Intel Core Ultra 200S series desktop chipsets with dedicated NPU launched

Intel Core Ultra 200S series processors for desktop PCs, codenamed Arrow Lake, were launched by the company on Thursday. This is the chipmaker’s first desktop offering with a dedicated neural processing unit (NPU). With claimed performance of 36 trillion operations per second (TOPS), these will also be the first Intel chipsets to power AI PCs. In addition to improved performance via the NPU, the company also stated that the CPU and GPU have also received significant upgrades. The Intel Core Ultra 200S processors will be available from October 24 in retail and online stores, as well as through OEM partner systems.

Intel Core Ultra 200S series processors launched

In a press release, the tech giant detailed the latest processors. The Intel Core Ultra 200S processor family is led by the Intel Core Ultra 9 processor 285K and five other desktop processors. These are all equipped with up to eight performance cores (P-cores) and up to 16 efficient cores (E-cores). The company claimed that the new PC architecture offers up to 6 percent faster single-threaded performance and 14 percent faster performance on multi-threaded workloads compared to the previous generation. The processors also have a built-in Iris Xe GPU.

Intel highlighted that the Arrow Lake processors are focused on energy efficiency, offering up to 58 percent less packet power when running everyday apps and up to 165W lower system power when gaming.

The special system comes to the NPU and offers hardware-accelerated AI capabilities. While the company did not reveal the architecture, it claimed that the processors offer up to 36 TOPS of performance. The chipmaker also claimed that the Core Ultra 200S series can deliver up to 50 percent faster performance in AI-enabled creator applications compared to competing processors.

In terms of connectivity, the Intel Core Ultra 200S series desktop processors offer compatibility with up to 24 PCIe 4.0 lanes, up to eight SATA 3.0 ports, and up to 10 USB 3.2 ports. Moreover, they also support two integrated Thunderbolt 4 ports, Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3.