Intel debuts laptop silicon that doesn't qualify for Microsoft's 'Copilot+ PC' badge

CES Intel has announced new silicon for the edge, and products for laptops that lack one.

The new laptop silicon, aka Core Ultra 2, aka Arrow Lake, comes in three flavors: the high-performance Core Ultra 200HX and 200H series for gamers and content creators, and the power-efficient 200U processors for ultraportables.

Like Intel's earlier crop of Arrow Lake desktop chips, they feature neural processing units (NPUs) designed for AI workloads.

But they're relatively wimpy NPUs that mean the new chips won’t earn PCs that use them the “Copilot+ PCs” label that Microsoft uses to designate “the fastest, most intelligent Windows PCs” – machines with NPUs capable of performing 40+ trillion operations per second (TOPS).

Intel's announcement of the new kit mentions “platform TOPS” and performance of 99 TOPS when GPU, NPU, and CPU all work together.

Another Intel document states that the 200H and 200HX NPUs max out at just 13 TOPS, while the 200U’s NPU deliver just 11 TOPS.

Qualcomm and AMD claim their desktop systems boast NPUs capable of 45 and 50 TOPS performance respectively.

Intel has nonetheless proclaimed it enjoys “leadership” in AI PCs.

"The strength of our AI PC product innovation, combined with the breadth and scale of our hardware and software ecosystem across all segments of the market, is empowering users with a better experience in the traditional ways we use PCs," Intel interim co-CEO and CEO of Intel Products Michelle Johnston Holthaus said of the new chips.

"Intel is only going to continue bolstering its AI PC product portfolio in 2025 and beyond," Holthaus added.

Here's a look at the HX series of Arrow Lake parts.

Intel does have one family of chips with an NPU that meets Microsoft's standards: the Lunar Lake processors released in September 2024. The NPUs in those devices reach 48 TOPS.

Intel’s announcement of the new Arrow Lake kit nonetheless claimed the Lunar Lake kit, aka the Core Ultra 200V, demonstrate its leadership – in part because they include an updated version of the vPro security and management features the company recommends to business PC buyers. But that vPro upgrade was announced last February.

The new H Series Arrow Lake processors detailed below fall well short of the 48 TOPS mark.

The U series Arrow Lake silicon includes the following models.

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Desktops and edges

Alongside its announcement of laptop parts that lack an edge, Intel announced products for the desktop and the edge.

The desktop products are new members of the Core Ultra 200S series, which now includes a dozen 65-watt and 35-watt offerings for mainstream desktop users. Intel's product brief [PDF] doesn’t list the new models but suggests they'll do well in educational, retail, healthcare, and manufacturing environments.

For less demanding workloads, Intel also announced a pair of new Core 3 processors and the same number of plain vanilla Intel Processors – aka Twin Lake – aimed at low-end laptops and low-power embedded devices and which improve on the clock speeds offered in Alder Lake by a couple of hundred megahertz.

Intel hasn’t claimed those products are market leaders. It has claimed products built on its 18A process, which is roughly equivalent to what rival foundries would describe as a 1.8 nanometer process, will represent a new level of chipmaking sophistication.

The chipmaker's CES announcement revealed its already produced sample products made with 18A and plans "volume production in the second half of 2025."

The company is yet to detail performance of those products, but perhaps by CES 2026 they’ll make its claims of leadership more credible. ®