Intel transforms the laptop CPU market with Core Ultra 200H/HX

Intel’s making AI mainstream with its new Core Ultra 200H/HX Arrow Lake CPUs

If one thing is clear at CES 2025, it’s that the PC market is becoming the AI PC market. AI workloads are becoming increasingly relevant, and PC users need AI compute to accelerate them. That’s where Intel comes in with its new Arrow Lake Core Ultra 200H/HX CPUs.

This rule is at the core of Intel’s latest AI processors: “A great AI PC starts with a great PC.” As important as AI can be, it must be combined with a strong PC experience. AI needs to be additive. It can’t take away from the core PC experience. That’s why Intel’s new Arrow Lake mobile CPUs aren’t just focused on AI; they are focused on improving Intel’s PC fundamentals.

On the AI front, Intel is working with ISVs (Independent Software Vendors) to build the hardware they want. Today, AI workloads take place on a CPU, GPU, or NPU. As time as marched on, NPUs have become increasingly important. This is why all of Intel’s new Arrow Lake CPUs feature a dedicated NPU. For the first time, all of Intel’s latest processors have an NPU for AI acceleration.

Arrow Lake bring AI PCs to new markets

At CES, Intel has revealed their new Core Ultra 200U, 200H, and 200HX processors. These target balanced thin and light notebooks, performance then and light notebooks, and enthusiast notebooks, respectively. All of these CPUs use Intel’s Arrow Lake architecture and feature Lion Cove P-cores and Skymont E-cores.

Presenting the Intel Core Ultra 200H series

Intel’s new Core Ultra 200H series replaces its Meteor Lake CPU lineup. With these CPUs, Intel has greatly enhanced its silicon’s AI capabilities and delivered a boost to both single-threaded and multi-threaded CPU performance.

With Core Ultra 200H, Intel promises a greater than 15% boost in single-threaded and multi-threaded CPU performance over Meteor Lake. Intel also promised a greater than 15% boost in GPU performance. Furthermore, XMX units have been added to the GPUs of Core Ultra 200H CPUs, giving them enhanced AI capabilities.

Thanks to these added XMX units, these new CPUs can deliver up to 99 TOPS of platform AI performance. That’s a 2.5x increase over Meteor Lake.

With their new 200H series CPUs, Intel has not increased the core counts of their new CPUs to enhance their performance. All performance gains in this generation come from enhancements to clock speeds and enhancements to Intel’s CPU and GPU architectures.

Note that the GPU on Intel’s Ultra 9 200H has 77 TOPS of AI performance. This is where the bulk of this CPU’s AI performance lies.

Intel Core Ultra 200HX Intel’s Enthusiast mobile CPUs

For Intel’s Enthusiast notebook range, the company has its Core Ultra 200HX series. These CPUs are a lot like Intel’s desktop Arrow Lake processors, featuring up to eight P-cores and sixteen E-cores. These CPUs replace Intel’s Raptor Lake-H Refresh CPUs, adding an NPU to the series for added AI performance.

The main benefit of these new CPUs is their increased power efficiency. These CPUs deliver more performance with less power. That’s critical for mobile workstation performance and for delivering a longer battery life for enthusiast systems. Performance-wise, these CPUs promise a greater than 5% boost in single-threaded performance and a greater than 20% increase in multi-threaded performance.

These new CPUs will be found in enthusiast gaming and workstation notebooks paired with the latest discrete GPUs. Intel expects these systems to become available in late Q1 2025. More information about these systems will be available soon.

We expect to hear more about these PCs over the coming days. This will likely be after Nvidia’s CES 2025 keynote, where the company is expected to reveal new graphics cards.

Below, we can see the specifications of Intel’s Core Ultrs 200HX series. In a sense, these CPUs are the mobile versions of Intel’s Arrow Lake Desktop CPU lineup, specifically their K-series lineup. With these CPUs, Intel is including overclocking features on specific systems and more control options for users to tinker with.

Note that the integrated GPUs within these processors do not feature Intel’s AI-focused XMX units. This makes sense, as these CPUs were made to be paired with discrete GPUs. These discrete GPUs are expected to handle GPU-focused AI workloads.

The Core Ultra 200H/HX series deliver major improvements to Intel’s laptop CPU lineup

Overall, Intel’s new Arrow Lake mobile lineup achieves three things. First, it delivers AI performance across its range with its integrated NPU. Second, Intel is boosting the single-threaded and multi-threaded performance of its newest systems. Finally, Intel is delivering increased performance per watt, allowing users to experience a longer battery life than before.

Together, these changes deliver systems that are faster, more feature-rich, and longer-lasting than before. All of these are welcome changes. Together, they are transformative.

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