Not AMD in the client desktop and server markets, but rather companies like Apple and Qualcomm in the ultraportable notebook SoC market, provide Intel’s toughest long-term competition. In addition to its current Hybrid architecture-based “Rocket Lake-U” processors, the company is aiming to meet the challenge head-on with its upcoming “Meteor Lake” and “Arrow Lake” architectures, which disaggregate the processor into chiplets built on various foundry nodes, including ones that are external to Intel. The goal here is to keep Intel in front of the curve when Moore’s Law begins to break down. “Lunar Lake” is really Intel’s trump card.

“Lunar Lake” is purportedly a brand-new, from the ground up design for not just the SoC but also the CPU microarchitecture, with an emphasis on performance/Watt and a concentration on mobile devices, and is scheduled for “beyond 2024” (which might imply 2025 or later). This is what a statement to Dr. Ian Cutress claims. With Arm partners packing their SoCs with three or more types of CPU cores, Intel may potentially give “Lunar Lake” even more [kinds of] hybrid processing capabilities. Intel has previously introduced hybrid CPU cores to the PC. Another indication of Intel’s future course comes from an unlikely source: “Sapphire Rapids.” The newest Intel enterprise CPUs make an effort to make up for AMD’s CPU core count advantage by including a variety of on-die accelerators, which are pieces of fixed-function hardware that speed up particular types of enterprise applications. During its January 26 Q4-2022 Financial Disclosures Day, Intel might reveal further information regarding “Lunar Lake.”