Intel's next-gen Lunar Lake CPUs will be able to run Microsoft's Copilot AI locally thanks to 45 TOPS NPU performance
News
By
Cale Hunt
published 13 hours ago
The new CPUs are expected to deliver more than 100 TOPS total, smashing Meteor Lake's 34 TOPS capability.
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(Image credit: Intel)
What you need to know
- Intel hosted its Vision 2024 event in Phoenix, Arizona this week, where it showed off next-gen Lunar Lake processors and many upcoming AI advancements.
- It was revealed that the Lunar Lake chips will offer total package performance in the range of 100+ TOPS, with 45 TOPS set aside for the NPU.
- Intel Core Ultra CPUs from the current Meteor Lake lineup offer about 34 TOPS of performance total, with 10 TOPS for the NPU alone.
- Microsoft plans to make its AI assistant Copilot run locally on laptops, which will require at least 40 TOPS of NPU performance.
Intel's Vision 2024 event kicked off this week in Phoenix, Arizona, with a major focus on AI and what the company has in store for its next generation of Lunar Lake processors (CPU).
As
first reported by Tom's Hardware, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger revealed that the next-gen Lunar Lake CPUs will have more than 100 TOPS of total package performance for AI tasks, with the NPU getting 45 TOPS on its own.
TOPS stands for "Tera Operations per Second" or "Trillion Operations per Second," and it's currently the standout term being used to approximately measure the expected AI performance in
AI PCs. The term ties in directly with the
Neural Processing Unit (NPU), which is a new PC component optimized specifically to handle AI tasks.
(Image credit: Windows Central)
With
Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite CPU offering 45 TOPS of NPU performance and 75 TOPS total across the chip, it's unsurprising that Intel was quick to give an update on next-gen Lunar Lake capabilities.
Its Meteor Lake CPUs — like the
Core Ultra chips we're seeing in the
best laptops available today — top out at 34 TOPS total package performance (with the CPU, GPU, and NPU portions counted together), with just 10 TOPS carved out for the NPU alone.
On AMD's side, its Ryzen 8040-series mobile chips have an NPU with 16 TOPS; that number goes up to 39 TOPS for the whole package. AMD is also hard at work, boosting its AI performance to keep up with the competition. It's expected that its next-gen "Strix Point" mobile CPUs will offer up to three times as much AI performance thanks to a new XDNA 2 NPU, as revealed in December at AMD's Advancing AI event.
Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm are clearly putting a lot of emphasis on AI performance as measured by TOPS, and for good reason. AI PCs are all the rage right now, and AI features will continue to embed themselves in the devices we use every day. I don't think it's yet time to rush out and buy an AI PC, but it's clear that things are only going to heat up as we move forward.