Intel Lunar Lake To Feature A Brand New CPU Architecture Built From The Ground-Up, Perf/Watt Focused at Mobile

Intel is working on a brand new CPU architecture designed from the ground for its next-gen Lunar Lake family of processors.

In a tweet by Dr. Ian Cutress of TechTechPotato, it is revealed that Intel provided some additional info on its future client family, codenamed Lunar Lake. The Lunar Lake CPUs are expected to arrive after Arrow Lake which itself comes after Meteor Lake, the follow-up to Raptor Lake, and its refresh (for 2023).

The quoted information comes from Intel's EVP & GM of CCG (Client Computing Group), Michelle Johnston Holthaus, who has stated that the Lunar Lake family will feature a fresh new architecture and a brand new design built from the ground up. The architecture will mainly focus on bringing some big performance per watt improvements in the mobile space & more information is expected to be unveiled at the Financial Day on the 26th of January when Chipzilla will disclose its Q4 results.

From @Intel @MJHolthaus : Lunar Lake is a fresh ground-up design and CPU uArch, built with perf/watt in mind for mobile devices. More info at the financial disclosure on 26th

— ????????. ???????????? ???????????????????????????? (@IanCutress) January 12, 2023

Last year, during a press-only HotChips presentation, Intel revealed that the Lunar Lake family is originally aimed at the 15W low-power mobile CPU segment. The CPU will utilize a sub-20A node as its process technology alongside an external foundry node for various other IPs since this will be a multi-tiled chip design. You can expect all the latest and greatest innovations from Intel such as Foveros packaging (25um pitch). Now saying that these chips are optimized for mobile doesn't necessarily mean that they won't launch on the desktop platform but with reports coming out that Intel might shift its Meteor Lake chips away from desktops and do an intermediate refresh of sorts on the platform, it may also not be too farfetched to believe so.

If the Lunar Lake CPUs are indeed fabricated and produced on the 18A process, then we can see manufacturing beginning in the second half of 2024 which means we are looking at an early 2025 or mid-2025 launch.