7 ms·
Intel Core Ultra Series 3 Debut as First Built on Intel 18A
- DrammBA 10mo ago> Today at CES, Intel unveiled Intel Core Ultra Series 3 processors, the first AI PC platform built on Intel 18A process technology that was designed and manufactured in the United States. Powering over 200 designs from leading, global partners, Series 3 will be the most broadly adopted and globally available AI PC platform Intel has ever delivered. What in the world is this disaster of an opening paragraph? From the weird "AI PC platform" (not sure what that is) to the "will be the most broadly adopted and globally available AI PC platform" (is that a promise? a prediction? a threat?). And you just gotta love the processor names "Intel Core Ultra Series 3 Mobile X9/X7"
- dangus 10mo agoIntel marketing isn’t the best but I am struggling to understand what issue you’re taking with this. It’s an AI PC platform. It can do AI. It has an NPU and integrated GPU. That’s pretty straightforward. Competitors include Apple silicon and AMD Ryzen AI. They’re predicting it’ll sell well, and they have a huge distribution network with a large number of partner products launching. Basically they’re saying every laptop and similar device manufacturer out there is going to stuff these chips in their systems. I think they just have some well-placed confidence in the laptop segment, because it’s supposed to combine the strong efficiency of the 200 series with the kind of strong performance that can keep up with or exceed competition from AMD’s current laptop product lineup. Their naming sucks but nobody’s really a saint on that.
- webdevver 10mo agoi cant believe we're still putting NPUs into new designs. silicon taken up that couldve been used for a few more compute units on the GPU, which is often faster at inference anyway and way more useful/flexible/programmable/documented.
- cromka 10mo agoGuess they're following Apple here whose NPUs get all the support possible, as far as I can tell.
- dangus 10mo agoBingo. Maybe Microsoft shouldn’t even be chasing them but I think they have a point to try and stay competitive. They can’t just have their OS getting half the battery life of their main competitor. When you use an Apple device, it’s performing ML tasks while barely using any battery life. That’s the whole point of the NPU. It’s not there to outperform the GPU.
- zmb_ 10mo agoYou can thank Microsoft for that. Intel architects in fact did not want to waste area on an NPU. That caused Microsoft to launch their AI-whatever branded PCs with Qualcomm who were happy to throw in whatever Microsoft wanted to get to be the launch partner. After than Intel had to follow suit to make Microsoft happy.
- dangus 10mo agoThat doesn’t explain why Apple “wastes” die area on their NPU. The thing is, when you get an Apple product and you take a picture, those devices are performing ML tasks while sipping battery life. Microsoft maybe shouldn’t be chasing Apple especially since they don’t actually have any marketshare in tablets or phones, but I see where they’re getting at: they are probably tired of their OS living on devices that get half the battery life of their main competition. And here’s the thing, Qualcomm’s solution blows Intel out of the water. The only reason not to use it is because Microsoft can’t provide the level of architecture transition that Apple does. Apple can get 100% of their users to switch architecture in about 7 years whenever they want.
- stockresearcher 10mo agoEvery modern chip needs some percentage dedicated to dark silicon. There is no cheating the thermal reality. You could add more compute units in the GPU, but you then have to make up for it somewhere else. It’s a balancing act. The Core Ultra lineup is supposed to be low-power, low-heat, right? If you want more compute power, pick something from a different product series.
- jmward01 10mo agoI think I have given up on chip naming. I honestly can't tell anymore there are so many modifiers on the names these days. I assume 9 is better than 7 right? Right?
- chrismorgan 10mo ago> I assume 9 is better than 7 right? Right? Oh, the number of times I’ve heard someone assume their five- or ten-year-old machine must be powerful because it’s an i7… no, the i3-14100 (released two years ago) is uniformly significantly superior to the i7-9700 (released five years before that), and only falls behind the i9-9900 in multithreaded performance. Within the same product family and generation, I expect 9 is better than 7, but honestly it wouldn’t surprise me to find counterexamples.
- gambiting 10mo ago>>Within the same product family and generation, I expect 9 is better than 7 Ah the good old Dell laptop engineering, where the i9 is better on paper, but in reality it throttles within 5 seconds of starting any significant load and the cpu nerfs itself below even i5 performance. Classic Dell move.
- chrismorgan 10mo agoWithin the same family and generation, I don’t think this should happen any more. But especially in the past, some laptops were configurable with processors of different generations or families (M, Q, QM, U, so many possibilities) so that the i7 option might have worse real-world performance than the i5 (due to more slower cores).
- tracker1 10mo agoIt's been a cooling problem on a lot of i9 laptops... the CPU will hit thermal peaks, then throttle down, this has an incredibly janky feel as a user... then it spins back up, and down... the performance curves just wacky in general. Today is almost worse, as the thermal limits will be set entirely different between laptop vendors on the same chips, so you can't even have apples to apples performance expectations from different vendors.
- octoberfranklin 10mo agoLaptop names are even worse: > Are ZBooks good or do I want an OmniBook or ProBook? Within ZBook, is Ultra or Fury better? Do I want a G1a or a G1i? Oh you sell ZBook Firefly G11, I liked that TV show, is that one good? https://geohot.github.io/blog/jekyll/update/2025/11/29/bikeshedding-or-laptop.html https://geohot.github.io/blog/jekyll/update/2025/11/29/bikes...
- lostlogin 10mo agoAnd that root of all that shit lies Apple and the ‘book’ suffix.
- kergonath 10mo agoApple is very consistent. You have the MacBook Air (lighter, more portable variant) and the MacBook Pro (more expensive and powerful variant). They don’t mess around with model numbers.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- lostlogin 10mo ago> Apple is very consistent. You have the MacBook Air (lighter, more portable variant) and the MacBook Pro (more expensive and powerful variant). What about the iBook? That wasn’t tidy. Ebooks or laptops? Or the iPhone 9? That didn’t exist. Or MacOS? Versioning got a bit weird after 10.9, due the X thing. They do mess around with model numbers and have just done it again with the change to year numbers. I don’t particularly care but they aren’t all clean and pure. https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/05/28/gurman-version-years https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/05/28/gurman-version-...
- stefanfisk 10mo agoIt was a response to you specifically calling out the book suffix. And what was unclear iBook VS PowerBook?
- cherioo 10mo agoAI PC has been in the buzz for more than 2 years now (despite itself being a near useless concept), and intel has like 75% marketshare for laptop. Both of those are well with in norm for an intel marketing piece. It’s not really meant for consumer. Who would even visit newsroom.intel.com?
- lostlogin 10mo agoApparently it’s been a thing for a while: What is an AI PC? ('Look, Ma! No Cloud!') An AI PC has a CPU, a GPU and an NPU, each with specific AI acceleration capabilities. An NPU, or neural processing unit, is a specialized accelerator that handles artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) tasks right on your PC instead of sending data to be processed in the cloud. https://newsroom.intel.com/artificial-intelligence/what-is-an-ai-pc#gs.6yib7p https://newsroom.intel.com/artificial-intelligence/what-is-a...
- sidewndr46 10mo agoIt'd be interesting to see some market survey data showing the number of AI laptops sold & the number of users that actively use the acceleration capabilities for any task, even once.
- sixothree 10mo agoI'm not sure I've ever heard of a single task that comes built into the system and uses the NPU.
- CyberDildonics 10mo agoIt's a disaster along with the title. There isn't a lot of clear information.
- hnuser123456 10mo agoIt means they did cost cutting on Lunar Lake and are excited to sell a lot of them at similar or higher prices.
- ajross 10mo ago> cost cutting on Lunar Lake It's... the launch vehicle for a new process. Literally the opposite of "cost cutting", they went through the trouble of tooling up a whole fab over multiple years to do this. Will 18A beat TSMC and save the company? We don't know. But they put down a huge bet that it would, and this is the hand that got dealt. It's important, not something to be dismissed.
- hnuser123456 10mo agoLunar Lake integrated DRAM on the package, which was faster and more power efficient, this reverts that. They also replaced part of the chip from being sourced from TSMC to from themselves. And if their foundry is competitive, they should be shaking other foundry customers down the way TSMC is. If they have actually mostly caught up to TSMC, props, but also, I wish they hadn't given up on EUV for so long. Instead they decided to ship chips overclocked so high they burn out in months.
- ajross 10mo agoI don't see how any of that substantiates "Panther Lake and 18A are just cost cutting efforts vs. Lunar Lake". It mostly just sounds like another boring platform flame.
- hnuser123456 10mo agoI'll let Intel speak for themselves here: https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/lunar-lakes-integrated-memory-is-an-expensive-one-off-intel-rejects-the-approach-for-future-cpus-due-to-margin-impact https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/lunar-lakes-...
- glzone1 10mo agoIf they are going to be the most broadly adopted AI platform where does that leave nvidia? What is the AI PC platform? The experience on windows with windows 11 for just the basic UI of the start menu leaves a lot to be desired, is copilot adoption on windows that popular and does it take advantage of this AI PC platform? Ryzen AI 400 mobile CPU chips are also releasing soon (though RocM is still blah I think) Nvidia is still playing in the AI space despite all the noise of others on their AI offerings - and despite intel hype, Nividias margins at least recently have been incredible (ie, people still using them) so their platform hasn't yet been killed by intel's "most widely adoptoped" AI platform offering
- Traster 10mo agoFirstly, >Series 3 will be the most broadly adopted and globally available AI PC platform Intel has ever delivered. The true competitor is Ryzen AI, Nvidia doesn't produce these integrated CPU/GPU/AI products in the PC segment at all.
- zamadatix 10mo agoHow broad your PC AI hardware adoption is matters little when the overwhelming majority of users use cloud hosted AI.
- zapnuk 10mo agoI assume its still x86-64? What actually makes it an AI platform? Some tight integration of an intel ARC GPU, similar to the Apple M series processors? They claim 2-5x performance for soem AI workloads. But aren't they still limited by memory? The same limitation as always in consumer hardware? I don't think it matters much if you're limited by a nvidia gpu with ~max 16gb or some new intel processor with similar memory. Nice to have more options though. Kinda wish the intel arc gpu would be developed into an alternative for self hosted LLMs. 70b models can be quite good but still difficult / slow to use self-hosted.
- vbezhenar 10mo agoThese processors have NPU (Neural Processing Unit) which is supposed to accelerate some small local neural networks. Nvidia RTX GPUs have much more powerful NPUs, so it's more about laptops without discrete GPU.
- distances 10mo agoAnd as far as I can see, it's a total waste of silicon. Anything running in it will anyway be so underpowered that it doesn't matter. It'd be better to dedicate the transistors to the GPU. The latest Ryzen mobile CPU line didn't improve performance compared to its predecessor (the integrated GPU is actually worse), and I think the NPU is to blame.
- wtallis 10mo agoIf you ask NVIDIA, inference should always run on the GPU. If you ask anybody else designing chips for consumer devices, they say there's a benefit to having a low-power NPU that's separate from the GPU.
- dragonwriter 10mo agoOkay, yeah, and those manufacturers’ opinions are both obvious reflections of market position independent of the merits, what do people who actually run inference say? (Also, the NPUs usually aren't any more separate from the GPU than tensor cores are separate from an Nvidia GPU, they are integrated with the CPU and iGPU.)
- sbinnee 10mo agoI will wait for the actual reviews from users. But I lost faith in Intel chips. I was in CES2024 and saw snapdragon X elite chip running a local LLM (llama I believe). How did it turn out? Users cannot use that laptop except for running an LLM. They had no plans for translation layer like Apple Rosetta. Intel would be different for sure in that regard, but I just don't think that it will fly against Ryzen AI chips or Apple silicon.
- ZuLuuuuuu 10mo agoIsn't it a bit exaggerating to say that users cannot use Snapdragon laptops except for running LLMs? Qualcomm and Microsoft already has a translation layer named Prism (not as good as Rosetta but pretty good nevertheless): https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/arm/apps-on-arm-x86-emulation https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/arm/apps-on-arm-x8... I agree with losing faith in Intel chips though.
- webdevver 10mo ago>Isn't it a bit exaggerating to say that users cannot use Snapdragon laptops except for running LLMs? I think maybe what OP meant was that the memory occupied by the model meant you couldn't do anything alongside inferecing, e.g. have a compile job or whatever running (unless you unload the model once you've done asking it questions.) to be honest, we could really do with RAM abundance. Imagine if 128GB ram became like 8GB ram is today - now that would normalize local LLM inferencing (or atleast, make a decent attempt.) ofcourse youd need the bandwidth too...
- blell 10mo agoPrism is not as good as Rosetta 2? At least Prism supports AVX.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- Numerlor 10mo agoLost faith from what? On x86 mobile Lunar lake chips are the clear best for battery life at the moment, and mobile arrowlake is competitive with amd's offerings. Only thing they're missing is a Strix halo equivalent but AMD messed that one up and there's like 2 laptops with it. The new intel node seems to be kinda weaker than tsmc's going by the frequency numbers of the CPUs, but what'll matter the most in a laptop is real battery life anyway
- cubefox 10mo agoAny speculation on what the equivalent TSMC node is for Intel 18A?
- tuananh 10mo agotsmc n2 i think (2nm)
- compounding_it 10mo agoIf that is the case then it's interesting how intel managed to catch up so quickly.
- chasil 10mo agoAfter their 7/10nm delay, they are bringing 2nm into production. They skipped 5nm and 3nm, and that is indeed an accomplishment. I hope the yeilds are high.
- aurareturn 10mo agoThey didn't skip it. They have Intel 7, Intel 4, Intel 3 nodes. Anyways, Intel's names do not equal to the same number on TSMC. They're usually 1 or 1.5 generation behind with the same name. So Intel 3 would be something like TSMC N6.
- Dylan16807 10mo agoWow, I didn't realize Intel was slacking on top of their node rename. Sure their "10nm" was ahead at the time, but if they'd left the numbers alone they'd be a much closer match to everyone else today instead of even further off.
- tromp 10mo agoCloser to n3 or n5 I would think. Intel's node numbering is far more aspirational than TSMCs.
- 10mo ago
- sandGorgon 10mo agothis doesnt have integrated ram like lunar lake right ?
- klardotsh 10mo agoNearly all modern SOCs have built in RAM now. Apple Silicon does it, AMD Strix Halo and beyond do it, Intel Lunar Lake does it, most ARM SOCs from vendors other than Apple do it… Now, unified memory shared freely between CPU and GPU would be cool, like Apple and AMD SH have, if that’s what you meant.
- notenlish 10mo agoIsnt Strix Halo and apple's m series a bit different. Iirc you need to choose how much ram will be allocated to the igpu, whereas on mac it is all handled dynamically.
- Tsiklon 10mo agoOn the Mac it's all dynamically handled. With Strix Halo there's two ways of going about it; either set how much memory you want allocated to GPU in BIOS (Less desirable), or set the memory allocation to the GPU to 512MB in the BIOS, and the driver will do it all dynamically much like on a Mac.
- adgjlsfhk1 10mo agostrix also does it dynamically, just with a limit (which is generally set to ~75% of your total RAM)
- einsteinx2 10mo agoYou can also change it manually on macOS [0], though yes by default it’s automatic but has a much lower limit (I think 2/3 is total RAM or something). [0]: https://github.com/ggml-org/llama.cpp/discussions/2182#discussioncomment-7698315 https://github.com/ggml-org/llama.cpp/discussions/2182#discu...
- wtallis 10mo ago
- makeitrain 10mo ago[flagged]
- tanh 10mo agoThe list of claims and what was tested in the comparison can be found here https://edc.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/performance/benchmarks/mobile/ https://edc.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/performance...
- shihab 10mo agoI was surprised by that defiant tone there in an official page. But it's missing actual numbers, which makes it all pretty strange.
- adrian_b 10mo agoThe numbers and the benchmarking conditions are in the PDF linked on that page: https://download.intel.com/newsroom/2026/CES2026/Intel-CES2026-Core-Ultra-Series-3-Press-Deck.pdf https://download.intel.com/newsroom/2026/CES2026/Intel-CES20...
- jauntywundrkind 10mo agoXe3 GPU could be super super super great. Xe2 is already very strong, and this could really be an incredible breakout moment. The CPU are also probably also fine! Intel is so far ahead with consumer multi-chip. AMD has done amazing with having an IOD+CCD (io / core complex dies) chiplet split up (basically having a northbridge on package), but is just trying to figure out how in 2027's Medusa Point they're going to make a decent mainline APU multi-chip, can't keep pushing monolithic APU dies like they have (but they've been excellent FWIW). Like Intel's been doing with sweet EIMB, breaking the work up already, and hopefully is reaping the reward here. Stashing some tiny / very low power cores on the "northbridge" die is a genius move that saves incredible power for light use, a big+little+tiny design that let's the whole CCD shut down while work happens. Some very nice high core configs. Panther Lake could be super exciting. 18A with backside power delivery / "PowerVia" could really be a great leap for Intel! Nice big solid power delivery wins, that could potentially really help. My fingers are so very crossed. Really hope the excitement for this future arriving pans out, at least somewhat! Their end of year Nova Lake with b(ig)LLC and an even bigger newer NPU6 (any new features beyond TOps?) is also exciting. I hope that also includes the incredible Thunderbolt/USB4 connectivity Intel has typically included on mobile chips but not holding my breath. Every single mobile part is capable of 4X Thunderbolt 5. That is sick. I really hope AMD realizes the ball is in it's court on interconnects at some point!! 20 Lane PCIe configs are also very nice to have for mobile. Lunar Lake was quite good for what it was, very amazing well integrated chip, with great characteristics. As a 2+4 big/little it wasnt enough for developers. But great consumer chip. I think Intel's really going to have a great total system design with Panther Lake. Yes! https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/intel-doubles-down-on-gaming-with-panther-lake-claims-76-percent-faster-gaming-performance-new-x-series-chips-deliver-up-to-12-xe3-cores https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/intel-double...
- wmf 10mo agoFor a laptop chip the optimal dsesign is a single die. Apple, Qualcomm, and AMD agree on this. Chiplets are a last resort when you can't afford a single die due to yield or mask costs.
- 10mo ago
- fancyfredbot 10mo agoTwo things stand out to me: 1) Battery life claims are specific and very impressive, possibly best in class 2) Performance claims are vague and uninspiring. Either this is an awful press release or this generation isn't taking back the performance crown.
- w-m 10mo ago“With Series 3, we are laser focused on improving power efficiency, adding more CPU performance, a bigger GPU in a class of its own, more AI compute and app compatibility you can count on with x86.” – Jim Johnson, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Client Computing Group, Intel A laser focus on five things is either business nonsense or optics nonsense. Who was this written for?
- HDThoreaun 10mo agoWell this is the consumer electronic showcase so I would say consumers who are looking at buying laptops
- throwaway81523 10mo agoCan't we just focus on everything?
- DannyBee 10mo agoI think you mean laser focus on everything. Maybe they have a prism.
- simulator5g 10mo agoI’m sure they have something like a prism. Perhaps, a PRISM.
- dudeinjapan 10mo agoMeanwhile they are NOT laser-focusing on doing more of Lunar Lake, with its on-package memory and glorious battery life. Intel called it a “one-off mistake”, it’s the best mistake Intel ever made.
- bryanlarsen 10mo agoIntel is claiming that Panther lake has 30% better battery life than Lunar Lake.
- akkad123 10mo ago[dead]
- alecco 10mo agoI really, really want Intel to do well. I like their open oneAPI for unified CPU-GPU programming. It would be nice to have some competition/alternative against NVIDIA and TSMC. But I wont be investing time and money again on Intel while the same anti-engineering beancounter board is still there. For example, they never owned the recent Raptor Lake serious hardware issues and they never showed clients how this will never happen again. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raptor_Lake#Instability_and_degradation_issue https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raptor_Lake#Instability_and_de... "Intel has decided not to halt sales or recall any units"
- skystarman 10mo agoGreat point. This Board nearly destroyed one of the world's great tech companies and they are STILL in charge after not being held accountable or admitting their mistakes over the past decade + The only reason INTC isn't in a death spiral is because the US Govt. won't let that happen
- etempleton 10mo agoThey did reshuffle their board a bit after firing Pat to bring in some people with industry and domain expertise and not just academics / outside industry folks.
- phkahler 10mo agoClock speed? Hyperthreading? AVX512? APX?
- icegreentea2 10mo agoThere's a link to product brief PDF from the bottom of the press release. Page 9 and 10 have product tables. https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/content-details/871378/intel-core-ultra-series-3-processors-product-brief.html https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/content-details/8713... P-Core Max Frequency 5.1 on the highest end, and the lowest at 4.4. There's no hyperthreading: https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/processors/now-youve-got-something-thats-a-little-bit-easier-and-less-expensive-and-can-go-a-little-bit-faster-intels-lead-x86-cpu-architect-explains-why-its-not-bringing-hyper-threading-back-for-panther-lake/ https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/processors/now-youve-got-so... Dunno about AVX and APX. They're not making it easy to find, so... probably not.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 10mo agoAVX 2 according to: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/245716/intel-core-ultra-5-processor-322-12m-cache-up-to-4-40-ghz/specifications.html https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/245716/...
- aseipp 10mo agoNo AVX512, client SKUs are just going to go straight to APX/AVX10, and they are confirmed for Nova Lake which is 2H 2026 (it will probably be "Core Ultra Series 4" or whatever I guess).
- kleinmatic 10mo agoI wonder how much of the funding that led to this came from the Biden-era Chips & Science Act? I can't find a straight answer amid the AI slop and marketing hype about both of them. Update: Looks like Trump admin converted billions in unpaid CHIPS act grants into an equity in Intel last year https://techhq.com/news/intel-turnaround-strategy-panther-lake-analysis/ https://techhq.com/news/intel-turnaround-strategy-panther-la...
- daneel_w 10mo agoIs Intel's 18A (~2nm) their own hardware or did they acquire ASML equipment for this plant?
- smallmancontrov 10mo agoIntel never made EUV machines, never claimed to make EUV machines, never aspired to make EUV machines, and have run multiple marketing campaigns bragging about the ASML EUV machines they purchased.
- wtallis 10mo agoAnd even prior to EUV, Intel didn't make their own lithography tools.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- T-A 10mo agohttps://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/semiconductors/intel-installs-industrys-first-commercial-high-na-euv-lithography-tool-asml-twinscan-exe-5200b-sets-the-stage-for-14a https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/semiconductors/in...
- GeorgeOldfield 10mo agox86? max 96GB RAM? is this a joke?
- wtallis 10mo agoIt's 96 GB max when using LPDDR5, or 128 GB when using DDR5. These are consumer chips with the same 128-bit memory bus width that x86 consumer chips have been using for many years, and this is a laptop-specific product line so they're not trying to squeeze in as many ranks of memory as possible.
- etempleton 10mo agoThis is a laptop specific product. The next desktop variant will be later in 2026 or 2027 and I imagine that will support more Ram.