Intel “Lunar Lake-MX” features 4P-Cores & 4 E-Cores, 8 Xe2 “Battlemage” GPU cores and supports 8W fanless mode
Intel’s next-generation low-power architecture called Lunar Lake has witnessed a large leak today.
YuuKi-AnS shared the slides on Twitter, but they were quickly removed. A copy of all the information is available thanks to the Anandtech forum member Geddagod. The slides cover all the important details of the new CPU series designed for low-power systems, between 8W to 30W. This is not a high-end gaming architecture that would replace Meteor Lake-H, on a contrary, it is a successor to Meteor Lake-U, which has not officially been released yet.
Intel claims that the Lunar Lake architecture was co-developed with Microsoft for the power-efficient software/hardware integration. It features a next-gen integrated NPU 4.0 (Neural Processing Unit) which is supported by a modern Xe2-LPG graphics. Worth noting that the Lunar Lake MX series is the first known product series to introduce a power-efficient version “Battlemage” series. Today, it was confirmed that the Core 7 (200?) series will come with up to 8 Xe-Cores. It is an evolution of Arc graphics that will also span across mobile and desktop discrete graphics.
Intel Lunar Lake MX Series, Source: YuuKi_AnS
This GPU architecture has 64 Vector Engines, supports Systolic AI/Super Scaling technologies and has real-time ray tracing support. Furthermore, we learn that the Lunar Lake MX GPU will support DisplayPort 1.4, HDMI 2.1, eDP1.4 & 1.5and offer hardware VVC/H.266 video decoding support.
The Lunar Lake MX architecture will ship with memory on the package, and judging from the slides, there will be 16 GB and 32 GB options available. Intel is planning at least four variants with different layouts of CPU and GPU cores. The CPU architecture is based on a combination of Lion Cove and Skymont cores. What is also important to note is that the CPU tile will be manufactured using TSMC N3B process technology.
Intel Lunar Lake MX Series, Source: YuuKi_AnS
Intel Lunar Lake MX series
- Core 7 32GB: 4P + 4E + 8 Xe2-LPG
- Core 7 16GB: 4P + 4E + 8 Xe2-LPG
- Core 5 32GB: 4P + 4E + 7 Xe2-LPG
- Core 5 16GB: 4P + 4E + 7 Xe2-LPG
The architecture supports dual-channel LPDDR5X-8533 memory, which is an on-package memory (MoP). By integrating memory, Intel is saving power (less routing, integrated memory subsystem) as well as size (about 100-250 mm2). The package size is measured at 27.5 mm x 27 mm, and it will feature two tiles: CPU & GPU and a separate SoC tile.
Intel Lunar Lake MX Series, Source: YuuKi_AnS
The Lunar Lake MX series will support PCIe Gen5x4 and Gen4x4 interface with Thunderbolt 4 and up to three USB4 connectors. The chip has integrated WiFi-7 and Bluetooth 5.4 support through BE201 network card based on CNVio3 interface.
Interestingly, it is said that a special 8W SKU of Lunar Lake could operate without a fan. Meanwhile, the fanned version will operate within the 17 to 30W TDP range. Furthermore, it was stated that the 12W version of the Arc Xe2-LPG GPU could offer 2.5 TFLOPS of single-precision compute performance, which is an equivalent of the Apple M1 chip. While the peak Arc performance in this chip could offer 3.8 TFLOPS, which is below the Apple M2 SoC design.
Intel Lunar Lake MX Series, Source: YuuKi_AnS
With alleged the power efficiency and GPU performance in mind, one might look forward to integrating the Lunar Lake MX series into next-generation handheld systems. While we still do not know how much faster Battlemage GPU architecture is over Alchemist, we can set a good baseline with the launch of Meteor Lake chips featuring Xe-LPG (Alchemist) series next month.
Intel Lunar Lake MX series is officially expected to debut in 2024.
Source: YuuKi-AnS (removed), Geddagod @ AnandTech
