Intel Lunar Lake CPU: 2.8 GHz Turbo, Cache Surprise

At CES 2024, Intel’s Executive Vice President and General Manager of Sales, Marketing, and Communications, Michelle Johnston Holthaus, unveiled the next-generation Lunar Lake chip. She also discussed Arrow Lake, confirming that both processors are slated for release between this fall and the end of the year.

Recently, a user named XZiar revealed a performance chart for a Lunar Lake engineering sample CPU, indicating that, thanks to an innovative manufacturing process, the chip achieves a base frequency of 1.8 GHz and a turbo frequency of 2.8 GHz from the outset, ensuring remarkably smooth operation. It’s noteworthy that this processor, lacking hyper-threading technology and consisting of eight cores and eight threads, boasts an L1 cache of 832KB and an L2 cache larger than its L3 cache, with 14MB and 12MB respectively.

However, the user clarified that the displayed L1 cache capacity encompasses both instruction and data caches, whereas discussions about L1 cache typically focus solely on data cache. The L2 cache capacity mentioned seems inconsistent, likely due to the engineering sample’s nature, which can lead to display inaccuracies.

According to previous reports, Lunar Lake is designed for low-power mobile platforms, with chips ranging from 8W to 30W. The 8W models can operate without a fan, while the 17W to 30W models require one. Utilizing the Lion Cove architecture for P-Cores and the Skymont architecture for E-Cores, the chip can accommodate up to four P-Cores and four E-Cores. It features the next-generation Battlemage’s Xe2-LPG architecture, supporting up to eight Xe-Cores, real-time ray tracing, VCC/H.266 hardware video decoding, and output via DP 1.4, HDMI 2.1, and eDP 1.4/1.5. The chip integrates the next-generation NPU 4.0 neural processing unit, supports PCIe 5.0/4.0 x4 interfaces, includes Thunderbolt 4, up to three USB4 ports, and offers Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 support through the BE201 network card based on the CNVio2 interface.

Furthermore, Lunar Lake will incorporate Memory-on-Package (MoP) technology, integrating memory directly into the chip, with options for 16GB and 32GB of dual-channel LPDDR5X-8533 memory. The package dimensions are 27.5 x 27 mm, featuring a CPU, GPU, and a separate SoC module.

Intel is expected to launch at least four products, including:

• Core 7 32GB – 4P+4E with eight Xe-Cores
• Core 7 16GB – 4P+4E with eight Xe-Cores
• Core 5 32GB – 4P+4E with seven Xe-Cores
• Core 5 16GB – 4P+4E with seven Xe-Cores