Intel’s next-gen Lunar Lake CPU for Copilot+ laptops launches Sept. 3

It’s official: Intel is going to launch its next-gen mobile Core Ultra processor—codenamed Lunar Lake—at IFA in Berlin on September 3 via its livestreamed event at 9am PT.

During that event, executives “will reveal details on the new processors’ breakthrough x86 power efficiency, exceptional core performance, massive leaps in graphics performance, and the unmatched AI computing power that will drive this and future generations of Intel products,” the company said.

The livestream will be hosted by Michelle Johnston Holthaus (Intel’s executive vice president and general manager of the Client Computing Group) and Jim Johnson (senior vice president and general manager of the Client Business Group), and joined by many notebook partners.

Intel typically unveils its processors in two stages: first, a technical overview of the new chip’s features and basic performance comparisons, and second, the full launch of the chip complete with the various processor models as well as their clock speeds.

Given that Intel previously released a detailed technical background of Lunar Lake at Computex, we assume we’ll receive the full Lunar Lake product breakdown at the Berlin show. (Traditionally, notebook vendors announce laptops with their respective chips at CES in January, but Intel chief executive Pat Gelsinger said in June that Lunar Lake would ship this fall, backed by more than 80 designs from its partners.)

Intel also said previously that its related desktop chip, Arrow Lake, “would be coming” before the end of 2024. So far, Intel has made no public mention of that chip in regards to IFA. But it’s still scheduled to ship this fall, specifically in the fourth quarter, according to Gelsinger.

Lunar Lake is a big deal because it’s poised to make two big impacts on laptops: first, Lunar Lake ships with on-package DRAM, meaning that Lunar Lake laptops will only ship with either 16GB or 32GB of RAM and the memory won’t be upgradeable; second, Lunar Lake chips are made up of “bricks” of four efficiency cores (and four performance cores, or P-cores) that limit their flexibility. Intel has killed hyperthreading, too.

Still, Lunar Lake laptops will be more powerful, with an improved 48 TOPS NPU and the new Xe2 graphics architecture, which will eventually appear in a discrete GPU for desktops, codenamed Battlemage.