Intel removed some fresh details about the new Lunar Lake mobile CPU architecture, including some performance and power claims, but couldn't really back it up with data. It claims to be not ready to show CPU performance at the moment, but all we have is a few promises and the unexpected appearance of Microsoft Teams as a CPU benchmarking platform.

Lunar Lake represents the next generation Intel processors for thin and lightweight laptops and is the first modern CPU design made entirely outside of its own manufacturing facility. Instead, the Lunar Lake chip is created entirely in the TSMC using the N3B node.

That's not bad for the end user. After all, do we really care where silicon is being slapped together if it provides. 

And Intel has promised that the new chip will also be the first to use the new Battlemage graphic core. This integrated Xe2GPU is reportedly offering 7 165% higher performance in terms of 3DMark Time Spy count than the competing Meteor Lake Core Ultra 50U.

It's worth noting that the 3DMark benchmark has historically been very kind to Intel's Arc Gpus, so it's worth noting that the performance of the actual game can still be very patchy. Also, the Core Ultra7 165U included only 4 Xe cores, so it wasn't a hero chip in terms of the graphics performance of Meteor Lake. But that GPU also helps the Lunar Lake chip deliver AI performance about 40% faster than Qualcomm's new Snapdragon X Elite chip when it comes to stable diffusion.

Since AI is a battlefield for all processor architectures to fight it at least over the next 12 months, it is clear that the Xe2 core, which Intel hammered home, is powered by Battlemage's XMX matrix engine built into the iGPU and has a top 60. We offer it on our own. Then there's Lunar Lake's own NPU, which promises to give up 45 of the top.That means, overall, you can get more than 100 AI processing grunts right away.

Another battleground for low-power laptop platforms is obviously efficiency.1 Intel has promised that the low-power island will provide 2x the calculations of Meteor Lake, which should provide real power benefits in simple applications such as Microsoft Teams, which is a well-known benchmark standard. The low-power island was first introduced at Meteor Lake, and Intel dropped some efficient cores on the SoC away from the actual compute tiles. This allows the entire calculation tile to effectively sleep when the device only needs a pair of E cores to keep the lights on, suggesting that using Lunar Lake is actually more valuable in terms of calculations than just keeping the lights on.  

Intel has not said whether it means using more E-cores on SoC low-power islands or whether the new Skymont microarchitecture will provide this extra computational performance with the same number of new E-cores. Still, using its Teams chat benchmark, Intel claims to have up to 7840% lower total package power compared to the Ryzen30u and up to 8% lower than the Snapdragon 3cx Gen20. This is not particularly the new Snapdragon X Elite or X Plus chip, as Intel claims only against publicly released benchmark data on qualcomm's chips. And oddly, while Qualcomm doesn't state how much power it will consume in Microsoft's conference app, its low-spec X Plus chip will go against Meteor Lake in terms of teams

and still, for its part, once AMD's Intel's Bobby Hallock is his usual vibrant self, "like this x86." I have never seen the power characteristics of the battery."

It does bode pretty well for Moon Lake as long as it can back up all these claims in real terms once the chip and laptop get out there."

But it also potentially suggests something good for Lake Arrow, too. It's a new CPU architecture for standard laptops and next-generation desktops coming towards the end of the year, set to use the same Lion Cove and Skymont microarchitecture as Lunar Lake for performance and efficient cores, respectively. They will reportedly — at least in part — be built using Intel's fancy new 20A production process.

However, the new Battlemage-based Xe2 core will not be used for the relevant igpus, but these chips will be more regularly paired with discrete graphics cards and we can't all have a nice one, either.

In practice, however, this latest drop in information from Intel is rather light on the details and rather relies on promises to compete claims. How the new chips, such as Intel Lunar Lake, AMD Strix Point and Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite, will actually stack up in the final calculations will require time and independent testing.

Although we will probably never use Microsoft Teams as part of our own benchmarking suite when it comes to it. Sorry Nick