Friday, July 18th 2025
Intel Skips NPU Upgrade for Arrow Lake Refresh, AMD Cancels Medusa Halo in Latest Rumors
Intel's Arrow Lake-S desktop update set for the latter part of 2025 might not bring the expected boost in AI capabilities. New information from Jaykihn, a leaker known for sharing regular updates on Intel roadmaps hints that this update will keep the current NPU 3 design instead of using the more advanced NPU 4 found in Intel's Lunar Lake laptop chips. The existing Arrow Lake desktop line uses NPU 3, which came out in 2023 with Meteor Lake and offers 11.5 TOPS of AI power. This falls well short of the 40 TOPS needed for Microsoft Copilot+ certification. Intel's Lunar Lake laptop processors have the upgraded NPU 4, which can reach up to 48 TOPS making them Copilot+ ready. By sticking with NPU 3 in the desktop update, Intel's desktop chips will still trail behind laptop offerings from AMD and Apple in AI speed. Without NPU upgrades, the Arrow Lake update seems to offer small increases in clock speed and continued production on Intel's 20A process. This small step forward might not be enough, given Intel's shrinking market share and the need for bigger design improvements to stay competitive.
At the same time AMD might face some problems with reports suggesting that Medusa Halo, which was supposed to come after Strix Halo, has been scrapped. This news comes from HXL, a leaker with a decent track record. This could mean that Intel's Nova Lake-AX is left without any real competition in a market where Strix Halo and Apple's chips are the big players. If this is true, it shows a big change in AMD's plans for high-end mobile computing.
Sources:
VideoCardz, @Jaykihn on X, @HXL on X, Notebookcheck
At the same time AMD might face some problems with reports suggesting that Medusa Halo, which was supposed to come after Strix Halo, has been scrapped. This news comes from HXL, a leaker with a decent track record. This could mean that Intel's Nova Lake-AX is left without any real competition in a market where Strix Halo and Apple's chips are the big players. If this is true, it shows a big change in AMD's plans for high-end mobile computing.
75 Comments on Intel Skips NPU Upgrade for Arrow Lake Refresh, AMD Cancels Medusa Halo in Latest Rumors
What we need is Strix Halo to be more affordable. Since we doubt that would happen, we have to keep waiting for mid-range products to reach those levels in 5 - 10 years, better off with a dedicated CPU/GPU combo.
With no competition AMD will have very little reason to innovate, and you'll be stuck with minor refreshes year after year and high prices because there's no one to challenge them.
As much as I dislike Intel, I'm hoping they get their act together and start competing again, which will continue to push AMD to be better.
& this process is absolutely not reversible.
The show must go on, but only among the remaining players.
Unfortunately in this game - Who is dead can't be revived anymore, sorry bro, but it's like that.
Monopolies are inherently anti-consumer.
Do you really think that AMD can afford to be relaxed with all these new players around?
Seriously???
Hahahaha ... well, I'm no one to judge you for this.
China ones are out for wider world + not quite yet at AMD/Intel level and ARM derivatives are still in theoretical for the box sitting on/under your table.
What about Xiaomi's ARM based cpu? What if tomorrow the sanctions will be lifted and finally this chip will enter the world wide competition like everybody else?
P.S:
en.eeworld.com.cn/news/manufacture/eic701276.html
Nvidia here sends a clear signal about it's intentions for the future.
Nvidia is preparing to dump ARM with it's royalty fees to switch on RISC-V instead.
Intel is pushing money to revive fabs, and this alone is generating financial loss. But they do not have to have their fabs. They can dump it any day, and become highly profitable company again.
ARM and RICS-V are not immediate replacement for x86, it will take decade or longer, in most optimistic way. Currently Intel lost biggest share in server market, but clients picked AMD, not ARM, for obvious reason, x86.
I will never pay a single cent from my pocket to save a degenerative corporation like Intel with AMD included in the package.
My true & genuine wish is only for Nvidia's N1x being a nice soc for it's price so I can give a very big Hasta la vista to Shintel with AMD altogether.
Last thing about all this mess is: the people should never be supposed to pay from their pocket the price for the mistakes of corporations!
Bye & good luck for everybody!
I hope this """"source"""" is wrong.
Microsoft is doing all the advertising by pushing copilot+ not having anything for the desktop that can service that market now windows 10 is being killed off. :kookoo:
At least Intel can make their own stuff if they have to, AMD nor Nvidia can say the same thing..
IMO, what Intel needs to do is start using their own fabs and come up with a completely new architecture.What exactly does copilot+ or an NPU do that the average desktop user needs? MS is pushing very hard for something people don't care about.
The only thing that kept me from them was the insane cost. The only real laptop so far is the one HP G1a whatever, and we're talking of spending $4k+ to get a 128GB model.
My hope was we'd eventually get one that traded the two 8c CCDs with a single 12c CCD with a x3d cache and the 40 CU GPU.
Literally speaking, a generic 5060 gets 641 TOPS, 16X that of AMDs AI laptop APUs and 18X that of an Apple A18. Bump up to 5070 and you're talking 1180 TOPS. Even an old card like a 2060 6GB gets a 70-75 TOPS rating. None of these NPUs are doing much.
But, techies like us who care enough to look into things like this are in a tiny minority.
I feel a big chunk of people will be convinced by the advertising and a computer that is Copilot + and sales people will be pushing those extra hard.
And given how much money is involved developers will be working really hard to bring something that is going to be using them soon enough.
For people buying a computer once every decade having a system that has one is important even if it's a little one.How large is the group buying systems with dedicated gpu's vs the group that gets systems with an igpu?
as stated in my previous post, I believe npu's for local processing will be a thing needed in the coming years
techies like us don't mind spending some money on new gear every now and then. we are a minority.
It was rumoured that the newer RX 9060S in Medusa Halo AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 495 would hit RTX 5070 Ti performance levels.
www.tweaktown.com/news/103651/amds-next-gen-medusa-halo-apu-leaks-zen-6-chip-rumored-with-rtx-5070-ti-levels-of-gaming-perf/index.html
www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Radeon-RX-8060S-Benchmarks-and-Specs.942049.0.html
Does anyone of you even know that and bought Strix Halo ?
I mean who wants to play Doom at 60fps, right?
Oh, and have you heard of dark mode?