Intel’s future laptops will have memory sticks again

Nov 02, 2024 12:51 AM - 4 months ago 173084

Intel is rolling backmost 1 of the biggest changes to its laptop chips successful years. Remember really this fall’s Lunar Lake laptops ditched the thought of representation sticks, putting a fixed magnitude of RAM connected the processor package instead? Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger now says that turned retired to beryllium a financial mistake, and Intel won’t do it again. Oh, and he whitethorn beryllium axing desktop GPUs, too.

Future Intel generations of chips, including Panther Lake and Nova Lake, won’t person baked-on memory. “It’s not a bully measurement to tally the business, truthful it really is for america a one-off pinch Lunar Lake,” said Gelsinger connected Intel’s Q3 2024 net call, arsenic spotted by VideoCardz.

“We’ll build it successful a much accepted measurement pinch representation off-package, and the CPU and I/O capabilities successful the package. But measurement representation will beryllium off-package successful the roadmap going forward,” he said.

It whitethorn look a spot of a head-scratcher, because Intel touted Lunar Lake’s on-package representation arsenic a competitory advantage erstwhile it came to laptop artillery life — boasting that it reduced the powerfulness depletion of moving information done the strategy by 40 percent.

But connected the net call, Gelsinger suggested that Lunar Lake was expected to beryllium much of an experiment, alternatively than the halfway of Intel’s laptop efforts it became:

Lunar Lake was initially designed to beryllium a niche merchandise that we wanted to execute highest capacity and awesome artillery life capability, and past AI PC occurred. And pinch AI PC, it went from being a niche merchandise to a beautiful high-volume product.

Don’t we each want the champion capacity and artillery life from our laptops? Perhaps — but Lunar Lake became a problem for Intel because it relied excessively overmuch connected outer partners for the representation chips and wafers from rival TSMC. Last quarter, erstwhile Intel announced its wide layoffs and restructuring, Intel’s CFO revealed that Lunar Lake was excessively costly to thief move Intel’s fortunes around. Gelsinger says Lunar Lake hasn’t shipped 100 cardinal units aliases thing for illustration that, but it became “a meaningful information of our full mix.”

Unfortunately for PC graphics enthusiasts, it seems for illustration Intel’s discrete GPU efforts are likewise seen arsenic a grounded research now. Gelsinger says he’s focused connected simplifying the company’s user products now, and dedicated graphics cards / chips are apparently connected the chopping block. He said:

How are we handling graphics? That is progressively becoming large, integrated graphics capabilities, truthful little request for discrete graphics successful the marketplace going forward.

If Intel axes them, it won’t travel arsenic a immense astonishment — its gaming graphics inaugural only had very constricted success pinch standalone cards, and only ever managed to play at the ultra-budget end of the field, which AMD is now threatening moreover more.

But it’d beryllium a spot of a shame if Intel ne'er manages to get past the missive A — Alchemist — and the gamers waiting for Intel’s Battlemage dGPUs ne'er negociate to spot its sophomore effort. At slightest Intel’s Arc graphics efforts, including Battlemage, did trickle down to the progressively powerful integrated graphics aboard its laptop chips.

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