There’s plenty of fuss surrounding Intel’s upcoming Arrow Lake launch for desktop, but the company also has another 2024 launch expected to hit before the holidays. Lunar Lake is the codename for Intel’s next generation of low-power mobile processors and I’m even more excited to see what the brand has in store for laptops and other portable devices. Details are starting to emerge as we progress through the year and you can bookmark this hub to check back periodically to see what else has been revealed.
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When should we expect the first laptops to arrive with Intel Lunar Lake CPUs?
Out by the end of the year
Lunar Lake is expected to be announced by the end of 2024, alongside Arrow Lake on the desktop. From what we’ve gathered from various sources thus far, it seems Intel is reportedly on track to deliver some chips for energy-efficient laptop platforms with unique experiences. If you’ve been holding out to see what Intel can do with Windows for entry-level hardware, Lunar Lake could be what you’ve been waiting for. With Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X just around the corner, Intel has its work cut out.
With an announcement scheduled for late 2024, I wouldn’t expect to see any hardware launch with the new Lunar Lake chips until 2025.
What is Intel Lunar Lake?
Next-next-generation
This is the codename for Intel’s next generation of low-power mobile chips. With the advancement of its E-core technology, Intel has developed a mobile-first architecture, replacing the existing U-series processors. Some specifications of the new chips have already leaked before launchbut we’re still holding for official word from Intel. If the leaks are accurate, Lunar Lake processors will have up to eight cores, consisting of four energy-efficient Skymont cores and four high-performance Lion Cove cores.
Intel’s 18A (1.8nm) manufacturing process will be used for this architecture to get as much performance out of the processor as possible, keeping to a low-power profile. We expect to see a TDP of just 15W and improved integrated graphics capabilities could also be on the cards. Then there’s RAM with speeds up to 6400 MT/s on the cards. If all comes to fruition, Intel’s Lunar Lake could produce some powerful little chips for low-power and more affordable laptops.
X (Twitter) user Bionic_Squash posted some details regarding the performance of Lunar Lake. According to unconfirmed results, we could see an almost 1.5 times performance increase for Lunar Lake compared to Meteor Lake mobile processors. These results were gathered using Cinebench, a benchmark utility used in our CPU testing and review processes.
More details to follow
We’re still way out of when Intel expects to announce Lunar Lake. Details will likely emerge as 2024 continues to progress and while rumors have been covered on XDA, we’d always recommend taking anything pre-launch with a grain of salt. An announcement before the end of the year seems likely so we’re expecting new Intel Lunar Lake-powered hardware to hit stores in 2025.