Intel Lunar Lake CPU with a curious configuration spotted running Windows

An Intel Lunar Lake engineering sample CPU has been spotted running Windows. That’s hardly surprising during the development phase of any CPU, but this one is made more interesting given the screenshot reveals some key specifications regarding its cache configuration and Hyperthreading (or lack thereof).

The leak comes courtesy of XZiar, (via @9550pro and Tom’s Hardware). It shows a screenshot of the Windows Task Manager featuring some specifications of a Lunar Lake A1 engineering sample. The tested CPU has eight cores and eight threads, meaning Hyperthreading is not present. It’s believed the core configuration consists of four P-cores and four E-cores.

((Image credit: Xziar/Zhihu))

Its base clock is 1.8GHz while its boost clock is 2.8GHz. There’s nothing unusual about that as the purpose of early engineering samples is for testing basic functionality, compatibility and debugging rather than performance. What’s really interesting however, is its cache configuration.

The chip in question reportedly has 14MB of L2 cache, but only 12MB of L3 cache. Usually a higher level cache would be much larger. There are several possibilities as to why that might be the case. Firstly, it could just be the Task Manager is reading it incorrectly. Other possibilities are that some cache is disabled, or Intel is doing something really different with Lunar Lake’s architecture, perhaps in conjunction with on-package LPDDR5X memory.

It’s important not to assume too much from this one screenshot. A1 silicon indicates that its a very early sample. Specifications and configurations can change, and clock speeds are sure to increase as the kinks are ironed out.

Lunar Lake is a mobile oriented design, with low power and efficiency being a key focus. It’ll have an AI NPU (of course) and improved graphics capabilities thanks to its Battlemage iGPU. We’ll have to wait and see what kinds of devices Lunar Lake chips are housed in, but handhelds and ultra-portable devices are surely on the menu.

Lunar Lake will launch alongside Arrow Lake, which is the replacement for current 14th Gen Raptor Lake CPUs. Given the Meteor Lake architecture is out and about in laptops, there’s going to be a lot of lakes to wade through towards the end of 2024.