Intel unwraps Lunar Lake architecture: Up to 68% IPC gain for E-cores, 14% IPC gain for P-Cores

Lunar Lake NPU 4.0

Intel shared deep dive architectural details of its fourth-gen NPU unit at the event, but I was unfortunately unable to attend this specific briefing. I do have a recording that I will watch and use to update this section, but for now I’ll have to let the slides do most of the talking.

The NPU is the central component in Intel’s AI strategy, and with 48 TOPS of performance it easily meets Microsoft’s requirements for next-gen PCs. However, the NPU is primarily designed for AI offloading for low-intensity work, thus saving tremendous amounts of battery power. The GPU steps in for more demanding workloads with 67 TOPS of performance, while the CPU contributes another 5 TOPS. Overall, that gives Lunar Lake 120 total TOPS of AI performance.

The key architectural components include 12 enhanced SHAVE DSPs, six neural compute engines, and a MAC array and DMA engine. This is fed with twice the memory bandwidth of the prior-gen NPU on Meteor Lake, and the NPU also has access to the 8MB shared side cache on the compute tile. This further enhances efficiency.

Overall Intel claims a 4X improvement in peak performance and a 2X improvement in performance at the same power over the previous-gen NPU 3.0 used in Meteor Lake.

Lunar Lake Platform Controller Tile and Connectivity

The Platform Controller Tile houses all of the external I/O functions for the chip, including Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, USB 3.0 and 2. 0, Thunderbolt, and the PCIe 4.0 and 5.0 interfaces. It also houses the memory controllers.

Intel guarantees that all Lunar Lake laptops will have at least two ports of Thunderbolt 4 connectivity, while some models will offer up to three ports. Intel used Thunderbolt 4 instead of the newer Thunderbolt 5 due to the target market for this class of laptop. The interface also supports the new Thunderbolt Share feature, which allows the interface to provide drag-and-drop file sharing functionality between PCs, along with screen and peripheral sharing.

The platform also supports Bluetooth 5.4 and Wi-Fi 7 that’s partially embedded into the Platform Controller Tile. Wi-Fi 7 functionality still requires another CNVi module that’s connected externally via the CNVi 3.0 interface. The new BE201 CRF module is 28% smaller than prior-gen Wi-Fi modules.

Lunar Lake Thread Director Improvements