Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon laptops had the summer all to themselves, but that’s coming to an end. AMD is now shipping its Ryzen AI chips — and Intel has just announced it’ll “launch” its next generation of Core Ultra laptop chips, codename Lunar Lake, on a September 3rd livestream. It sounds like they won’t be available quite that soon, but the full reveal should be just five weeks away.
As we’ve discussed, Lunar Lake is an utterly overhauled chip that ditches the entire idea of plugging swappable memory sticks into your laptop, not to mention several of Intel’s previous ideas about how to achieve the best battery life and performance — plus a tripled NPU if you happen to have generative AI applications you’d like to run locally.
But more importantly, it’s Intel’s laptop answer to Qualcomm and Apple’s Arm-based chips, which offer more battery life than we’ve typically seen from x86 chips like the ones Intel builds. We’re all waiting to see if Intel can deliver a compelling combination of performance, battery life, and features to keep Intel upright as Windows on Arm finally becomes a viable challenger.
We’re currently testing one of the first AMD Ryzen AI 9 laptops to see if “Strix Point” makes for a promising machine in this new climate, and Lunar Lake will be the final piece of this year’s chip war puzzle this fall.
But as usual for chipmakers, you shouldn’t necessarily expect “launch” to mean that Lunar Lake laptops will be available to purchase that day. (“More details to come on availability at the event” is the current vibe, says Intel spokesperson Thomas Hannaford.)
For now, all Intel is confirming is that it “will reveal details on the new processors’ breakthrough x86 power efficiency, exceptional core performance, massive leaps in graphics performance and the unmatched AI computing power that will drive this and future generations of Intel products.”