Qualcomm made headlines when it was named the chipmaker for Microsoft's Copilot+ PCs. But that hasn't stopped Intel from innovating for this latest type of computing. The company had been working on chips for AI PCs long before Microsoft's news. In fact, on the identical day, Intel announced its Lunar Lake processora chip that may power greater than 80 latest laptop designs from 20 computer manufacturers. The chip is anticipated to launch within the third quarter of 2024.
Intel desires to advance AI internally
This week at Computex, Intel is revealing architecture details of its Lunar Lake processor, which is claimed to deliver as much as 40 percent of the SoC performance and greater than 3 times the AI computing power.
“The launch of Lunar Lake will bring significant fundamental improvements in security, battery life, and more, due to our close co-engineering partnership with Intel. We're excited that Lunar Lake is launching with a 40+ TOPS NPU that can deliver Microsoft's Copilot+ experiences at scale after they're available,” noted Pavan Davuluri, corporate vice chairman of Windows + Devices at Microsoft, in May.
Intel is designing Lunar Lake with two microarchitectures: a Performance Core (P-Core), codenamed Lion Cove, and an Efficient Core (E-Core), codenamed Skymont. It will include the corporate's fourth-generation Neural Processing Unit (NPU), which delivers as much as 48 tera-operations per second (TOPS) of AI performance, 3 times greater than the third-generation NPU. Also included is the brand new Battlemage GPU design, which mixes X.t2 GPU cores for graphics and Xt Matrix Extension (XMX) arrays for AI. The Xt2 GPU is claimed to supply greater than 80 percent more gaming performance and greater than five times the AI throughput than its predecessor. Intel claims it may well also deliver greater than 60 TOPS.
In addition, Lunar Lake features a complicated low-power island, a novel computing cluster, and a option to handle background and productivity tasks with “extreme efficiency.”
The AI-PC race is heating up
Now that Microsoft has opened the floodgates to AI PCs, we’re seeing a flood of innovation around this computing platform – not only a trickle. Intel's Lunar Lake news comes a day after Nvidia and AMD announced their efforts to bring Microsoft Copilot+ PC AI features to more laptops. The former has teased so-called “RTX AI PC” laptops from Asus and MSI, and the latter has its Strix laptop CPU.
It is valued AI PCs will account for nearly 60 percent latest PCs by 2027. The first 20 computers supporting Microsoft's Copilot+ PC will hit the market in a number of weeks. It could be silly to think that these could be the one ones in existence. To remain competitive, chipmakers must develop powerful NPUs to support the AI PC operating system.
When Intel's Lunar Lake launches “in time for the vacation season,” 80 more PCs might be launched, but the corporate has not yet announced the OEMs. Ultimately, the chip is anticipated to supply users with Copilot+ experiences, including the controversial Recall feature, through an over-the-air update.
