Intel’s low-power Arrow Lake-U CPUs are reportedly going to be a cheaper alternative to Lunar Lake chips and target thin & light designs.
Intel Arrow Lake-U CPUs To Be The Low-Cost Alternative To Lunar Lake, Similiar To The Raptor Lake-U and Meteor Lake-U Releases
Intel’s next major laptop upgrade is heading for low-power platforms and is released in the form of Lunar Lake CPUs which will have their first designs hitting shelves by the end of 2024. Intel is also preparing its Arrow Lake lineup which will serve a range of platforms including desktops, laptops, handhelds, and Mini PCs. The Arrow Lake CPUs will mostly target the high-end & mainstream CPU segment but they will also be coming to thin & light designs as a cheaper alternative to Lunar Lake.
“ARL-U” is basically a cheaper alternative to LNL
— Bionic_Squash (@SquashBionic) January 18, 2024
“ARL-U” uses intel 3 (it’s basically MTL-U ported to intel 3)
— Bionic_Squash (@SquashBionic) January 18, 2024
According to @Bionic_Squash, it looks like while Intel will release its Lunar Lake CPUs for premium yet still low-power notebooks, the Arrow Lake lineup will be offered in the lower-priced segments.
Intel’s Lunar Lake and Arrow Lake CPUs for low-power platforms are expected to utilize different process technologies. Arrow Lake-U is expected to leverage Intel’s 3 process node and bring about a 10% performance/watt improvement versus Meteor Lake-U while Lunar Lake-MX chips will offer a bigger performance per watt and significant IPC gains as the company has reported while utilizing a sub-3nm node (20A or 18A).
It’s basically the MTL cores ported to intel 3.
~10% perf per watt improvement in MT workloads— Bionic_Squash (@SquashBionic) January 18, 2024
The situation with Arrow Lake in the low-power segment will be similar to Raptor Lake Refresh. The Meteor Lake-U lineup serves the more premium devices and are usually priced in the $1000+ range whereas more affordable designs are equipped with the Raptor Lake Refresh (Core Series 1) chips & fall in the sub $1000 US category. Lunar Lake will be a bigger upgrade for low-power platforms vs Arrow Lake with an upgraded architecture, NPU, and the latest Battlemage iGPUs.
Most of the Arrow Lake mobility CPUs are expected to be launched at CES 2025 which is a year away from now. Both Arrow Lake and Lunar Lake CPUs from Intel will be competing against AMD’s Zen 5 “Strix Point”, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite, and Apple’s next-gen SOCs by the time they hit retail shelves.