Intel held its “AI Everywhere” event last night where the the company launched its Intel Core Ultra mobile processors that, according to the company, “deliver reimagined power efficiency, world-class compute and graphics performance and the best AI PC experience to mobile platforms and out to the edge”.
Intel Core Ultra Chips: What Are They?
The new Intel chips drop the ‘i’ branding and are now dubbed as Core Ultra CPUs. As the case is with most companies around the world nowadays, Intel’s focus now also includes AI. Intel has categorised the chips across three segments, with Core Ultra 9 series leading the pack, followed by Core Ultra 7 and then Core Ultra 5.
The Intel Core Ultra is the first Processor built on the Intel 4 process technology. Intel Core Ultra offers a built-in Intel Arc GPU that features up to eight XE-cores, AI-based XE Super Sampling (XESS), DX12 Ultimate support, and up to double the graphics performance over the previous generation. The GPU includes support for modern graphics features including hardware-accelerated ray tracing, mesh shading, AV1 encode and decode, HDMI 2.1 and DisplayPort 2.1 20G.
Intel’s newest dedicated NPU for AI, branded Intel AI Boost, is purpose-built to handle longer-running AI workloads at low power, and it complements AI handled on both the CPU and GPU, enabling 2.5x better power efficiency than the previous generation.
A total of 9 chips comprise the Intel Core Ultra family of processors. Intel’s main focus was on the Core Ultra 7 165H chip despite the Core Ultra 9 185H being the most top-end CPU in the lineup. The Core Ultra 7 165H offers an 11 percent improvement in multi-threading performance when compared to competitors such as the AMD Ryzen 7 7840U, Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3, and Apple’s latest M3 chip. It gets 16 cores and 22 threads and an up to 5.0GHz Frequency and is the second-most powerful chip after the Ultra 9 in the new lineup.
It provides a 25% decrease in power usage compared to the prior Intel Core i7-1370P and boasts up to 79% less power than AMD’s Ryzen 7 7840U within the same 28W envelope for ultrathin notebooks. Talking about the Core Ultra 9 185H, it features 16 cores and 22 threads, out of which, six of them are performance (P) cores and eight are efficient (E) cores. It gets up to a 5.1GHz turbo frequency as well as a built-in Arc GPU with eight Xe cores running at up to 2.35GHz speeds.
The Intel Core Ultra 5 125H gets 4 P-cores, 8 E-Cores and 2 LP E-cores. This one’s the baseline H-series CPU which has a max turbo frequency of 4.5 Ghz along with 2.2 Ghz of max GPU frequency.
The chips can support up to 64 gigabytes (GB) LP5/x and up to 96 GB DDR5 maximum memory capacity. It gets integrated Intel Wi-Fi 6E (Gig+) and support for discrete Intel Wi-Fi 7 (5 Gig) for multi-gigabit speeds along with Bluetooth LE Audio and Bluetooth Auracast. They also support Thunderbolt 4 providing PC connectivity to multiple 4K monitors.
Further, only the H-series CPUs get the new Intel Arc GPU while the U-series gets only Intel Integrated graphics. The new family also has U-series chips which aren’t as powerful as the new H-series processors.
Intel Core Ultra Chips: Availability
Available globally on-shelf and online starting today, new Intel Core Ultra mobile processors will power more than 230 of the world’s first AI PCs from partners including Acer, ASUS, Dell, Dynabook, Gigabyte, Google Chromebook, HP, Lenovo, LG, Microsoft Surface, MSI and Samsung. Three of the chips including the most high-end Core Ultra 9 185H will be available sometime in Q1 of 2024.
Samsung Galaxy Book 4 series, MSI Prestige 16 AI Studio laptop, Prestige 13 AI Evo, Asus Zenbook 14 OLED, Lenovo’s ThinkPad X1 Carbon, ThinkPad X1 2-in-1, IdeaPad Pro 5i, and finally, Acer’s Swift Go 14 and Predator Triton Neo 16 are some of the machines that have been launched with the new Intel Core Ultra chips.