Intel promises 100 TOPS of AI performance for its next-gen processors

The upcoming Lunar Lake processors will deliver even more AI performance, with 45TOPS coming from the NPU alone.

Source: Lenovo

The wave of AI PCs has already started hitting the market, but things are going to get much more serious later this year. While the Intel Core Ultra processors we have today are already AI-ready, Intel is now promising that its next-generation processors, codenamed Lunar Lake, will offer a whopping 100TOPS of AI performance, with 45 of those coming from the NPU alone.

That should set up Intel to face the competition coming later this year, with the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite set to launch in the summer.

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AI is here to stay

The announcement came from Intel’s CEO, Pat Gelsinger, during the Vision 2024 conference taking place today (spotted by Tom’s Hardware), and it signals an increasingly heavy investment into AI PCs.

Every part of the PC industry has been honing its focus on AI for the past year and a half, and things have taken shape in a very significant form. AMD has built AI into many of its Ryzen 8000-series processors, and Intel joined the fray with Intel Core Ultra, the first time the company built an NPU (neural processing unit) into its processors. Of course, it’s still very early days, so it’s only natural to see AI performance get a big boost over the next few generations, and if what Intel says is true, we’re going to see big gains very quickly, which is good news after what many consider to be disappointment with Intel Core Ultra.

According to Tom’s Hardware, AMD is also set to deliver major AI improvements with its next generation of processors, codenamed Strix Point. AMD is promising three times faster generative AI performance compared to its current lineup, so things are evolving very quickly.

Intel has some tough competition

In addition to AMD, Intel is also set to face a major competitor with Qualcomm, which is launching its top-tier Snapdragon X Elite chip this summer. While AI is relatively new to PCs, it’s been a part of Arm processors for a long time, and Qualcomm has a lot more experience building AI into its processors. Many of the features that Intel Core Ultra unlocked in Windows 11, like background blur and auto framing for the webcam, have been available on Snapdagon-powered PCs for a while, they just haven’t been as popular for other reasons.

With the Snapdragon X Elite, the Qualcomm is finally garnering support from major PC manufacturers and software developers on Windows, which means Intel will be facing a major threat when the chip launches. The Snapdragon X Elite also promises 45TOPS of AI performance, so Intel’s Lunar Lake targets almost seem to be made to fight back against Qualcomm’s offering.

Regardless, it’s clear that the age of the AI PC is upon us, and it will be interesting to see what all this power can unlock in laptops in the coming year. Microsoft is expected to announce some big AI features for Windows 11 version 24H2 in the next few months, which are likely to take advantage of this hardware.