Intel to Launch its ‘Meteor Lake’ Core Ultra CPUs on December 14

The first Intel “Meteor Lake” CPUs will launch on December 14 with the premium Intel Core Ultra chips. These new Intel CPUs will be the first to include an integrated neural processing unit, and the chip maker also promises major performance and power efficiency improvements thanks to its new Intel 4 process technology.

As you may recall, Intel announced a new branding structure for its Core CPUs back in June. With its upcoming Meteor Lake CPUs, Intel will offer Core 3/Core 5/Core 7 mainstream chips and premium Core Ultra 5/Ultra 7/Ultra 9 chips. The “i” letter the company has been using for years is going away for good).

“Core Ultra integrates an NPU into client silicon for the first time,” Intel said today. “The NPU is built to enable low power and high quality and provide entirely new PC experiences. It is ideal for workloads migrating from the CPU that need higher quality or efficiency, or for workloads that would typically run in the cloud due to lack of efficient client compute.”

The last paradigm shift in the Intel CPU ecosystem happened two years ago with the company’s 12th-generation Alder Lake CPUs. These were the first Intel CPUs to adopt the same big.LITTLE computing architecture seen on ARM CPUs, with a combination of high-performance cores and power-efficient cores.

With Meteor Lake, Intel CPUs are now adding dedicated neural processing units, which are now quite common on high-end ARM CPUs for phones and PCs. The Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 that powers Microsoft’s ARM-based Surface Pro 9 also comes with an NPU, and it adds support for AI-powered Windows Studio effects such as background blur or Voice Focus.

Earlier this year, AMD was actually the first to announce new x86 CPUs with a dedicated neural processing unit with its Ryzen Pro 7000 Series mobile chips. With its new Meteor Lake CPUs, Intel is also getting ready for the “age of the AI PC.”