Changing the branding of your ubiquitous mobile processors may not seem smart, but Intel obviously wants to differentiate its new laptop CPUs that come with an integrated neural processing unit (NPU). Billed as Intel Core Ultra (while also dropping the “i” from the model numbers), these chips also feature Intel Arc integrated graphics with eight cores.
Intel claims that these chips are faster than the competition by up to 11% for multi-thread performance. No chipmaker is going to introduce new chips, and say they are slower, so there’s that. But one thing caught my eye — Intel says AI-enhanced applications such as Adobe Premiere Pro are running 40% faster on its Core Ultra chips compared with the competition. That seems like a huge gain, to be honest.
If you’re wondering when you’ll find laptops powered by Intel Core Ultra, the good news is that these computers are already shipping (in the US). Expect to see notebooks from the usual suspects such as Asus, Acer, MSI, and Lenovo. However,…
