Note: This feature was first published on 6 January 2025.
While Intel’s management is facing strong pressure by the changing forces for AI dominance in the server, hyperscale computing, cloud computing and AI inference/training domains, Intel wasted no haste to push on with their client, commercial and edge computing arenas where they’ve a strong market share and have had a robust roadmap in place.
Today, Intel debuts high performance laptop parts – Intel Core Ultra 200H series and the Core Ultra 200HX series - for performance seekers and enthusiasts, while also filling in the low-power premium thin-and-light laptop markets with the Intel Core Ultra 200U series. All of these are based on the Arrow Lake architecture.
Riding high with the Arrow Lake architecture
The Core Ultra Series 2 might have begun with the unusual but powerful Lunar Lake processors (Core Ultra 200V), but Intel had already set sights on Arrow Lake that improved on it with a more scalable, improved design and manufacturing process that debuted first on the desktop-oriented Core Ultra 200S.
In a nutshell, Arrow Lake has more compute tiles manufactured externally at TSMC, but for the rest of us more concerned with features and gains, Arrow Lake boasted a revised Lion Core performance core (P-core) and Skymount efficiency core (E-core), an upgraded Intel Xe integrated GPU that’s far faster than predecessors and a much more capable NPU. All the ingredients that are necessary for it to conquer the next-level of AI PC ecosystem across a broad spectrum. Intel currently forecasts that there will be a higher dependency on NPUs and that’s only logical considering AI features are still at an infancy and only really took off in a big way in 2024. You can catch up reading more about Arrow Lake highlights over here.
In fact, Intel even pits the new Core Ultra 200H against NVIDIA’s Jetson AGX Orin developer kit that’s squarely aimed at edge computing AI needs and claims it ranks much better than NVIDIA’s ‘paper specs’. Of course, the Jetson AGX Orin is a much more compact package than the Intel Core Ultra 200H, while the Intel counterpart is also a more versatile where platform choices are concerned, so we’ll take those claims with a pinch of salt for now until we witness real deployments.
Intel Core Ultra 200H Series – Aimed at next-gen premium creator laptops
Image: Intel
A direct replacement for Meteor Lake based H-series processors, the H-class series have for a while now been a clear option for professionals, creators and enthusiasts alike with at least 16 processor cores on the high-end SKUs. Now on the Core Ultra 200H series, the same 16 cores (six P-cores, eight E-cores and two low-power E-cores) bring on the benefits of the Arrow Lake architecture with over 15% performance improvement across the board. It’s interesting that Lunar Lake forewent any LP E-cores, but it has made a comeback on the Intel Core Ultra 200H. This probably meant that Intel didn’t see it necessity when there was only a total of eight cores and was already on fairly advanced manufacturing process over Meteor Lake. However, with up to 16 cores on the H-series, it’s probably prudent to have LP-E cores to help offload tasks and rely on appropriate right-sized cores to continue maintaining a decent overall power draw (just 28W processor base power for all SKUs except the Ultra 9 model that requires 45W).
Here are the processor SKUs at launch in February 2025:-
Intel Core Ultra 200H series processor SKUs
Intel Core Ultra 200HX Series – Aimed at mobile AI PC enthusiasts and gamers
Image: Intel
Of course, let’s not forget for pure gamers, a discrete GPU plays a far bigger role and the integrated GPU can take a backseat. This is exactly what they’ve done by upsizing the number of total processing cores with up to 24 cores – eight Performance-cores (P-cores) and 16 Efficient-cores (E-cores) – but have cut down on the GPU cores and are not part of the Intel Arc branding. This perfectly fine since the processor is designed to be paired with a discrete modern GPU.
Brute force is not all you get; remember, this class is for enthusiasts, gamers and tinkerers. Accordingly, the new Intel Core Ultra 200HX offers the following features but limited to the OEM laptop manufacturer making them available:-
- Compute overclocking for P-cores and E-cores.
- Intel Extreme Memory Profile (XMP) support for DDR5 SODIMM overclocking.
- New overclocking interfaces, including die-to-die and fabric and controls like 16.6 megahertz ratios.
- Intel Extreme Tuning Utility with one-click overclocking using the Intel Speed Optimizer feature
Intel Core Ultra 200HX series-powered systems will become available in the first half of 2025, with more details to come closer to system availability.
Intel Core Ultra 200U Series – Aimed at a balanced, modern, value-oriented laptop
Laptops based on the Lunar Lake Core 200V processors didn’t come cheap, but this is where the new Arrow Lake oriented Intel Core Ultra 200U series mobile processors featuring up to two P-cores and eight E-cores, Intel Xe LPG graphics, and up to 24 platform TOPS at just 15W processor base power could fit the role nicely with a balance of performance, power efficiency and price. Here are the processor SKUs at launch in February 2025:-
Image: Intel