I highly doubt it, unless Intel/AMD falls flat on it's face again, and Pantherlake-U loses 35% of battery life over Lunarlake, meaning back to Meteorlake levels.
I mean, they already are flat on their face. Lunar Lake is less efficient than an M1 or a Cortex X3/4 phone in SpecINT, and less performant than a Dimensity 9400. The average SKU geekbench is about 2500-2900, which is basically the SDXE, but on N3B with a more expensive die and overall package with less MT. And it’s also behind the M3 even at the top SKU + using more power. The battery life isn’t actually better than SDXE either on similar laptops.
The windows compatibility and GPU are better which is why it’ll still sell, but all this really shows is Intel design is mediocre. Windows on Arm will be much better by 2025 H2 & 2026 anyway thanks both to time and Nvidia’s release of a chip. By that point I am skeptical how well Intel can compete with Nvidia/MediaTek or Qualcomm with better IP (on perf/W or peak performance they can guarantee without insane clock binning), probably also area etc, and Nvidia will have GPU IP to bring.
People also lament how N4P to N3B or N3E doesn’t change much but this is clearly BS with regard to frequency if not more. The 8 Gen 4’s baseline frequencies are like 4-4.4GHz, even if that’s at 9W for the top frequency as rumored, it’d blow out Lunar Lake on perf/W, and Qualcomm could ship that (4.2-4.4GHz) at baseline in laptops if they had used N3E (or when they do…) instead of the 3.4GHz base SKU they settled with on N4P. The XE2 will probably have 4.4GHz standard at ~ 10W and an IPC boost, lol.
Zen 5 with Strix was a joke and doesn’t offer major battery gains, nor is the ST particularly killer. It’s basically an X Elite 80 sku with better MT performance/W, worse battery life. And the ST still runs to 22-25W, lol, to roughly match SDXE or LNL at half that or less. That matters for responsiveness and efficiency (battery life in this case). And before someone brings up “uhh that’s the peak voltage” the 10W performance isn’t good either, it (the HX 370) loses quite a bit.
We are coming up on 4 years now after the M1. We’ve heard the “wait for Alder Lake, wait for Meteor Lake, and most notably, wait for Lunar Lake when Intel is on a TSMC node” — which aged just ok at best only due to X86 lock-in, and we’ve heard the ridiculous “AMD with 4/5NM” which aged poorly with Zen 4 which still didn’t have the kind of ST efficiency & battery life Arm SoCs do — and now it was Zen 5 — same thing.
It’s not going to change, and the trouble for them is as the X86 compatibility moat is broached,
others can offer more efficiency or performance with the same or even less area & budget, or better IP elsewhere (Nvidia GPU and even the new Immortalis IP looks killer)
or conversely the same efficiency and performance for less. (
For example,
Intel has no part they can put towards $600-900 laptops with long all-day battery life in real constraints but Qualcomm does with Purwa and the follow-up part in 2025, and with very similar ST and MT as Lunar Lake, actually even more MT. And AMD has the performance with the 8c Kraken but not the ST efficiency or battery life or even same cost at all.
And Qualcomm hasn’t even put E Cores in yet….)
FWIW, Panther Lake’s 8-12 core U series parts per exist50 will ditch the on-package RAM, ditch the too expensive (talk about penny pinching) PMICs. Lunar Lake is a big margin cut for Intel fwiw. Not sustainable.
Forecasters are notorious for assuming whatever trend is in motion will continue especially when it fits their bias.
I know Microsoft was pushing WoA sometimes to the detriment of the market recently. Intel and Microsoft have a very dysfunctional love/hate relationship where they blame each other for their problems not realizing they hate each other because they see their own flaws as if looking into a mirror.