Intel is going after Apple and Qualcomm with its new Lunar Lake chip

For decades, Intel has been dominating the PC space with its CPUs. But Apple has challenged their dominance by ditching them as a partner and designing their own Arm-powered chipsets. Now it looks like Intel is fighting back in their own way with the launch of their new Lunar Lake chips.

The Lunar Lake is a new chip design unveiled by Intel at Computex 2024. While Intel refreshes their CPU lineup every year, the Lunar Lake is different from the company’s usual offerings. This is because unlike Intel’s other chips, this chip comes with built-in RAM. The concept of built-in RAM isn’t new. That’s pretty much the premise of the system-on-chip design that we’ve seen in our smartphones and tablets.

However, unlike other SoCs which are typically Arm-based, the Lunar Lake is still x86-based. Intel claims that the new chip design offers 60% better battery life. They are also boasting a 14% increase in CPU performance, and 50% more graphics performance over its predecessor. The downside is that with the RAM being soldered directly to the chip, it means it would be impossible for customers to make their own RAM upgrades.

If you’re concerned that this is Intel’s new direction, don’t be. Intel says that they will be launching a new Arrow Lake chip later this year that will use a more traditional RAM bus. It’s not surprising to see Intel move in this direction. There has been a recent onslaught of Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite-based Windows PCs, so we imagine that Intel is hoping to compete with its new chip design.