Intel couldn’t sign off of its Core HX launch without a “one more thing” moment. “Arrow Lake” is Intel’s next desktop chip and it’ll bring the “Core Ultra” brand to desktops with an integrated AI NPU inside. And here’s another thing. Intel’s next mobile chip will be “Lunar Lake” and it’s already shipping that chip to its PC partners. This will all shake down in 2024.
This week, Intel launched more “Raptor Lake Refresh” processors, an update to its 13th-gen architecture for laptops, with the Core HX, as well as eighteen new desktop processors. It’s an interesting moment, which is splitting time in laptops between the power-sipping Meteor Lake (Core Ultra) architecture and the Core HX, branded just as Core. Core HX is, not surprisingly, being geared at gaming PCs, the same as Arrow Lake.
“We’re going to be extending the Core Ultra architecture to high performance gaming systems with our upcoming Arrow Lake,” Holthaus said. “The product is the first desktop gaming CPU with an AI accelerator.”
Mark Hachman / IDG
Mark Hachman / IDG
Mark Hachman / IDG
We don’t know too much about Arrow Lake, though it will supposedly offer “leadership in compute, graphics and AI,” according to a 2022 roadmap presentation Intel made. That will mark a transition to Intel’s “angstrom” architecture, Intel 20A.
As for mobile, Johnston said that Intel is making “great progress” in Lunar Lake, and that the company’s OEM partners already have the first samples.
“We have very big goals for this product,” Holthaus said. “You’re going to see significant IPC [instructions per clock] improvement on the CPU, and more than three times AI performance in both the GPU and the NPU.”
Mark Hachman / IDG
Mark Hachman / IDG
Mark Hachman / IDG
Lunar Lake will be the next block of performance for thin-and-light PCs, Holthaus said. Intel said in a 2022 Hot Chips presentation that Lunar Lake would be “optimized for 15 watts and below.”
That suggests an interesting dichotomy, or maybe a tri-chotomy: could we see Lunar Lake positioned against both Meteor Lake and Raptor Lake Refresh, all in the mobile market? Or will Lunar Lake replace Meteor Lake? And how long will the 14th-gen Raptor Lake Refresh desktop chips hold on before (the presumably 15th-gen) Arrow Lake replace them? Those will be the questions as we roll on into 2024.
Author: Mark Hachman, Senior Editor, PCWorld
Mark has written for PCWorld for the last decade, with 30 years of experience covering technology. He has authored over 3,500 articles for PCWorld alone, covering PC microprocessors, peripherals, and Microsoft Windows, among other topics. Mark has written for publications including PC Magazine, Byte, eWEEK, Popular Science and Electronic Buyers' News, where he shared a Jesse H. Neal Award for breaking news. He recently handed over a collection of several dozen Thunderbolt docks and USB-C hubs because his office simply has no more room.