Shut out of today’s Microsoft AI event, Intel tried to undermine Qualcomm’s big day by promoting its coming microprocessor family for Copilot+ PCs, the second-generation Core Ultra chips. Code-named Lunar Lake, these chips will arrive in Q3 in time for the holidays.
“With breakthrough power efficiency, the trusted compatibility of [the] x86 architecture, and the industry’s deepest catalog of software enablement across the CPU, GPU, and NPU, we will deliver the most competitive joint client hardware and software offering in our history with Lunar Lake and Copilot+,”
Intel executive vice president Michelle Johnston Holthaus said.
Microsoft paid lip service to Intel and AMD at Monday’s special event, just as it paid lip service to its PC maker partners. And none of these companies seemed all that happy about their demotions, with Microsoft focusing quite heavily on Qualcomm and its own in-house Surface PCs, both of which can best be described as also-rans in the PC industry.
But Qualcomm has seemingly done the impossible. Not only has it finally delivered a viable Arm chipset for Windows PCs after years of failing, its Snapdragon X chips are by all accounts equal to or superior to the Apple Silicon M3 processor that powers the industry darling MacBook Air. Unfortunately, in promoting that fact again and again during the one-hour event, Microsoft also implicitly condemned Intel for not creating similarly efficient PC chips with powerful NPUs for hardware accelerated on-device AI capabilities.
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