I do not understand why some are sharing this like it is some smoking gun or big comeback. Considering Lunar Lake is a 2025 product, it is lackluster that it can only compete with Apple’s M2 from 2022. Contrary to Gelsinger’s initial remarks as CEO, Intel continues to be in the competition’s rearview mirrors.
It shows Intel is improving much faster than Apple. M3 GPU is barely faster than M2. Unless Apple has a much better product next year (which is unlikely), LNL will still be competitive.
Apple isn’t even a direct competitor. Intel’s comments were about AMD.
Yeah Apple is stagnating with the performance cores. If Intel gains momentum with a solid product in Lunar Lake, and is able to sustain it, Apple is going to regret ditching x86 altogether.
Ah yes, my favorite cpu, the core 5 16gb and the core 5 32gb. Lol, what’s with these name.
It is not 8gb, hurray.
8 Gb for $7000 also, $200 per extra 8 Gb, and soldered to prevent user upgrades.
I don’t think that Intel or AMD need to worry at all about the new Apple laptops.
I’m curious as to why it’s on TSMC N3. Is it because 20A/18A isn’t ready yet or is there another reason?
TSMC has had better low power performance but the difference isn’t massive. I suspect the main reason is a) 18A is not ready for mass production until too late and b) limited 20A capacity coming online next year is needed for other products (remember intel has to ship absolute shitload of chips). So why not do it on TSMC if that is possible and the alternative is to delay the products to wait for capacity?
Edit: i’m not sure if 20A was again a more limited early version designed primarily for intel desktop products and 18A was supposed to be the long term version of the node with wider array of capabilities?
20A is essentially an early, incomplete release of 18A that can only be used on for the compute tiles. LNL has iGPU, NPU, and x86 cores all on the same tile, so 20A can’t be used.
Intel 3 and 4 weren’t designed with GPUs in mind either.
Because this came out of someone’s ass.
If you listen to the investor calls and roadmaps they state when 20A/18A will be ready and on what manufacturing processes.
My guess is IFS will be coming online and Intel is saving that for their customers. And the other is better margin. Intel has better margins on their own manufacturing reserved for their higher priced products.
Lunar Lake being a consumer product will mean lower margins. And saving 20A/18A for server and server gpu products could mean better margins.
Performance is likely secondary. All new silicon perform pretty close that you really can’t tell the difference.
Only NVIDIA has the exception with the software scaling. Like DLSS and Frame Generation.
assuming its real, for the last decade or so TSMC has been better about low power (serving mostly mobile devices) while intel has been better at high power. Last few years TSMC has been better all around but I’d assume 20/18 are targeting high power first, low power down the road if everything works out like GAAFET+Powervia.
LNL goes into manufacturing in H1 2024, but 20A will be ready only by H2 2024. Arrow lake will be on both N3B and 20A because 20A is now ahead of schedule.
Will Arrow lake refresh be totally on 20A?
I’m not sure about arrow lake refresh. Right now, we have 2 versions of Arrow Lake. One on 20A and the other on N3B. Both should launch about the same time but will target different core configurations.
20A should be manufacturing ready early next year if they are going to launch arrow lake on it in 2024. I suspect it’s already basically done and they are expanding capacity now.
Is their upcoming product lineup all ultra low power options only? Is this for phones?? I’m curious because my current 14900k uses like 253w, so when I see 17-30w I’m not sure what I’m looking at is an upgrade if anyone could provide me context :)
Lunar lake is essentially meant for the low power laptop market. By capability comparisons it seems to directly target Apple M3 chip.
So small laptops.
LNL is specifically for mobile ultra low power
Arrow Lake is going to be the next client side architecture
Stopgap Apple comp
Isn’t this an obvious fake by someone who doesn’t even know what MTL is set up like?
Eg: they have an 8MB L4 cache on the CPU die for LNL when MTL has a 128MB cache on SOC die.
And the renders for the on package memory have the two memory chips separate from the die with no safe area on the package border, when Intel would traditionally try to have them right next to each other.
And why use N3 when Intel will have Backside power with their 3nm node?
FWIW, if this is a fake, someone put an enormous amount of work into irrelevant things e.g. mechanical dimensions.
Eg: they have an 8MB L4 cache on the CPU die for LNL when MTL has a 128MB cache on SOC die.
The 8 MB is not an L4 cache since it is in parallel with the last level cache rather than above it in the hierarchy. This detail actually looks credible since it is a logical progression from MTL where the GPU memory access was also split off from the LLC. Now they’re splitting off the rest.
Probably limited capacity and priorities
when MTL has a 128MB cache on SOC die.
It doesn’t tho
And the renders for the on package memory have the two memory chips separate from the die with no safe area on the package border, when Intel would traditionally try to have them right next to each other.
Idk, it looks very similar to this
And why use N3 when Intel will have Backside power with their 3nm node?
Bcuz they are lame lol.
Intel talked about using TSMC N3 nodes in their products before. It won’t be too surprising to see it in client CPU tiles as well.
nice comment fuss with digital warrior btw!
It was quite frustrating yet fun to see a regular user trying to defend his ill-informed contrarian position against someone who clearly has industry info.
btw I know that 90% of what he said are correct. 90% because the rest is kinda up to interpretation.
Super excited for someone to make a good fanless competitor to the Macbook Air. Looks like this should well be able to do it and Intel is even hyping up performance per watt leadership by then.
Yeah.
It’s a pity Lenovo discontinued the X1 Nano. That would be an excellent fanless platform (the fan it comes with as is is ineffectual as it has to pass through a half-mm cooling egress slot and barely has flow.)
I just wish manufacturers would make a laptop with these that isn’t obsessed with being thin and light.
I’d absolutely love one of these power efficient chips with a 100whr battery.
Given how much space they save with the on package ram, and how small SSDs are, you could feasibly have this with two m.2 slots, perhaps one 2280 and one 2230.
Put a bunch of ports and you’re sorted. No need for the thing to anorexic. My workload is light, I just want ports and battery.
One of the ways these low power chips save power and die space is by having less IO capacity.
This is what dragged me to the M1 Pro MBP 16". No expandable storage, which fucking sucks, but it has a huge battery, an incredibly efficient chip, and it still has power on tap if I need it (which isn’t often, for my use cases). I regularly go 2 full workdays without charging. It’s awesome.
Ugh I want one but I really don’t need it, and they’re so damn expensive