If there's any company that needs a big win right now, it's ailing semiconductor giant Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) . Fresh off a disastrous earnings report that sent the stock tumbling and raised questions about the company's long-term strategy, Intel could have an ace up its sleeve with Lunar Lake.
Massive battery life gains
Intel launched its Meteor Lake laptop chips last year, which included built-in AI accelerators and improved power efficiency. Lunar Lake ups the ante considerably. Not only has Intel ramped up the AI compute capacity, but it's claiming best-in-class battery life.
Intel says that total package power consumption with Lunar Lake has been decreased by as much as 50% compared to Meteor Lake, resulting in a doubling of performance per watt. The performance cores in Lunar Lake have been redesigned and optimized, while the efficiency cores can now run more workloads.
Intel chose to almost entirely outsource manufacturing for Lunar Lake, a decision likely driven by the timing and capacity of its advanced manufacturing processes. While Meteor Lake used the Intel 4 process for its compute tile, Lunar Lake uses a 3nm process from TSMC. Intel will move back to doing its own manufacturing for next year's Panther Lake, which will be built on the upcoming Intel 18A process.
On top of the redesigned cores and manufacturing upgrade, Intel chose to include on-package memory with Lunar Lake. This has the downside of making memory upgrades impossible, but it also contributes to lower power usage and lower heat production.
All of these improvements will lead to laptops with up to 20 hours of battery life in productivity use cases, according to Intel's testing.
Fighting back against Arm and AMD
Lunar Lake is not meant for beefy, high-performance laptops. Rather, Intel's new chips are squarely focused on providing solid performance, incredible battery life, good gaming performance, and great AI performance.
Intel claims that Lunar Lake beats AMD 's latest HX 370 chip in gaming by a double-digit percentage, with an even bigger edge when ray tracing is used. The company also claims that Lunar Lake beats the competition across all AI workloads tested.
In terms of battery life, Intel claims that it not only beats AMD, but that it also beats the new Arm -based laptop CPUs from Qualcomm . In an office productivity test pitting the Intel Core Ultra 7 268V against the Qualcomm X1E-80-100, Intel found that its chip provided 20.1 hours of battery life compared to 18.4 hours for the Qualcomm chip.
Even if Intel can only match Qualcomm in battery life, it would entirely eliminate the core advantage of Arm-based Windows PCs. Battery life parity combined with the big disadvantage of Arm-based Windows PCs, spotty compatibility with games and some other applications, will make Qualcomm PCs a tougher sell once Lunar Lake systems are available later this month.
A big step forward for Intel
Third-party reviews, which should be available around the Sept. 24 launch, will shed light on whether Intel's performance and battery life claims hold water. If Intel's claims hold up, Lunar Lake will be a potent force in the laptop market this holiday season.
The massive battery life gains provided by Lunar Lake will give those with older laptops a good reason to upgrade, and they won't have to accept the downsides of a Qualcomm-powered laptop. Intel's client computing segment was its strongest in the second quarter, growing by 9% year over year following a post-pandemic slump. If Lunar Lake triggers an upgrade cycle, a big rebound could be in order for 2025.
Intel's turnaround depends on more than Lunar Lake. The company must get its Intel 18A manufacturing process up and running, and successfully sell it to external customers. It also must win back share in the server CPU market after falling behind AMD in performance and efficiency. While this will take time, Lunar Lake looks like a positive development as Intel plots its comeback.
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Timothy Green has positions in Intel. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Advanced Micro Devices and Qualcomm. The Motley Fool recommends Intel and recommends the following options: short November 2024 $24 calls on Intel. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy .
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