Let’s dissect this one first. Lunar Lake will get Copilot+ experiences, like Recall, via an update when they become available. Since it is launching in Q3 2024, it arrives in time for the busy holiday season shopping frenzy and brings 80 new laptop designs across more than 20 OEMs. Intel is now comfortable saying that it will ship more than 40 million AI PC processors this year. The mix includes Core Ultra (Meteor Lake) and probably some Arrow Lake desktop / mobile too. 

“With breakthrough power efficiency, the trusted compatibility of the x86 architecture, and the industry’s deepest catalog of software enablement across the CPU, GPU, and NPU, we will deliver the most competitive joint client hardware and software offering in our history with Lunar Lake and Copilot+”

–Michelle Johnston Holthaus, Intel executive vice president and general manager of the Client Computing Group

"The launch of Lunar Lake will bring meaningful fundamental improvements across security, battery life, and more thanks to our deep co-engineering partnership with Intel. We are excited to see Lunar Lake come to market with a 40+ TOPS NPU which will deliver Microsoft's Copilot+ experiences at scale when available," said Pavan Davuluri, corporate vice president of Windows + Devices at Microsoft.

Intel’s dynamic trio Dan Rogers VP and GM of client performance marketing, Robert Hallock Vice President and General Manager, Client AI and Technical Marketing, and Bernard Fernandes Director of Global Communications jumped in and shared some information about Lunar Lake. 

7 million Meteor Lake AIPC sold

Intel made a lot of noise with AIPC with the biggest partner and developer pool in PC marketing promising deep developer support over 500+ AI Models, Acceleration Programs, Frameworks, Leading Tools & Runtimes, and AI Developer Kits. Intel targets 100+ ISV Applications with its widely available Meteor Lake and hopes to continue to succeed once Lunar starts shipping in Q3 24.  Intel is also targeting 300+ AI Features for productivity, creativity, and collaboration. It is introducing AI-enhanced security with McAfee, CrowdStrike, Microsoft Defender, Bufferzone, Trend Micro, and Xcitium.

What happened in the meantime are Client Optimized LLMs including Microsoft Phi-2, Day0 Phi-3 Support, LLaMa2-7B, Day0 LLaMa3-8B Support, Mistral-7B, Qwen 7B (PRC) and ChatGLM3 6B (PRC). Two partners are bringing local personal assistants Acer Experience Zone and Lenovo AI Now with more in the pipeline. 

Lunar Lake

Expect to see new P and E cores with significant IPC and Perf/W improvement, Intel Battlemage-based Xe2 GPU introduces new XMX engines for AI, 45+ TOPS AI NPU, advanced low power island with breakthrough battery, Ultra-Thin and light design, and Intel 3D packaging and 100+ platform TOPS.

 

Lunar Lake performance

Based on publicly available details, Lunar Lake offers 1.4X better performance in Stable Diffusion 1.5 vs. Snapdragon X Elite. 

GXF performance is projected at 1.5X versus Meteor Lake GPU and even the core performance is faster than vs. Ryzen 7 8840U & Snapdragon X Elite. Intel didn’t go into any details on how fast, it was but rather based the claim on performance estimated with measurements on Lunar Lake against Ryzen 7 8840U & Snapdragon X Elite public claims.

Lunar Lake power

Microsoft Teams conferencing 3x3 should result in up to 30 percent lower power Ryzen 7 7840U and 20 percent lower total package power compared to Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3.  Obviously, Intel measured competitors’ parts available in the market at the time of the announcement. One interesting observation is that total package power for Intel includes memory as well while Snapdragon 8CX Gen 3 and 7840U only use the power of the chip as the memory subsystem is separate.  

We expect to learn more around Computex, a tradeshow that starts on June 3 this year, and to see the systems shipping ready for the holiday season.