As Intel ponders how to restructure itself for a better future–and investors and analysts ponder whether or not it has a future–the company continues to deliver on its PC chip roadmap. As the IFA Berlin consumer electronics event kicked off this week, Intel announced that its Core Ultra 200V Series family of PC processors–previously called Lunar Lake–will be available in laptops later this month.
The announcement makes good on Intel’s pledge back in June at Computex to begin shipping Lunar Lake during the third quarter. The new processor family is the successor to the company’s Meteor Lake series, which ushered in the era of the AI PC at Intel and was central to the “AI everywhere” message Intel was spouting late last year amid observations that the company otherwise had arrived late to the AI party. Fast forward into the second half of 2024, and Intel has announced massive job reductions and may be considering spin-offs and other moves as its stock value continues a nosedive.
With all of that in the background, the on-time release of the new Core Ultra 200V chips should come off as something of a win, and during the pre-IFA launch announcement broadcast, Jim Johnson, senior vice president and general manager of the Client Business Group at Intel, did his best to position the new series as game-changers that will provide a gaming performance lift and significantly longer battery life for the latest ultra-thin laptops shipping from Intel partners like Microsoft, Lenovo, Dell, and others.
In fact, Johnson shifted AI capabilities into the background, at least at the beginning of his presentation, and put gaming performance and power efficiency front and center, stating, “We know a great processor isn't just about AI, it's about performance, power efficiency, graphics–they all matter. A great AI PC must first be a great PC.”
He proceeded to show that the Core Ultra 200V chips deliver great performance gains and power benefits over their Meteor Lake predecessors, as well as their competition from AMD and Qualcomm. Describing Lunar Lake’s “Performance Core,” or P-Core, Johnson said, “It's wider, faster and more scalable than any core we've ever built. It's the new foundation for how we think about core design moving forward, compared to our last P core. It delivers double-digit increases in performance, performance per watt and performance per area.”
Regarding graphics performance, Johnson said the XE2 GPU, or graphics card, in the new platform, will please gamers. “There are eight graphics cores in Lunar Lake. The average performance lift of each core is about 30%. In many games–for example, Cyberpunk 2077, Spider-Man, Hogwarts Legacy–we’re delivering performance improvements up to 50%.”
Johnson also described the new processor daily as “the most power-efficient processor we have ever built,” delivering close to 50% power package savings via its “Efficiency Core,” or E-Core, vs. the Meteor Lake processors, and better power consumption compared to AMD and Qualcomm processors. For example, he said that while running at the same frame rate as the Qualcomm X Elite, the Core Ultra 200V delivered 1.20x better power efficiency while still delivering 7% greater performance. Johnson said the new series provides up to 20 hours of active battery life for laptops.
As for AI, Johnson claimed the new processor family delivers 120 TOPS across the platform for AI from the combination of its CPU, GPU, and NPU, the latter of which comes out at about 48 TOPs.
Offering his assessment of the Core Ultra 200V Series announcement, Leonard Lee, Executive Analyst at neXt Curve, told Fierce Electronics there were no new surprises in this week’s announcement compared to the presentation he had seen during the Intel Tech Tour for analysts that took place in Taipei right before Computex a few months ago.
“Intel's emphasis on Lunar Lake's GPU power and power-efficiency focused CPU design highlights the key differentiators of their new AI PC processor line,” he added. “In terms of the NPU, they are at parity with Qualcomm's X Series, which sport 45 TOPS, and AMD, which claims 50 TOPS. To be frank, the NPU is in the early days of proving itself and its value. That being said, the value case of the AI PC has largely been battery life.”
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