Intel is gearing up to launch its next-gen AI processors, Arrow and Lunar Lake this fall. Boasting thrice the AI performance as Meteor Lake, Lunar Lake aims to solidify Intel’s place as the best mobility PC chipmaker. Arrow Lake will do something similar in the desktop space with some caveats. With hyper-threading gone, the multi-core crown will likely pass onto AMD’s Ryzen 9000 processors, but the single-core and gaming segments will be hotly contested.
Initially, we expected Arrow and Lunar Lake to leverage the Intel 20A and 18A process nodes for their CPU tiles, respectively. Boasting next-gen GAA transistors (RibbonFET) and backside power delivery (PowerVia), these would make a strong statement to the competition and doubters alike. However, neither will allegedly make notable use of the Intel nodes, instead relying on TSMC’s 3nm (N3B) process.
Intel CPU Roadmap 2024: Arrow Lake and Lunar Lake
Intel is scheduled to ship its Lunar Lake processors next quarter, with production wafers already running in labs. These chips will power the next generation of AI PCs, with an upgraded CPU, GPU, and NPU on a 3nm-class node (at least for the compute tile).
Lunar Lake: Powering Premium Notebooks
Lunar Lake (Core Ultra 200V) will feature the Lion Cove P-core and the Skymont E-core architectures. The LPE cores on the SoC tile will either leverage Crestmont or Skymont. On the GPU side, we’re looking at the first incarnation of the Battlemage graphics architecture (Xe2) and an NPU delivering 45 TOPs of AI throughput on its own (100 TOPs+ for the entire SoC).
Specifically targeting high-end notebooks and convertibles, Lunar Lake will be marketed as an always-on PC SoC, with soldered, 3D stacked DRAM modules alongside the CPU and SoC tiles. This saves board space but limits upgradability and repair options. Notebooks featuring Lunar Lake are expected around the holiday season in Q3/Q4 2024.
Arrow Lake-S: Desktop and DIY
Arrow Lake-S (Core Ultra 200) processors are expected to launch alongside Lunar Lake in the fourth quarter. They’ll be Intel’s first chiplet-based desktop processors, consisting of a CPU, iGPU, I/O, and SoC tiles. The CPU tiles will be fabbed on the Intel 20A and TSMC N3B node, while the iGPU tile be produced using the N3 or N4 process.
According to “Moore’s Law is Dead,” the Lion Cove P-cores powering Arrow Lake will be faster than their Lunar Lake implementation, offering a 15-25% IPC uplift over Raptor Cove. An improvement of 10-20% and 20-35% is expected in the single-core and multi-core performance segments, respectively.
Arrow Lake-U: While the desktop CPU tiles will be fabbed on TSMC’s 3nm “N3B” process node (and Intel 20A), the mainstream notebook chips “ARL-U” will leverage the Intel 3 node. These will leverage an “enhanced” Redwood Cove and Crestmont core architectures, and offer 15% higher performance (or 20% lower power) than vanilla Redwood Cove/Meteor Lake.
Arrow Lake Desktop (ARL-S)
- 8P+16E on TSMC N3B.
- 6P+8E+2LPE on Intel 20A.
Arrow Lake Mobile
- ARL-HX: 8P+16E on TSMC N3B.
- ARL-H: 6P+8E+2 on TSMC N3B.
- ARL-U: 6P+8E+2LPE on Intel 3.
- Integrated graphics: Arrow Lake will leverage the Xe-LPG architecture for the iGPU with 8 Xe cores, offering modest performance improvements over Meteor Lake.
- AI hardware: It’ll also feature an NPU block, capable of delivering ~13 TOPs of inferencing performance This will allegedly be utilized for “ML Thread Scheduling.”
- SMT: Arrow Lake will be Intel’s first client processor to drop hyper-threading (in a very long time).
Intel CPU Roadmap 2025-26: Arrow Lake Refresh, Panther Lake and Nova Lake
Arrow Lake Refresh: Refreshes are Intel’s middle name, so Arrow Lake will be followed by an Arrow Lake Refresh in late 2025. The 40 (8P+32E) core design has allegedly been canceled due to bandwidth and cost concerns. The remaining SKUs will feature higher boost clocks, and probably, minimal single-core performance gains.
Panther Lake processors will be fabricated on the Intel 18A node. Like Meteor Lake, it’ll be a mobile-centric design powered by “Cougar Cove” P cores and “Darkmont” E cores. It’ll leverage a new die layout with up to 12 cores, including 4P, 8E, and 4LPE. Panther Lake is expected to land at the end of 2025.
- Cougar Cove: The P-core architecture powering Panther Lake is expected to bring a 5-13% IPC uplift.
- SMT: Hyper-threading and Rentable Units won’t be supported.
- Power: Similar to Lunar Lake, it’ll have a TDP range of 17W to 30W.
- Integrated graphics: The Celestial (Xe3) iGPU is expected to feature 12 Xe cores.
- AI TOPS: The Panther Lake NPU is expected to offer 80-120 TOPs of inferencing performance, up from 48 TOPS on Lunar Lake.
Nova Lake will be Arrow Lake’s true successor with up to 40 cores (16P + 32E). It’ll be fabbed on the Intel 14A node and adopt P-cores capable of leveraging Rentable Units and Arctic Wolf E-cores. These CPUs are expected to feature high-cache variants akin to AMD’s 3D V-Cache chips. A late 2026 launch is planned for Nova Lake.
There will likely be an Arrow Lake-S Refresh before Nova Lake with increasing core counts (and cache?), but the same architecture. It will allegedly feature up to 40 cores (16P + 32E) at the top of the stack with increased core clocks and competitive pricing.
Sources: Intel, Moore’s Law is Dead.
