Faced with Qualcomm's backstabbing, Intel instantly counterattacked.

According to public information, some PC manufacturers are preparing to cooperate with Microsoft to launch the AI PC “Copilot+PC”. These computers are all equipped with Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite or Snapdragon X Plus chips based on the Arm architecture.

As a core member of the “Wintel” business value alliance in the wind industry for more than 20 years, Intel was able to stand by and watch Microsoft's “betrayal” one day ahead of the “2024 Microsoft Build Conference” held by Microsoft on May 22, and disclosed some information on its first laptop AI chip that supports “Copilot+AI”, in advance on May 21, Lunar Lake (X86 architecture), and officially announced that it will be officially launched in the third quarter of 2024.

Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite and Snapdragon X Plus chips are not designed for desktop computers, but are also used in laptops.

Intel also expects to ship more than 40 million AI-enabled PC chips this year. These chips have built-in neural processing units (NPUs) to implement AI functions.

According to Intel, Lunar Lake's AI performance will far exceed the current Meteor Lake model, and its NPU computing power can reach more than 40 trillion times per second (TOPS). Looking at the horizontal comparison, Intel claims that Lunar Lake's performance in Stable Diffusion 1.5 is 1.4 times faster than Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite based on the Arm architecture, and that the core performance is faster than AMD Ryzen 7 8840U and Snapdragon X Elite.

According to official Intel and information sources, Intel's Lunar Lake includes a CPU, an integrated Xe2 GPU, and a neural processing unit (NPU). It will be a high-performance, low-power processor specially designed for mobile devices, suitable for users who require long battery life and efficient computing power.

Compared with the previous generation Meteor Lake, Lunar Lake's AI performance will be more than 3 times higher, and the NPU performance will exceed 40 TOPS, which can bring users a Copilot+ experience, and the entire platform's computing power exceeds 100 TOPS.

Lunar Lake is designed for thin and light notebooks, and its power consumption is 17W, which helps improve the laptop's battery life.

This processor uses P-Core with Lion Cove architecture and E-Core with Skymont architecture. The SoC chip will use an improved low-power island design and integrate an NPU with more than 45 TOPS of computing power. The core will use a new Xe2 architecture. This is a low-power version of Battlemage.

As a result, Lunar Lake debuted Battlemage GPUs. Using a combination of the Lion Cove P core and Skymont E core, and the Battlemage Xe 2-LPG graphics processor architecture, this hybrid architecture is designed to provide better energy efficiency and performance.

According to limited information, Lunar Lake may use memory particles encapsulated in the CPU. The benefits of this design are increased memory bandwidth and reduced power consumption.

The reason why the Lunar Lake processor can achieve low power consumption is said to be due to the use of Intel's 18A process. Intel previously claimed that they will achieve the leading position in performance per watt ratio in 2024.

In terms of specific architecture, Lunar Lake's CPU configuration may include 8 cores (cores), which helps improve multitasking capabilities while also achieving low power consumption.

Lunar Lake is positioned in the flagship lightweight laptop market, competing with Apple's M-series processor (non-M Pro/Max) series products, and focuses on energy efficiency and integration.

There is no further news about this AI processor yet. Computex in June and the Hot Chips conference in August will probably have more technical details about the Lunar Lake processor.

Michelle Johnston Holthaus, executive vice president and general manager of the client computing division of Intel, publicly stated, “With breakthrough energy consumption, reliable compatibility of the X86 architecture, and a software catalog integrating CPU, GPU, and NPU, we will provide the most competitive solution in our history, integrating client hardware and software through AI PCs equipped with Lunar Lake and Windows 11.”

Also, Intel has done it (or is it still in progress?) Development progress schedule for Arrow Lake, the next AI chip to launch Lunar Lake processors — Arrow Lake will be launched in the fourth quarter of this year as part of the Core Ultra 200 series for mobile and desktop platforms.

The main reason why “Wintel” was invincible back then and its position was unshakable was the strong ecological power of this alliance. Therefore, while launching Lunar Lake this time, Intel is also planning to cooperate with more than 20 OEMs to bring more than 80 new laptops equipped with Lunar Lake processors to the market. The exact time is expected to go on sale before the Christmas shopping season this year.

Although Microsoft and Qualcomm are in the spotlight — it is clear that laptops equipped with Qualcomm Snapdragon's ARM-based AI CPU will be launched on June 18 (Surface Pro series), Microsoft will also launch AI laptop products equipped with Intel (including AMD) X86 architecture CPUs later this year.

Pavan Davuluri, Microsoft's vice president of Windows and Devices, said in a statement, “Thanks to our close collaboration with Intel, the launch of Lunar Lake will bring significant and substantial improvements in safety, battery life, etc. We are very much looking forward to Lunar Lake entering the market with 40+ TOPS NPU, which will provide users with a large-scale Microsoft Copilot+ experience when it goes on sale.”

Therefore, for AI PCs, whether it is a Qualcomm chip with an Arm architecture or an Intel or AMD chip with an x86 architecture, it is a good thing. Once the Lunar Lake processor revealed by Intel this time is introduced to the market, it will undoubtedly continue to expand the scale of global AI PCs.