Niets is meer heilig bij Intel Lunar Lake – Zeg maar dag tegen Hyper-Threading
During his Computex keynote, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger introduced the next generation of processors for laptops: Lunar Lake. While it will be a few months before the first laptops with these CPUs hit the shelves, we can already tell you everything about the technology of Lunar Lake. Lunar Lake is the successor to Meteor Lake, the current Core Ultra 100 processors. Although Intel has not confirmed this yet, it is likely that Lunar Lake will eventually be named Core Ultra 200.
Like Meteor Lake, Lunar Lake is composed of chiplets, called ’tiles’ by Intel. There are fewer tiles than the previous generation. There is a base tile, essentially an interposer where chips can be stacked using Intel’s Foveros technology, and it is produced on its own process. The bump pitch is slightly smaller at 25 microns compared to Meteor Lake’s 36 microns. Additionally, there is a compute tile produced on the N3B node of TSMC and a platform tile made on TSMC N6. Finally, there is an inactive filler tile to make the whole package a neat rectangle. Notably, no part of Intel Lunar Lake containing active logic comes from Intel’s own factories.
Within Intel’s IDM 2.0 strategy, where it separates its chip design and production branches, one might have expected Intel to always choose the best available process for future products, even if it comes from TSMC. But now that it has happened, it is a significant moment. It also has major implications for chip design. For example, the large P-cores were always designed for Intel’s own nodes, so production at TSMC meant a complete redesign at the lowest level, which is now ’99 percent process-independent’.
There are two special chips on the Lunar Lake package: memory chips. Intel is integrating the memory for the first time on the processor. Upgrading is not possible, but Lunar Lake will mainly be used in thin, light laptops that already used soldered memory. Intel will sell versions with 16 and 32GB on-board dual-channel Lpddr5x memory, with a maximum speed of 8533MT/s. This results in a 40 percent power savings and a reduction of PCB area in a laptop by 250mm², according to Intel.
Lunar Lake features new architectures for the four P-cores and four E-cores. It also includes the first Xe2 GPU, integrated graphics, and an npu that has become over four times faster. Stay tuned for more in-depth coverage on all these topics.