Intel will formally 'launch' its Lunar Lake laptop CPUs on September 3rd

Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon laptops had the summer all to themselves, but that’s coming to an end. AMD is now shipping its Ryzen AI chips — and Intel has just announced it’ll “launch” its next generation of Core Ultra laptop chips, codename Lunar Lake, on a September 3rd livestream. It doesn't look like they're coming anytime soon, but the full reveal is expected to be in five weeks.

The processors are made up of multiple individual "tiles" or chiplets, designed without hyper-threading on the faster P-cores to improve efficiency. Intel explains that the non-hyperthreaded P core is 15% more efficient and takes up 10% less space on the chip than a hyperthreaded core. Manufacturing of the Lunar Lake CPU cores will not be done at Intel's own facilities, but will be carried out by TSMC using its N3B process. The move is part of Intel's IDM 2.0 strategy launched in 2021, which includes both manufacturing chips for other companies and outsourcing some manufacturing needs to external foundries such as TSMC. An Intel representative told The Verge that the company aims to launch these chips by September 21, within the third quarter of the year.

As we’ve discussed, Lunar Lake is an utterly overhauled chip that ditches the entire idea of plugging swappable memory sticks into your laptop, not to mention several of Intel’s previous ideas about how to achieve the best battery life and performance — plus a tripled NPU if you happen to have generative AI applications you’d like to run locally. But more importantly, it's a response to the Intel laptop of the Qualcomm and Apple Arms flea, and, like those who build Intel, provide more autonomous tasks than the X86 chips. 。 Intel hopes that ARM's Windows will ultimately be an executable competitors, so he will confirm that Intel's performance, battery life, and compelling combinations can be provided. Now we're testing one of the first AMD Ryzen AI 9 laptops to see if the 'Strix Point' will be a promising machine in this new environment. And Lunar Lake will arrive this fall as the final piece of this year's chip wars puzzle.

But as always for chipmakers, "launch" doesn't necessarily mean Lunar Lake laptops will be available to buy on that date. (“More details on availability will be provided at the event,” is the current sentiment, Intel spokesman Thomas Hannaford said.) For now, Intel is only confirming that it will “reveal details about the new processors’ breakthrough x86 power efficiency, exceptional core performance, significant advances in graphics performance, and unmatched AI processing power that will define this and future generations of Intel products.”