• Intel has revealed its new Lunar Lake AI chipset at Computex 2024.
• The processor achieves up to up to 48 TOPs (tera operations per second).
• Intel says as many as 80 new models of AI PC will be launched in Q3 of this year running the Lunar Lake chipset.

Unsurprisingly this week’s Computex conference in Taipei has been dominated by all things AI, and now it is the turn of Intel, which has been watching the likes of Qualcomm and AMD reveal new chipsets.

The American foundry’s offering is Lunar Lake and like other Windows 11 OEMs, will bring Copilot+ support to new devices later in the year.

The key number of Lunar Lake is the tera operations per second (TOPS) and here Intel has been able to muster up to 48 TOPS thanks to the integration of a new neural processing unit (NPU). This sandwiches the Lunar Lake chipset between Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite and AMD’s Ryzen AI 300, which offer 45 TOPS and 50 TOPS respectively.

As Engadget points out then, the race to deliver the most TOPS is on.

It should also be pointed out that Lunar Lake vastly outperforms the previous generation Meteor Lake chips in this metric, which were capable of up to 10 TOPS, which means Intel now has a viable competitor in this frantic silicon space.

“New Performance-cores (P-cores) and Efficient-cores (E-cores) deliver amazing performance at up to 40% lower system-on-chip power compared to the previous generation. A new neural processing unit is up to 4x faster, enabling corresponding improvements in generative AI, versus the previous generation. And new X^e2 graphics processing unit cores improve gaming and graphics performance by 1.5x over the previous generation,” highlighted Intel in a blog post regarding performance.

The chips will be offered in devices with a choice of either 16GB or 32GB of RAM depending on the manufacturer, although it looks like you will not be able to upgrade this aspect down the line, which is a pity. That functionality has reportedly been earmarked for Intel’s next lineup of chips – Arrow Lake.

Also worth noting is Intel’s updating of the standards for this new chipset, which will include WiFi 7, Bluetooth 5.4, PCIe Gen5, and Thunderbolt 4. The company is stating that a 60 percent improvement in battery life can be expected too compared to Meteor Lake-powered devices, although a more precise number of hours has not been shared.

“The processor designed for thin-and-light PCs makes significant improvements to performance and efficiency across the neural processing unit, central processing unit and graphics processing unit when compared with the previous generation,” it added.

Speaking of which, while no specific brand has been mentioned, Intel does say that consumers can expect as many as 80 different models of PC supporting Copilot+ from more than 20 partners, thanks to Lunar Lake.

These devices are expected to launch in Q3 of this year, so the wait will not be too long.