Intel’s recent CPU codenaming is quite confusing with many of its products intended for different markets all falling under some variation of **** Lake. There’s the current Raptor Lake-S 13th-gen desktop CPUs, the upcoming Raptor Lake refresh 14th-gen desktop CPUs, and next year we’ll get Arrow Lake. Meanwhile, on the mobile side we currently have Raptor Lake HX/H/P/U and later this year we expect to see Meteor Lake arriving, with Meteor Lake also originally slated for desktop use but now no longer being aimed at that market. It’s all a bit of a mess. Intel Lunar Lake, then, is yet another division of the company’s lineup, with it being the next generation of ultra low power CPU, and details of it have just leaked online.
An as-yet-unnamed Lunar Lake processor has appeared on the Sisoftware Sandra database, which is a repository of benchmark results from the Sisoftware Sandra benchmark. The listing describes the chip as ‘Intel Lunar Lake Client Platform Lunar Lake Client System (Intel LNL-M LP5 RVP1)’ and goes on to describe the platform as a ‘Laptop/Netbook’ with a 17W power rating.
The latter point hints at the level of power and performance these chips are aimed at – they’re definitely not desktop gaming CPUs. However, they will likely find themselves in a range of presumably quite capable compact computers, based on the specs listed here.
For a start, the mystery Intel Lunar Lake CPU is reported as having a whopping 20 cores, with a peak clock speed of 3.9GHz. Hardly 13900K-rivalling but still ample for multi-tasking and multi-threaded workloads.
It’s not entirely clear what the core configuration of the chip is, with it reasonable to assume it might contain six P-cores configured with Hyperthreading technology so they appear as 12 cores to software. Then, another eight E-Cores would round the total core/thread count up to 20. However, the cache configuration of the chip is shown as 4 x 2.5MB +4MB L2, which might hint at there being a number of P-cores divisible by four.
In terms of the architecture of those cores, they’re expected to follow the same core architectures as Arrow Lake, with Lion Cove P-cores and Skymont E-cores. Meanwhile, though not listed on the Sisoftware leak , other sources suggest the chip will include upgraded Xe2-LPG graphics – as we’re expecting to see in the next general of Intel Arc GPUs, codenamed Battlemage, rather than the Xe-LPG graphics used in Arrow Lake. However, while the architecture will be upgraded, fewer of the Xe-Cores are expected to be included.
Intel has demoed Lunar Lake at its Innovation event and confirmed the platform is undergoing testing, backing up the validity of this leak. The Intel Lunar Lake release date is expected to be in late 2024 or early 2025, so we’re some way off being able to put these chips through their paces.
At the other end of Intel’s CPU performance spectrum, here are our current best CPU for gaming recommendations.