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Intel Core Ultra Series 3 Debut as First Built on Intel 18A

newsroom.intel.com

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Re: Intel Core Ultra Series 3 Debut as First Built on Intel 18A

#11

Post by octoberfranklin »

DrammBA wrote: post #2

> Today at CES, Intel unveiled Intel Core Ultra Series 3 processors, the first AI PC platform built on Intel 18A process technology that was designed and manufactured in the United States. Powering over 200 designs from leading, global partners, Series 3 will be the most broadly adopted and globally available AI PC platform Intel has ever delivered. What in the world is this disaster of an opening paragraph? From the…

Laptop names are even worse:

> Are ZBooks good or do I want an OmniBook or ProBook? Within ZBook, is Ultra or Fury better? Do I want a G1a or a G1i? Oh you sell ZBook Firefly G11, I liked that TV show, is that one good?

https://geohot.github.io/blog/jekyll/update/2025/11/29/bikes...

Re: Intel Core Ultra Series 3 Debut as First Built on Intel 18A

#13

Post by klardotsh »

sandGorgon wrote: post #10

this doesnt have integrated ram like lunar lake right ?

Nearly all modern SOCs have built in RAM now. Apple Silicon does it, AMD Strix Halo and beyond do it, Intel Lunar Lake does it, most ARM SOCs from vendors other than Apple do it…

Now, unified memory shared freely between CPU and GPU would be cool, like Apple and AMD SH have, if that’s what you meant.

Re: Intel Core Ultra Series 3 Debut as First Built on Intel 18A

#14

Post by chrismorgan »

jmward01 wrote: post #5
DrammBA wrote: post #2

> Today at CES, Intel unveiled Intel Core Ultra Series 3 processors, the first AI PC platform built on Intel 18A process technology that was designed and manufactured in the United States. Powering over 200 designs from leading, global partners, Series 3 will be the most broadly adopted and globally available AI PC platform Intel has ever delivered. What in the world is this disaster of an opening paragraph? From the…

I think I have given up on chip naming. I honestly can't tell anymore there are so many modifiers on the names these days. I assume 9 is better than 7 right? Right?

> I assume 9 is better than 7 right? Right?

Oh, the number of times I’ve heard someone assume their five- or ten-year-old machine must be powerful because it’s an i7… no, the i3-14100 (released two years ago) is uniformly significantly superior to the i7-9700 (released five years before that), and only falls behind the i9-9900 in multithreaded performance.

Within the same product family and generation, I expect 9 is better than 7, but honestly it wouldn’t surprise me to find counterexamples.

Re: Intel Core Ultra Series 3 Debut as First Built on Intel 18A

#15

Post by distances »

vbezhenar wrote: post #9
zapnuk wrote: post #6

I assume its still x86-64? What actually makes it an AI platform? Some tight integration of an intel ARC GPU, similar to the Apple M series processors? They claim 2-5x performance for soem AI workloads. But aren't they still limited by memory? The same limitation as always in consumer hardware? I don't think it matters much if you're limited by a nvidia gpu with ~max 16gb or some new intel processor with similar memo…

These processors have NPU (Neural Processing Unit) which is supposed to accelerate some small local neural networks. Nvidia RTX GPUs have much more powerful NPUs, so it's more about laptops without discrete GPU.

And as far as I can see, it's a total waste of silicon. Anything running in it will anyway be so underpowered that it doesn't matter. It'd be better to dedicate the transistors to the GPU.

The latest Ryzen mobile CPU line didn't improve performance compared to its predecessor (the integrated GPU is actually worse), and I think the NPU is to blame.

Re: Intel Core Ultra Series 3 Debut as First Built on Intel 18A

#17

Post by ZuLuuuuuu »

sbinnee wrote: post #7

I will wait for the actual reviews from users. But I lost faith in Intel chips. I was in CES2024 and saw snapdragon X elite chip running a local LLM (llama I believe). How did it turn out? Users cannot use that laptop except for running an LLM. They had no plans for translation layer like Apple Rosetta. Intel would be different for sure in that regard, but I just don't think that it will fly against Ryzen AI chips or…

Isn't it a bit exaggerating to say that users cannot use Snapdragon laptops except for running LLMs? Qualcomm and Microsoft already has a translation layer named Prism (not as good as Rosetta but pretty good nevertheless): https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/arm/apps-on-arm-x8...

I agree with losing faith in Intel chips though.

Re: Intel Core Ultra Series 3 Debut as First Built on Intel 18A

#19

Post by [deleted] »

sbinnee wrote: post #7

I will wait for the actual reviews from users. But I lost faith in Intel chips. I was in CES2024 and saw snapdragon X elite chip running a local LLM (llama I believe). How did it turn out? Users cannot use that laptop except for running an LLM. They had no plans for translation layer like Apple Rosetta. Intel would be different for sure in that regard, but I just don't think that it will fly against Ryzen AI chips or…

[deleted]

Re: Intel Core Ultra Series 3 Debut as First Built on Intel 18A

#20

Post by gambiting »

chrismorgan wrote: post #14
jmward01 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I have given up on chip naming. I honestly can't tell anymore there are so many modifiers on the names these days. I assume 9 is better than 7 right? Right?

> I assume 9 is better than 7 right? Right? Oh, the number of times I’ve heard someone assume their five- or ten-year-old machine must be powerful because it’s an i7… no, the i3-14100 (released two years ago) is uniformly significantly superior to the i7-9700 (released five years before that), and only falls behind the i9-9900 in multithreaded performance. Within the same product family and generation, I expect 9 is…

>>Within the same product family and generation, I expect 9 is better than 7

Ah the good old Dell laptop engineering, where the i9 is better on paper, but in reality it throttles within 5 seconds of starting any significant load and the cpu nerfs itself below even i5 performance. Classic Dell move.

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