Notebook manufacturers are already testing Intel's upcoming Lunar Lake mobile processor series. Samsung's Galaxy Book 5 Pro has appeared in SiSoftware Sandra's benchmark database, which is apparently expected to be released with a Lunar Lake processor.
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Sisoftware Sandra reads eight CPU cores with clock frequencies of 1.6 to 2.8 GHz. This corresponds to an earlier Intel presentation, according to which Lunar Lake combines four performance and four efficiency cores, named Lion Cove or Skymont. Like the next high-performance Arrow Lake series, the processors should no longer be capable of hyper-threading, so there would be eight threads.
Not all data is reliable
The tool reads data about the integrated graphics unit and the cache sizes less reliably. The latter vary depending on the test. There are 512 shader cores specified, but according to leaks there should be twice as many for the fastest models. Intel supposedly leaves 896 shaders active on the slower processors. The company may deactivate additional shader clusters in the pre-production chips for testing purposes.
As early as February 2024, a task manager screenshot was circulating in Chinese forums that was supposed to come from a system with a Lunar Lake eight-core processor. It had 14 MB L2 and 12 MB L3 cache as well as a base clock of 1.8 GHz.
The eight-core processors cannot be processors from the current Meteor Lake generation. Even the smallest Meteor Lake models like the Core Ultra 5 125U have two performance, four efficiency and two low-power cores, for a total of 12 – also with 12 MB L3 cache.
Mobile processor without fan requirement
Lunar Lake is intended for particularly compact notebooks and convertibles, sometimes also for silent models without fans. Intel wants to present it later this year – an announcement could take place at the Computex technology trade fair at the end of May. Available devices are expected later in the year. The chip contract manufacturer TSMC produces parts of the processors with 3-nanometer technology, presumably also the compute tile with the CPU cores.
So far, Samsung has used H-class Meteor Lake CPUs in the Galaxy Book 4 Pro and Ultra, i.e. with a thermal design power (TDP) of 35 watts, actively cooled. With the switch to the much more economical Lunar Lake, performance could decrease, but in favor of greater efficiency.
Meanwhile, Samsung is also testing Galaxy Books with Qualcomm's ARM processor Snapdragon X Elite, which is in the same vein as Lunar Lake. Both attack Apple's fanless MacBook Airs with M3 CPUs. There will be a lot of competition in this device class in the summer.
(mma)