms such as Arrow Lake, Lunar Lake, Panther Lake, and beyond.

So starting with the details, the Intel Lunar Lake CPUs will ship with a brand new architecture on all fronts. You are looking at new CPU cores, new GPU cores, and new NPU cores, and all of this is made possible with the latest innovations in 3D Packaging technology and power innovations.

The leading changes include the utilization of the latest Lion Cove P-Cores and Skymont E-Cores which will be bringing in some decent IPC improvements. Intel states that it is still a bit too early to talk about the performance and IPC figures of its new P/E CPU cores but they are under evaluation and more information will be shared soon. The company also stated "Significant" IPC & perf/watt improvements with the new CPU cores along with an enhanced Thread Director to better manage those cores.

On the GPU side, Intel is adding its brand new Xe2 GPU architecture codenamed Battlemage. This has been a long time coming and Lunar Lake is the first CPU to leverage the Xe2-LPG design which is designed for integrated graphics solutions. The biggest benefit of this brand-new graphics chip is the addition of Intel XMX Engines for AI. Currently, Intel's Xe-LPG iGPUs featured on the Meteor Lake chips make use of DP4a acceleration and don't utilize the first-gen XMX engine but with Lunar Lake, you are not only getting XMX acceleration but also getting the 2nd Gen XMX cores, enabling much faster performance.

On the NPU side of things, Intel's Lunar Lake CPUs are adding over 3x the AI performance with an NPU that can deliver over 45 TOPS alone versus the 11 TOPS on the existing NPU featured on Core Ultra "Meteor Lake" chips. Following is the breakdown of Intel's Meteor Lake and Lunar Lake TOPS:

If you do the math, the Lunar Lake GPU offers a 3.15x boost over Meteor Lake's GPU while the Lunar Lake NPU offers a 4.09x boost over the Meteor Lake NPU. This is quite a drastic increase & with the CPU added to the mix, you are looking at even higher TOPS than the 105 AI TOPS from the NPU and GPU alone but one should keep in mind that the GPU and NPU will be doing most of the heavy-lifting when it comes to AI-specific tasks. Lunar Lake CPUs will also offer mixed precision and several other data types support while enabling optimizations in over 500 models.

The chip that was used for the performance evaluation was an early sample with 4+4 configuration which means 4 P-Cores and 4 E-Cores. The chip had two SKUs, one rated at a PL1 of 17W and the other rated at a PL1 of 30W. Lunar Lake leverages on-package memory and this sample used single-rank LPDDR5 memory rated at an unknown clock speed but the sample is mentioned to house 16 GB of capacity.

We know that the Lunar Lake-MX "Core Ultra 200V" chips will offer up to 32 GB on-package memory capacities. The reference performance used the Intel Filmore Peak connectivity and housed a 14" 2880x1800 panel with eDP 1.4, PSR2, and LRR2.5 capabilities.

Intel also shares some early performance figures of its Lunar Lake CPUs against Meteor Lake (Core Ultra 7 165U), AMD's Ryzen 7 7840U/8840U, and the upcoming Snapdragon X Elite chips. In AI TOPS, the Lunar Lake CPU is around 40% faster than Snapdragon X Elite in Stable Diffusion 15, in graphics performance, the Lunar Lake Battlemage "Xe2" GPU (17W) offers a 50% boost over the Meteor Lake Alchemist "Xe1" GPU (15W) in 3DMark Time Spy and the CPU core performance is said to be "Faster" than the Ryzen 7 8840U and Snapdragon X Elite.

In all these tests, Intel said the Power Plan to "Balanced Mode", the Power Mode to "Best Power Efficiency" and Performance Mode to "Best Performance" across its own and the competitor AI PC platforms.

Alright so moving to the power figures, Intel has incorporated a brand new "Advanced Low Power Island" on its Lunar Lake CPUs which leads to 30% lower power against the Ryzen 7 7840U & Ryzen 7 8840U chips and 20% lower than the Snapdragon 8cx Gen3 chips.

This is just a short preview of what Intel has in stores for the second half of this year and there's no doubt that Lunar Lake is looking like a fantastic solution for thin & light PC buyers. In these official tests, Lunar Lake CPUs look great against the competition and while it's always best to wait for 3rd party tests and independent reviews, especially for the CPU and GPU side of things, we are looking forward to Lunar Lake "Core Ultra 200V" CPU family.