Intel is reportedly pitching Microsoft to work on an "all American" semi-custom SoC for Microsoft's next Xbox generation that succeeds the Series X/S. The company's main pitch to Microsoft is the fact that the chip would be made entirely in the US, including its silicon fabrication and packaging. Microsoft currently relies on AMD for its SoC, which combines an AMD "Zen 2" CPU with a powerful RDNA2 iGPU that meets DirectX 12 Ultimate requirements.

Intel's semi-custom chip could be functionally the same, albeit based on its next generation CPU and graphics microarchitectures. Strengthening Intel's case is the fact that it now has a contemporary high performance gaming graphics architecture in Xe "Alchemist," and is on course to launch its successor, the Xe² "Battlemage," later this year. The company also made huge strides with chiplet-based SoCs as demonstrated with "Meteor Lake." Intel's semi-custom SoC for Microsoft could combine any of its upcoming CPU microarchitectures, such as "Lunar Lake," or "Panther Lake," and an iGPU based on "Battlemage" or Xe³ "Celestial." This chip could also integrate a next generation NPU if the platform calls for one. This wouldn't be Intel's first rodeo with powering a console; in fact the very first Microsoft Xbox was powered by a Pentium 3 "Coppermine" CPU, paired with a discrete GeForce 3 GPU supplied by NVIDIA.

Intel, Microsoft, and a fabless semiconductor company making analog, mixed-signal, and audio DSP, Cirrus Logic, have collaborated on a new reference laptop design to showcase the upcoming Lunar Lake mobile CPUs. The goal is to enable "cool, quiet, and high-performance" laptops that push the boundaries of efficiency, thickness, and acoustics. The reference design incorporates three key components from Cirrus Logic - the CP9314 power converter chip, CS42L43 audio codec, and CS35L56 amplifier. The CP9314 is the most critical element, using advanced power conversion technology to improve Lunar Lake's power efficiency significantly. This enables thinner and quieter laptops with longer battery life. The codec and amplifier chips also play a role, providing high-quality audio with next-generation features like spatial audio support.

Together, these Cirrus Logic components aim to highlight Lunar Lake's capabilities for efficiency, performance, and immersive experiences in a thin and light form factor. While details remain scarce on the Lunar Lake CPUs themselves, they are expected to arrive later this year, likely in the second half. If the reference laptops live up to their promises, Lunar Lake could help Intel regain leadership in mobile computing efficiency, which has been lacking since the introduction of Apple's M series SoCs, which have superior battery life. With expert collaboration from Microsoft and Cirrus Logic on the peripheral hardware and software, Lunar Lake may usher in a new generation of cool, quiet, and powerful laptops.

Pat Gelsinger, CEO of Intel Corporation, has outlined future performance expectations for the company's Core range of processors. In a recent fourth quarter 2023 earnings call he declared: "The Core Ultra platform delivers leadership AI performance today with our next-generation platforms launching later this year, Lunar Lake and Arrow Lake tripling our AI performance. In 2025 with Panther Lake, we will grow AI performance up to an additional 2x." Team Blue's Intel Core Ultra "Meteor Lake" mobile processors arrived right at the tail end of last year, as a somewhat delayed answer to AMD's Ryzen 7040 "Phoenix" APU series—both leveraging their own AI-crunching NPU technologies. Gelsinger believes that the launch of Lunar Lake and Arrow Lake Core product lines will bring significant (3x) AI processing improvements over Meteor Lake. He seemed to confident in a delay-free release schedule for the new year and beyond: "We are first in the industry to have incorporated both gate-all-around and backside power delivery in a single process node, the latter unexpected two years ahead of our competition. Arrow Lake, our lead Intel 20A vehicle will launch this year."

He proceeded to gush about their next node advancement: "Intel 18A is expected to achieve manufacturing readiness in second half 2024, completing our five nodes in four year journey and bringing us back to process leadership. I am pleased to say that Clearwater Forest, our first Intel 18A part for servers has already gone into fab and Panther Lake for clients will be heading into Fab shortly." Industry experts posit that Core "Panther Lake" parts could borrow elements from the next generation Xeon "Clearwater Forest" efficiency-focused family—possibly the latter's "Darkmont" E-cores, to accompany "Cougar Cove" P-cores. The Intel CEO is quite excited about the manufacturing outlay for 2025: "I'll just say, hey, we look at this every single day and we're scrutinizing carefully our progress on 18A. And obviously the great news that we just described those Clearwater Forest taping out, that gives us a lot of confidence that 18A is healthy. That's a major product for us. Panther Lake following that shortly."

According to sources close to Seoul Economy, and reported by DigiTimes, Intel has reportedly chosen Samsung as a supplier for its next-generation Lunar Lake processors, set to debut later this year. The report notes that Samsung will provide LPDDR5X memory devices for integration into Intel's processors. This collaboration could be a substantial win for Samsung, given Intel's projection to distribute millions of Lunar Lake CPUs in the coming years. However, it's important to note that this information is based on a leak and has not been officially confirmed. Designed for ultra-portable laptops, the Lunar Lake-MX platform is expected to feature 16 GB or 32 GB of LPDDR5X-8533 memory directly on the processor package. This on-package memory approach aims to minimize the platform's physical size while enhancing performance over traditional memory configurations. With Lunar Lake's exclusive support for on-package memory, Samsung's LPDDR5X-8533 products could significantly boost sales.

While Samsung is currently in the spotlight, it remains unclear if it will be the sole LPDDR5X memory provider for Lunar Lake. Intel's strategy involves selling processors with pre-validated memory, leaving the door open for potential validation of similar memory products from competitors like Micron and SK Hynix. Thanks to a new microarchitecture, Intel has promoted its Lunar Lake processors as a revolutionary leap in performance-per-watt efficiency. The processors are expected to utilize a multi-chipset design with Foveros technology, combining CPU and GPU chipsets, a system-on-chip tile, and dual memory packages. The CPU component is anticipated to include up to eight cores, a mix of four high-performance Lion Cove and four energy-efficient Skymont cores, alongside advanced graphics, cache, and AI acceleration capabilities. Apple's use of on-package memory in its M-series chips has set a precedent in the industry, and with Intel's Lunar Lake MX, this trend could extend across the thin-and-light laptop market. However, systems requiring more flexibility in terms of configuration, repair, and upgrades will likely continue to employ standard memory solutions like SODIMMs and/or the new CAMM2 modules that offer a balance of high performance and energy efficiency.

Intel in its 2024 International CES presentation, unveiled its two new upcoming client microarchitectures, "Arrow Lake" and "Lunar Lake." Michelle Johnston Holthaus, EVP and GM of Intel's client computing group (CCG), in her keynote address, held up a next-generation Core Ultra "Lunar Lake" chip. This is the Lunar Lake-MX package, with MOP (memory on package). You have a Foveros base tile resembling "Meteor Lake," with on-package LPDDR5x memory stacks. With "Lunar Lake," Intel is reorganizing components across its various Foveros tiles—the Compute and Graphics tiles are combined into a single tile built on an Intel foundry node that's possibly the Intel 20A (we have no confirmation); and a smaller SoC tile that has all of the components of the current "Meteor Lake" SoC tile, and is possibly built on a TSMC node, such as N3.

"Lunar Lake" will pick up the mantle from "Meteor Lake" in the U-segment and H-segment (that's ultraportables, and thin-and-light), when it comes out later this year (we predict in the second half of 2024), with Core Ultra 2-series branding. Intel also referenced "Arrow Lake," which could finally bring light to the sluggish pace of development in its desktop segment. When it comes out later this year, "Arrow Lake" will debut Socket LGA1851, "Arrow Lake" will bring the AI Boost NPU to the desktop, along with Arc Xe-LPG integrated graphics. The biggest upgrade of course will be its new Compute tile, with its "Lion Cove" P-cores, and "Skymont" E-cores, that possibly offer a large IPC uplift over the current combination of "Raptor Cove" and "Gracemont" cores on the "Raptor Lake" silicon. It's also possible that Intel will try to bring "Meteor Lake" with its 6P+8E Compute tile, Xe-LPG iGPU, and NPU, to the LGA1851 socket, as part of some mid-range processor models. 2024 will see a Intel desktop processor based on a new architecture, which is the big takeaway here.

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During the Q3 2023 earnings call, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger was answering some questions from analysts regarding the company's future and its position on emerging competition. One of the most significant problems the company could face is the potential Arm-based chip development not coming from x86 vendors like Intel and AMD. Instead, there could be fierce competition in the near future with the recently announced Qualcomm Snapdragon Elite X, possible NVIDIA Arm-based PC processor, and in the future, even more Arm CPU providers that Intel would have to compete against in the client segment. During the call, Pat Gelsinger noted that "Arm and Windows client alternatives, generally, they've been relegated to pretty insignificant roles in the PC business. And we take all competition seriously. But I think history as our guide here, we don't see these potentially being all that significant overall. Our momentum is strong. We have a strong roadmap."

Additionally, the CEO noted: "When thinking about other alternative architectures like Arm, we also say, wow, what a great opportunity for our foundry business." If the adoption of Arm-based CPUs for Windows PCs becomes more present, Intel plans to compete with its next-generation x86 offerings like Meteor Lake, Arrow Lake, Lunar Lake, and even Panther Lake in the future. As stated, the CEO expects the competition to manufacture its chips at Intel's foundries so that Intel can provide a platform for these companies to serve the PC ecosystem.

Intel's next-generation Lunar Lake processor has appeared in the SiSoftware Sandra benchmarking suite, and the online database has revealed many details, thanks to a spotting by @Olrak29 of X/Twitter. Considering Intel's Meteor Lake is still two months away from its launch, the presence of Lunar Lake's benchmarks is indeed intriguing. Interestingly, Intel showcased a Lunar Lake laptop at the Intel Innovation 2023 event, and this SiSoft entry might be related to that demo. The data from SiSoft details the system as a "Genuine Inte l(R) 0000 1.00 GHz (5M 20c 3.91 GHz + 2.61 GHz, 3.3 GHz IMC, 4x 2.5 MB + 4 MB L2, 2x 8 MB L3)," hinting at a "Lunar Lake Client System (Intel LNL-M LP5 RVP1)." Deciphering these details, the Lunar Lake system adopts a 4+4 core configuration, utilizing a mix of Lion Cove and Skymont architecture cores tailored for performance and efficiency.

Moreover, the benchmark report pegs this CPU as a low-power laptop variant with a 17 W TDP. While it operates at a 1.0 GHz base frequency, it reached a speed of 3.91 GHz during the testing. However, these numbers should be taken cautiously since it's likely an engineering sample. Cache details are outlined, suggesting a 2.5 MB L2 cache per P-core, an added 4 MB L2 cache for E-cores, and a 16 MB L3 cache. No details on the integrated GPU were revealed, although it's anticipated that Lunar Lake will house Intel's Xe2-LPG graphics and LPDDR5 system memory. Intel has shared that Lunar Lake is scheduled for a 2024 release in mobile/laptop devices, targeting performance-per-watt leadership. Arrow Lake processors, catering to desktops, might share the core architecture and are anticipated to launch around the same timeframe.

Team Blue's marketing team has kicked into hype mode—Meteor Lake is launching at the tail end of 2023—with a shift in naming conventions comes another rebranding of internal technologies. The previously identified versatile processing unit (VPU) is now going under a different moniker: "Intel will usher in the age of the AI PC with the upcoming Intel Core Ultra processors, code-named Meteor Lake, featuring Intel's first integrated neural processing unit, or NPU, for power-efficient AI acceleration and local inference on the PC. Intel confirmed Core Ultra will launch Dec. 14." Michael Larabel, principal author at Phoronix, has noticed that newly updated versions of the Linux kernel have the "IVPU" accelerator driver bundled in. This will: "support Meteor Lake's VPU/NPU, while a patch is pending to extend that support for next-generation Arrow Lake processors."

In his opinion, there are some shared aspects across the two CPU generations: "Intel's Arrow Lake NPU appears very similar to that of Meteor Lake with the driver enablement coming down to adding new PCI IDs...(with) this patch adding the new Arrow Lake PCI IDs to the existing Meteor Lake driver code paths for this DRM accelerator driver is all that's needed to enable the VPU." Team Blue jumped two generations ahead at this week's Innovation event—Lunar Lake showed up in a live demo. Larabel believes that this late 2024 CPU family will revolve the dial to a greater degree: "The VPU/NPU with Lunar Lake brings more significant changes with the open-source driver changes already underway there. With Lunar Lake is the new VPU4 IP and the Linux 6.6 kernel with its updated IVPU driver already has initial support there."

Intel at the 2023 InnovatiON event surprised audiences with a live demo of a reference notebook powered by a Core "Lunar Lake" processor. What's surprising about this is that "Lunar Lake" won't come out until 2025 (at least), and succeeds not just the upcoming "Meteor Lake" architecture, but also its succeeding "Arrow Lake," which debuts in 2024. Intel is expected to debut "Meteor Lake" some time later this year. What's also surprising is that Intel has proven that the Intel 18A foundry node works. The Compute tile of "Lunar Lake" is expected to be based on Intel 18A, which is four generations ahead of the current Intel 7, which will be succeeded by Intel 4, Intel 3, and Intel 20A along the way.

The demo focused on the generative AI capabilities of Intel's third generation NPU, the hardware backend of AI Boost. Using a local session of a tool similar to Stable Diffusion, the processor was made to generate the image of a giraffe wearing a hat; and a GPT program was made to pen the lyrics of a song in the genre of Taylor Swift from scratch. Both tasks were completed on stage using the chip's NPU, and in timeframes you'd normally expect from discrete AI accelerators or cloud-based services.

Thanks to the latest report from Phoronix, we know that Intel is working on supporting the latest "Xe2" graphics architecture for their upcoming Lunar Lake processors. Today, the latest enablement comes in the Mesa Linux drivers. By employing a new technique that allows for importing prior-generation XML files within the Intel Mesa driver code, Intel engineers have managed to streamline the overall file size. This is significant not just for the efficiency it brings but also because it signifies the beginning of work on enabling Xe2 graphics support. It suggests a thoughtful approach to building upon existing architectures, making it easier to adapt and evolve the software support for each new generation of Intel graphics.

Even though we are at the early stage and Lunar Lake is far away, the progress on Xe2 doesn't stop at Mesa driver changes. There is already some work at the kernel level, and new merge requests for draft compiler changes and shader compiler patches have also been spotted. This proactive development strategy positions Intel well in offering robust open-source graphics support for Linux, and it sends a strong signal to the developer community about Intel's dedication to the platform. After the Linux kernel driver works, this Mesa driver will enable better OpenGL/Vulkan API compatibility, so Lunar Lake arrives with proper software support.

Intel recently updated its website to highlight interposers used for testing upcoming chips before their actual product integration. A specific webpage now showcases components used by various tools, notably the "Gen5 VR," which stands for CPU Voltage Regulator in this context. The highlight of the update reveals at least four yet-to-be-announced products: Battlemage (BMG), Arrow Lake (ARL), and Lunar Lake (LNL), slated for launch in 2024. Particularly interesting are the two Battlemage interposers: BGA2362-BMG-X2 and BGA2727-BMG-X3. This hints that a Battlemage GPU could have more pins than Intel's current top-tier GPU from the Alchemist series, known as DG2, which features 2660 pins (BGA2660-DG2-512EU).

This unveiling could indicate Intel's plans to introduce two GPUs in its new series or potentially two different package sizes. Manufacturers often use consistent package sizes for multiple GPUs, granting flexibility to interchange processors with similar specifications and presenting a feasible production strategy. Another notable mention is the Arrow Lake-HX, intended for premium desktop/laptop hybrids.. While there was some buzz about the ARL-HX series before, this update provides clear confirmation from Intel. Lastly, the reveal includes an interposer for the Lunar Lake-M series (LNL-M), which is expected to be Intel's most energy-efficient line. Drawing parallels from the Alder Lake series, such chips were designed for tablets with power consumption between 5 to 7 watts.

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In a bid to prepare its ISV ecosystem for emerging technologies with future processor microarchitectures, Intel periodically releases instruction-set reference guides. The latest of these was leaked to the web, making their first references to the upcoming "Arrow Lake" and "Lunar Lake" client processor microarchitectures. From the looks of it, Intel is planning a massive push into the client AI acceleration space, starting with the upcoming "Meteor Lake" architecture that debuts later this year. The processor is expected to feature hardware acceleration for AI, with the new AI Boost feature.

The company could build on AI Boost with even more capabilities in the subsequent "Arrow Lake" and "Lunar Lake" microarchitectures. Among the instruction sets relevant to AI deep-learning neural net building and training, are AVX VNNI with INT8, AVX VNNI with INT16, AVX-IFMA, and AVX-NE Convert. There are several new security-relevant instructions, including SHA512, SM3, and SM4. "Lunar Lake" will introduce TSE-PBNDKB (total storage encryption). The ISA Reference Guide can be accessed here.

Intel faces its stiffest long-term challenge not from AMD in the client desktop and server segments, but from the likes of Apple and Qualcomm in the ultraportable notebook SoC market. The company is looking to meet the challenge head-on with not just its current Hybrid architecture-based "Rocket Lake-U" processors, but the upcoming "Meteor Lake" and "Arrow Lake" architectures, which disaggregate the processor into chiplets build on various foundry nodes, including ones that are external to Intel. The move here is to keep Intel ahead of the curve with Moore's Law buckling. The real ace up Intel's sleeves is "Lunar Lake."

Slated for "beyond 2024" (which could mean 2025 or later), "Lunar Lake" is reportedly a fresh ground-up design for not just the SoC, but also the CPU microarchitecture, with a design focus on performance/Watt, and a focus on mobile devices. This, according to a statement to Dr Ian Cutress. Intel has already brought Hybrid CPU cores to the PC, and with Arm partners loading their SoCs with three or more kinds of CPU cores; Intel could possibly give "Lunar Lake" even more [kinds of] Hybrid processing capabilities. Another hint on the direction in which Intel is heading comes from unlikely quarters—"Sapphire Rapids." Intel's latest enterprise processors attempt to overcome the CPU core-count deficit to AMD, by incorporating various on-die accelerators—these are fixed-function hardware that accelerate specific kinds of enterprise workloads. Intel could give us another lick about "Lunar Lake" in its January 26 Q4-2022 Financial Disclosures Day.

Intel published Linux kernel driver patches that reference a new CPU microarchitecture, codenamed "Lunar Lake." The patch comments refer to "Lunar Lake" as a client platform, and VideoCardz predicts that it could succeed "Meteor Lake." the microarchitecture that follows "Alder Lake," which was recently announced by Intel.

Targeting both mobile and desktop platforms, "Alder Lake" will herald a new 1,700-pin LGA socket for the client desktop, and debut hybrid CPU cores on the form-factor. Expected to be built on a newer silicon fabrication node, such as the 10 nm SuperFin, the chip will combine high-performance "Golden Cove" big cores, with "Gracemont" low-power cores. Its commercial success will determine if Intel continues to take the hybrid-core approach to client processors with future "Meteor Lake" and "Lunar Lake," or whether it will have sorted out its foundry woes and build "Lunar Lake" with a homogeneous CPU core type. With "Alder Lake" expected to debut toward the end of 2021 and "Meteor Lake" [hopefully] by 2022, "Lunar Lake" would only follow by 2023-24.