Intel® Core™ Ultra Processors – The Heart of Every PC
The family of Intel® Core™ Ultra Processors utilize a 3D Hybrid architecture that includes the integration of a CPU, GPU and a dedicated NPU engine for AI acceleration all on the same die. Initially introduced as a mobile processor, the Intel® Core™ Ultra 100 Series, code named Meteor Lake, brought to market a powerful, energy efficient, AI optimized processor that could run ML, SLM, and inferencing applications on a client platform.
The Intel® Core™ Ultra 200 Series features several new processors designed to meet the specific needs of various compute platforms including desktop AI PCs (Arrow Lake S), performance AI notebooks (Arrow Lake H), high-performance gaming or workstation notebooks (Arrow Lake HX) and premium class AI notebooks (Lunar Lake V).
The different family of Intel® Core™ Ultra 2 Series mobile processors provide unique technologies that address the specific needs of each notebook market segment. At a high level, the main differences relate to the number as well as types of processor cores, the size of the NPU, the GPU, and system memory.
Intel® Core™ Ultra 200 Series Mobile Processors
The top of the AI stack would be the Intel® Core™ Ultra 200V (Lunar Lake) which utilizes 8 cores consisting of 4 P-Cores and 4 E-Cores. Additionally, this processor includes a larger NPU (Intel NPU 4.0) and integrates Intel’s Xe2 (Battlemage) GPU but perhaps the most unique feature is the system main memory of 16GB or 32GB that is integrated directly on to the processor die. The Intel® Core™ Ultra 200V (Lunar Lake) was designed for maximum performance per watt delivering battery life of up to 20 hours. It is also the only Intel® Core™ Ultra processor that meets Microsoft’s requirement of NPU performance of 40 TOPs or more. The overall TOPs performance (CPU+GPU+NPU) is 120 TOPs.
The Intel® Core™ Ultra 200H and Intel® Core™ Ultra 200HX are both Arrow Lake processors but they are designed for specific markets. They differ in the how much die real estate is devoted to CPU and GPU cores rather than the larger NPU found on the Intel® Core™ Ultra 200V. The Intel® Core™ Ultra 200H is designed for general purpose notebook markets balancing overall AI performance, with general system performance and battery life. This processor family is capable of total system TOPs of 99. It uses the Intel Xe GPU and leverages a combination of 6 P-Cores, 8 E-Cores and has 2 Low Power E-Cores to enhance battery life.
The Intel® Core™ Ultra 200HX is designed for the performance notebook and mobile workstation market. It has larger cache (up to 36MB), integrates more P-Cores, and supports ECC memory. As this is a performance class mobile processor where discrete GPUs are more common, the Intel® Core™ Ultra 200HX uses 4 Xe GPUs and has 8 P-Cores as well as 16 E-Cores.