Starting Q3 2024 in time for the holiday season, Intel’s upcoming client processors (code-named Lunar Lake) will power more than 80 new laptop designs across more than 20 original equipment manufacturers, delivering AI performance at a global scale for Copilot+ PCs.
Lunar Lake will get the Copilot+ experiences, like Recall, via an update when available. Building on the success of Intel Core Ultra processors and with the addition of Lunar Lake, Intel will ship more than 40 million AI PC processors this year.
“With breakthrough power efficiency, the trusted compatibility of x86 architecture and the industry’s deepest catalog of software enablement across the CPU, GPU and NPU, we will deliver the most competitive joint client hardware and software offering in our history with Lunar Lake and Copilot+,” says Michelle Johnston Holthaus, Intel executive vice-president and GM of the Client Computing Group.
An AI PC has a central processing unit (CPU), a graphic processing unit (GPU) and a neural processing unit (NPU), each with specific AI acceleration capabilities. An NPU is a specialised accelerator that efficiently handles AI and machine learning (ML) tasks right on your PC instead of sending data to be processed in the cloud.
The AI PC is increasingly important as the need to automate, streamline and optimise tasks on the PC grows.
Lunar Lake is expected to give AI PCs more than three-times the AI performance compared with the previous generation. With more than 40 NPU tera operations per second (TOPS), Intel’s next generation processors will provide the capabilities necessary for Copilot+ experiences coming to market.
In addition to the higher performing NPU, Lunar Lake will also be equipped with over 60 GPU TOPS delivering more than 100 platform TOPS.
“The launch of Lunar Lake will bring meaningful fundamental improvements across security, battery life, and more thanks to our deep co-engineering partnership with Intel. We are excited to see Lunar Lake come to market with a 40+ TOPS NPU which will deliver Microsoft’s Copilot+ experiences at scale when available,” says Pavan Davuluri, corporate vice-president of Windows + Devices at Microsoft.
A holistic approach to AI requires a robust software enablement infrastructure alongside hardware innovation. As part of the AI PC Acceleration Program, Intel is working with more than 100 independent software vendors to enhance AI PC experiences for personal assistants, audio effects, content creation, gaming, security, streaming, video collaboration and others.