Intel Launches Low-End SoC Processor

A few weeks back, Apple caused a stir with the announcement of the MacBook Neo, a $599 notebook that had the physical features of a MacBook but a low-end processor — the same one used in the iPhone 16 — and something not typically associated with Apple products, namely, affordability.

And now Intel has its response in the Core Series 3 processor, codenamed Wildcat Lake. It fills out the line started by the Core Ultra Series 3 lineup of high-end, high-performance products with a high-end price. Core Series 3 is meant to offer some of the features found in Ultra but at an affordable price.

The Wildcat Lake line is in the same product family as Panther Lake and featured under the Core Series 3 family. The only differentiator in the processor names is Ultra. Wildcat Lake SoCs feature the same processor architectures (Cougar Cove P-Cores / Darkmont E-Cores), the same GPU architecture (Xe3), and the same neural processing unit (NPU) as Panther Lake (NPU5). 

The only thing that’s changed, which is the case with every cost-optimized variant, is the difference in the overall specs and capabilities of each chip. Panther Lake, for example, has a mix of 12 P-cores and E-cores while Wildcat Lake has just six P-cores and E-cores total.

The NPU is the dedicated AI processor separate from the CPU. On Panther Lake, the NPU can handle about 180 TOPS, or trillions of operations per second, the benchmark used to measure AI performance. On Wildcat Lake, performance is around 40 TOPS.

That said, the Intel Core Series 3 offers up to 2.1x faster creation and productivity, up to 64% lower processor power, and up to 2.7x AI GPU performance over the previous generation of processors, the Intel Core 7 150U.

So while the MacBook Neo is based on a repurposed smartphone SoC, Intel took a high-end chip and whittled it down to reduce power consumption. The proof will be in the inevitable benchmarks. Intel said it has “70+ designs” from partners such as Acer, ASUS, Dell Technologies, Lenovo, Samsung, and more.