Intel debuts Core Ultra processors at AI Everywhere event

Intel (INTC) on Thursday took the wraps off of its new Core Ultra processors for ultrathin laptops during its AI Everywhere event in New York.

The chips, which are available in new laptops starting today, pack a number of big firsts for Intel, including a chiplet design and neural processing unit. All of this comes as CEO Pat Gelsinger seeks to reinvigorate the semiconductor giant.

The Core Ultra processors will be available in three different configurations: the Core Ultra 5, Core Ultra 7, and Core Ultra 9. The Core Ultra 5 and Core Ultra 7 are available in new PCs now, while the Core Ultra 9 will land in the coming months.

Chiplets, or as Intel calls them, tiles, are a means of breaking up a single chip into different components, which can easily be swapped in and out depending on needs. The Core Ultra line has a compute tile, graphics tile, I/O tile, and SoC tile.

All of this is meant to make Intel’s Core Ultra chips more powerful and power efficient as it works to claw back market share from the likes of AMD (AMD) — and keep Qualcomm (QCOM) and Apple (AAPL) off its back.

Chiplets aren’t a new concept, though. AMD is already using them in its own chips, but it’s a big move for Intel and could provide a boost to the company’s sales as it seeks to prove it can innovate as fast as its rivals. Intel saw revenue of $63.1 billion in fiscal 2022 versus $79 billion in 2021.

The tiles themselves have a number of interesting capabilities. The compute tiles pack the chip’s performance cores, which focus on power-hungry tasks, and efficiency cores, which take over when you’re running less demanding programs. The SoC tile, meanwhile, gets Intel’s new Low Power Island, which can run tasks that require even less power.

The SoC tile also comes with Intel’s NPU, which fits into the event’s AI Everywhere theme. The NPU is meant to handle some onboard AI tasks, But don’t expect to be running something like ChatGPT directly on your laptop. That kind of functionality is still incredibly process intensive and has to be performed in the cloud.

It’s worth noting that AMD, Qualcomm, and Apple already offer NPUs in their processors.

As far as performance goes, Intel says its high-end Core Ultra 7165H chip beats out the likes of AMD’s Ryzen 7 7840U chip, Apple’s M3 chip, Qualcomm’s 8cx Gen 3 chip, and its own Core i7-1370P in terms of multithreaded performance.

The company also says that the Ultra 7165H uses less power than AMD’s Ryzen 7 7840U while doing everything from streaming Netflix to watching 4K video and browsing the web. Gaming performance, the company said, also gets a bump thanks to the Ultra’s onboard Arc graphics processing unit.

The Core Ultra line is a large part of Gelsinger’s push to return Intel to its former glory. The company has had a rough 2023 so far, including a 36% drop in revenue in Q1. Since then, the company has pared those declines, with revenue falling 15% in Q2 and 8% in Q3.

The company, like other chip makers, has been struggling to overcome a precipitous fall in computer sales after a massive burst of customer purchases at the onset of the pandemic when consumers needed new computers to work and play from home.

But as many of those systems begin to age, chip manufacturers are expecting consumers to once again search for new laptops and desktops, driving sales.

Intel is also contending with Nvidia’s rise as an AI powerhouse. Santa Clara-based Nvidia has become the go-to chip developer for AI accelerators. That’s also sent its share price soaring more than 228% year to date as of Wednesday. Shares of AMD are up 113%, while Intel shares are up 68%.

Daniel Howley is the tech editor at Yahoo Finance. He's been covering the tech industry since 2011. You can follow him on Twitter @DanielHowley.

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