Industry Coverage

On October 10th, Intel took the wraps off its new Core Ultra 200S series of desktop processors, formerly know by the code name Arrow Lake. As a follow-on to the company’s recent Lunar Lake Core Ultra 200V Series for laptops, Arrow Lake marks a transition that follows suit with Intel’s tiled architecture approach for its processors, which was first introduced with the Meteor Lake Core Ultra 100 series for laptops back in late 2023 in the consumer space. Intel’s tiled chiplet design, with external chip fabrication at TSMC that’s coupled with Intel’s cutting-edge Foveros chip stacking and packaging tech, has served the company well thus far. Further expanding this design approach to its desktop chip portfolio is likely just what the doctor ordered…

Last week, at one of the oldest consumer electronics industry shows, analysts and press were given hands-on access to Lunar Lake Core Ultra laptops from various OEM partners, along with a deep-dive view of Core Ultra 200V Series processor performance, delivered in a series of presentations and Q&A sessions. The promise of what Lunar Lake will deliver was very strong, so much so that competitors like Qualcomm immediately began picking apart some of the compares. This was to be expected of course, but let’s break down what you can expect from Lunar Lake and read between the lines a bit along the way as well.

Lunar Lake represents a major architectural shift for Intel, manufactured on TSMC’s N3 and N6 chip fab process nodes, in an effort to leap ahead of new entrant competition from both Qualcomm and AMD. And to say both members of the media and analyst communities were waiting with baited breath for this level of detail on Intel’s new ultra-efficient processor architecture, for the age of the AI PC, would be a major understatement.

At its annual Innovation event in San Jose last week, Intel demonstrated to me that not only are its new IDM 2.0 manufacturing and chip foundry plans beginning to take shape for meaningful impact, but its relentless pursuit of returning to PC chip design dominance is also starting to bear fruit. In addition, it’s now clear to me that the culmination of this two-pronged approach is showing signs of a true turnaround

Intel certainly brought the fight back to AMD with its 13th Gen Core series, for creators, workstation professionals, PC enthusiasts and gamers.

Though Intel is preparing a full onslaught of discrete GPUs (Graphics Processing Units) this year, based on its scalable Arc Alchemist architecture that can address powerful desktop PC to mobile applications, the company is stepping out first with a low power offering for laptops.

The notion of “purposeful computing” may sound like corporate thought leadership kind of stuff, but when I spoke with GB about his company’s goals and his personal philosophy in this regard, I came to realize it’s anything but.

Intel made a splash with the announcement of its new 11th Gen Core mobile processors, code named Tiger Lake, earlier this month. The company trumpeted hundreds of OEM laptop designs that are inbound for the Q4 holiday shopping season, offering breakout performance over its previous gen Ice Lake 10th Gen Core series platform, in addition to besting competitive AMD Ryzen 4000-powered laptops in mainstream app performance. Soon following that announcement, Intel also sent out pre-production reference systems to press and analysts like myself, as validation vehicles for its performance claims…

Intel just concluded a deep-dive analyst and press briefing that the company calls Architecture Day. It was a remotely hosted event, of course, but the company offered more than a few key disclosures that speak to both its product roadmap and strategy, based on its “Six Pillars Of Innovation,” which are Process, Architecture, Memory, Interconnect, Security and Software…