Intel Launches Core Ultra "Meteor Lake" Mobile Processors

At Intel's AI Everywhere event they officially launched their new Core Ultra branded Meteor Lake processors that will begin appearing in new laptops. Intel Core Ultra aims to deliver their most power efficient client processors, deliver around twice the GPU performance of existing integrated graphics, and via the NPU feature more robust AI capabilities.

The announced Intel Core Ultra processors feature up to six P-cores and up to 8 E-cores. Plus two LP E-cores for a total of 22 possible threads for forthcoming laptop designs. The maximum turbo frequency with Meteor Lake processors is currently up to 5.1GHz. Making Meteor Lake quite exciting is the Intel Arc integrated graphics with up to 8 Xe cores. Plus Meteor Lake introduces Intel's new dedicated Neural Processing Unit (NPU) for more robust AI capabilities.

Meteor Lake on the Intel 4 process is advertised as offering greater than 20% power efficiency over existing processors. Or the Intel Core Ultra 7 165H is said to offer a 25% reduction in power consumption compared to the Intel Core i7 1370P for Netflix video playback.

Intel also makes the bold claim of up to 79% lower power than AMD when both are at the same 28 Watt envelope for ultra-thin laptops. Intel compares the Core Ultra 7 165H to the AMD Ryzen 7 7840U.

Meteor Lake E cores feature VNNI support and other improvements as well as enhanced Thread Director for better P vs. E core scheduling.

All of the performance and power numbers provided by Intel were under Windows, to no surprise. It will be interesting to see how Meteor Lake performs on Linux particularly with the P vs. E core handling.

For single-thread CPU performance Intel's own numbers show the Core ultra 7 165H being slower than the Core i7 1370P but when it comes to multi-threaded CPU performance on Windows to be around 9% faster than the i7-1370P or 11% over the AMD Ryzen 7 7840U.