Monday, March 11th 2024
Intel "Lunar Lake-U" 17W Processor Offers Almost 50% Multithreaded Perf Boost Over "Meteor Lake" 15W Despite Lack of HTT
There is some confidence behind removing HTT (Hyper-Threading technology) for the P-cores of its upcoming processor generations. Apparently "Lunar Lake" 17 W U-segment processors offer a substantial multithreaded performance gain of almost 50% over the current-generation "Meteor Lake," enabling Intel to do away with the power- or cache overheads that come with HTT. "Lunar Lake" will be Intel's third microarchitecture powering mobile processors under the Core Ultra brand; and its U-segment SKUs meant for ultraportables will come with processor base power values of 17 W. Intel will probably revise its platform specifications for the U-segment to denote 17 W, up from the current 15 W. Bionic Squash, a reliable source with Intel leaks, suggests so. The processors will come with a configurable base power of up to 30 W.
Intel "Lunar Lake" microarchitecture has a lot in common with the upcoming "Arrow Lake." For starters, both microarchitectures use the same combination of "Lion Cove" P-core architecture, and "Skymont" E-core architecture; however "Lunar Lake" comes with changes in the core-configuration, and the use of more advanced foundry nodes for some of its tiles. "Lunar Lake," much like "Meteor Lake," comes with a design priority for mobile platforms, which is why Intel is planning to launch this shortly after "Arrow Lake," with some reports even speaking of a late-2024 debut for the U-segment.If the late-2024 debut rumor for "Lunar Lake" holds true, then it's conceivable that OEMs already have engineering samples and reference platforms for the chip, so they could evaluate and design their future notebook models with them. Apparently, some of these OEMs are already evaluating the performance on offer, which is where the leaks about the "almost 1.5x" performance gain over "Meteor Lake" seem to be coming from. Bionic Squash says that the number is based on multithreaded tests run on Cinebench R23 and Geekbench 5.4.5. "Lunar Lake" will see Intel push its notebook OEM partners to implement the "Lunar Lake-MX" MoP processor into their designs to achieve mainboard footprints and device dimensions rivaling the Apple MacBook Air. An MoP (memory on package) processor sees the Foveros tile processor and LPDDR5X memory modules share a single fiberglass substrate, to reduce PCB footprint.
Intel "Lunar Lake" microarchitecture has a lot in common with the upcoming "Arrow Lake." For starters, both microarchitectures use the same combination of "Lion Cove" P-core architecture, and "Skymont" E-core architecture; however "Lunar Lake" comes with changes in the core-configuration, and the use of more advanced foundry nodes for some of its tiles. "Lunar Lake," much like "Meteor Lake," comes with a design priority for mobile platforms, which is why Intel is planning to launch this shortly after "Arrow Lake," with some reports even speaking of a late-2024 debut for the U-segment.If the late-2024 debut rumor for "Lunar Lake" holds true, then it's conceivable that OEMs already have engineering samples and reference platforms for the chip, so they could evaluate and design their future notebook models with them. Apparently, some of these OEMs are already evaluating the performance on offer, which is where the leaks about the "almost 1.5x" performance gain over "Meteor Lake" seem to be coming from. Bionic Squash says that the number is based on multithreaded tests run on Cinebench R23 and Geekbench 5.4.5. "Lunar Lake" will see Intel push its notebook OEM partners to implement the "Lunar Lake-MX" MoP processor into their designs to achieve mainboard footprints and device dimensions rivaling the Apple MacBook Air. An MoP (memory on package) processor sees the Foveros tile processor and LPDDR5X memory modules share a single fiberglass substrate, to reduce PCB footprint.