"Lunar Lake is significant in this respect as Intel has never previously developed a whole chip architecture specifically for low power mobile devices before..."
I mean, you know that's not true, right?
The Core architecture started as a mobile-first design that was wildly more efficient than the existing Pentium4 designs it ultimately replaced.
You are partially correct. While Core was based off of Pentium-M, Pentium-M is based off of i686 (Pentium Pro, P6) and it's an older design than netburst.
More to the point, Pentium-M as a platform never aimed this low. Thin & light 15 Watt laptops weren't a thing in 2003, in part because half of what we take for granted now was still a discrete controller at the time.
Lunar Lake scratches a very, very specific (one might say fruit-induced) itch at Intel for low-power mobile devices. If anything the closer analogy is Lakefield, but that was more of an experiment than a high-volume product that is getting Intel's full attention. Intel hasn't offered a mainstream product quite like this before, which is one of the reasons it's so notable.
Yeah Atom. There were lots of Atom CPUs long with various later generation Celeron n and Pentium n series chips that make this sort of article misleading Thanks to people in the comments section for fact checking at least.
This is more like AMD launches. Paper only, with very little availability at high prices. This is because they still need to sell their 7 NM chips. Unlike before where Intel used to upgrade their manufacturing process on the same machines to a smaller node, This time they will need to replace a lot of expensive machines over a long period of time. They can not make their entire manufacturing sit idle while selling these built by TSMC. So they will throttle it hard, only on 1500$+ laptops for a nearly a year. Just like how AMD has been, atleast AMD is staying on the same node so their transition should be more immediate.
They already moved on to i4/tsmc/20a for production. their last gen inventory is being sold simultaneously by rebranding into different SKUs. Both Lunar and Arrow are heavily reliant on TSMC, they have no reason to keep inventory low but good reason to keep production flowing so that they can maintain steady wafer allocation at TSMC.
This is where you are wrong. Intel has a HUGE amount of fab capacity sitting idle. This is why their Manuf. business is reporting huge losses every quarter. On top of that, they continue to build even more capacity in the hopes of getting foundry customers. On top of THAT, they continue to design and build chips using TSMC processes, which cannot help the capacity problem. Honestly none of their strategy really makes sense to me, unless they do the obvious that they seem to deny over and over again....
what? they report losses every quarter on manufacturing because they merged manufacturing spending with external customer revenue (of which there is very little) rather than manufacturing being part of general expenses. it's quite literally a part of their recent restructuring. Did you just start following them yesterday?
Also why do you have multiple accounts? You still type the same way so it's obvious who you are (and no I'm not talking about naik). Will spamming anandtech really move the stock market in your favor?
Ireland is now building Intel-3 products ... Sierra Forest mainly, and will be busy building Granite Rapids as well. Arizona has a fab that will be building Intel-20A later this year. Oregon is in charge of bringing up the new processes ... so doing mainly 18A at this point ... Panther Lake and Clearwater Forest.
Those are the only fabs that could have built another EUV product. They look booked to me. Looks like use of TSM for Lunar Lake was a good way to expand capacity while they are still bringing up EUV fabs.
"Lunar Lake is significant in this respect as Intel has never previously developed a whole chip architecture specifically for low power mobile devices before – it’s always been a scaled-down version of a wider-range architecture..."
Wow, how did this totally off-the-mark fluff land in an article. Intel Atom says hello:
Intel must be secretively regretting not putting more CPU cores in Lunar Lake. Were Lunar Lake in a 6+6 instead of 4+4 configuration, it could provide raw performance comparable to Strix Point at similar TDP (and perhaps better actual performance/watt). Now Lunar Lake is arriving with puny 8 cores while everybody else is aiming for 10 or more in the same segment, OEMs will whip it beyond the optimal frequency to provide performance comparable to rivals, which may ultimatly turn out futile simply due to a lack of cores. It does not well for Intel. For ultrabook as mostly premium products, it's always nice to have more transistors running at lower frequency.
Yeah, it'll be interesting to see where Lunar Lake will end up in performance per watt when it comes out. Strix Point is surprisingly efficient and performs well at 15W, despite being an "HX" chip and easily beat the Z1 extreme at similar power levels.
You are right and wrong at the same time. lunar lake is a huge jump, and yes, they could have beaten the competition soundly with this with higher core counts. But they cannot put more cores in this as it will make anything they make in their own fabs irrelevant for some time. It's not regret it more of a business move to limit this to only 8 cores and only 32GB ram max. They do not have a choice here. But for laptops I would still say this looks more than sufficient in good ways. CPU was already fast enough at 7840u performances (which is where this will be at may be a bit more). It was always GPU and efficiency that has been a problem for x86 this should solve that finally. And no Zen 5 does not count as they really did not fix the battery life issue, they just changed to higher core count running at lower Freq to improve performance per-watt for fully multi threaded benchmarks, but would do poorly in low thread load like browser badly test given they pushed single core clock too high.
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James5mith - Wednesday, July 31, 2024 - link
"Lunar Lake is significant in this respect as Intel has never previously developed a whole chip architecture specifically for low power mobile devices before..."I mean, you know that's not true, right?
The Core architecture started as a mobile-first design that was wildly more efficient than the existing Pentium4 designs it ultimately replaced.
meacupla - Wednesday, July 31, 2024 - link
You are partially correct.While Core was based off of Pentium-M, Pentium-M is based off of i686 (Pentium Pro, P6) and it's an older design than netburst.
Ryan Smith - Wednesday, July 31, 2024 - link
More to the point, Pentium-M as a platform never aimed this low. Thin & light 15 Watt laptops weren't a thing in 2003, in part because half of what we take for granted now was still a discrete controller at the time.Lunar Lake scratches a very, very specific (one might say fruit-induced) itch at Intel for low-power mobile devices. If anything the closer analogy is Lakefield, but that was more of an experiment than a high-volume product that is getting Intel's full attention. Intel hasn't offered a mainstream product quite like this before, which is one of the reasons it's so notable.
Blastdoor - Wednesday, July 31, 2024 - link
'fruit-induced,' indeed. This looks like it was designed for a MacBook Air.If Intel had launched something like this in 2020 (albeit on TSMC N5), maybe Apple would still be a customer.
André - Wednesday, July 31, 2024 - link
Banias aka Pentium-M derived from the Tualatin Pentium III core.Kevin G - Wednesday, July 31, 2024 - link
I would've gone with Atom as a better example, though it was also found in low end desktops and a slew of embedded products.PeachNCream - Thursday, August 1, 2024 - link
Yeah Atom. There were lots of Atom CPUs long with various later generation Celeron n and Pentium n series chips that make this sort of article misleading Thanks to people in the comments section for fact checking at least.sharath.naik - Wednesday, July 31, 2024 - link
This is more like AMD launches. Paper only, with very little availability at high prices. This is because they still need to sell their 7 NM chips. Unlike before where Intel used to upgrade their manufacturing process on the same machines to a smaller node, This time they will need to replace a lot of expensive machines over a long period of time. They can not make their entire manufacturing sit idle while selling these built by TSMC. So they will throttle it hard, only on 1500$+ laptops for a nearly a year. Just like how AMD has been, atleast AMD is staying on the same node so their transition should be more immediate.whatthe123 - Wednesday, July 31, 2024 - link
They already moved on to i4/tsmc/20a for production. their last gen inventory is being sold simultaneously by rebranding into different SKUs. Both Lunar and Arrow are heavily reliant on TSMC, they have no reason to keep inventory low but good reason to keep production flowing so that they can maintain steady wafer allocation at TSMC.do_not_arrest - Wednesday, July 31, 2024 - link
This is where you are wrong. Intel has a HUGE amount of fab capacity sitting idle. This is why their Manuf. business is reporting huge losses every quarter. On top of that, they continue to build even more capacity in the hopes of getting foundry customers. On top of THAT, they continue to design and build chips using TSMC processes, which cannot help the capacity problem. Honestly none of their strategy really makes sense to me, unless they do the obvious that they seem to deny over and over again....whatthe123 - Wednesday, July 31, 2024 - link
what? they report losses every quarter on manufacturing because they merged manufacturing spending with external customer revenue (of which there is very little) rather than manufacturing being part of general expenses. it's quite literally a part of their recent restructuring. Did you just start following them yesterday?whatthe123 - Wednesday, July 31, 2024 - link
Also why do you have multiple accounts? You still type the same way so it's obvious who you are (and no I'm not talking about naik). Will spamming anandtech really move the stock market in your favor?JayNor - Thursday, August 1, 2024 - link
Ireland is now building Intel-3 products ... Sierra Forest mainly, and will be busy building Granite Rapids as well.Arizona has a fab that will be building Intel-20A later this year.
Oregon is in charge of bringing up the new processes ... so doing mainly 18A at this point ... Panther Lake and Clearwater Forest.
Those are the only fabs that could have built another EUV product. They look booked to me. Looks like use of TSM for Lunar Lake was a good way to expand capacity while they are still bringing up EUV fabs.
PeachNCream - Thursday, August 1, 2024 - link
"Lunar Lake is significant in this respect as Intel has never previously developed a whole chip architecture specifically for low power mobile devices before – it’s always been a scaled-down version of a wider-range architecture..."Wow, how did this totally off-the-mark fluff land in an article. Intel Atom says hello:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Atom_p...
EthiaW - Thursday, August 1, 2024 - link
Intel must be secretively regretting not putting more CPU cores in Lunar Lake. Were Lunar Lake in a 6+6 instead of 4+4 configuration, it could provide raw performance comparable to Strix Point at similar TDP (and perhaps better actual performance/watt). Now Lunar Lake is arriving with puny 8 cores while everybody else is aiming for 10 or more in the same segment, OEMs will whip it beyond the optimal frequency to provide performance comparable to rivals, which may ultimatly turn out futile simply due to a lack of cores. It does not well for Intel. For ultrabook as mostly premium products, it's always nice to have more transistors running at lower frequency.meacupla - Thursday, August 1, 2024 - link
Yeah, it'll be interesting to see where Lunar Lake will end up in performance per watt when it comes out.Strix Point is surprisingly efficient and performs well at 15W, despite being an "HX" chip and easily beat the Z1 extreme at similar power levels.
sharath.naik - Thursday, August 8, 2024 - link
You are right and wrong at the same time. lunar lake is a huge jump, and yes, they could have beaten the competition soundly with this with higher core counts. But they cannot put more cores in this as it will make anything they make in their own fabs irrelevant for some time. It's not regret it more of a business move to limit this to only 8 cores and only 32GB ram max. They do not have a choice here.But for laptops I would still say this looks more than sufficient in good ways. CPU was already fast enough at 7840u performances (which is where this will be at may be a bit more). It was always GPU and efficiency that has been a problem for x86 this should solve that finally.
And no Zen 5 does not count as they really did not fix the battery life issue, they just changed to higher core count running at lower Freq to improve performance per-watt for fully multi threaded benchmarks, but would do poorly in low thread load like browser badly test given they pushed single core clock too high.