Intel Core Ultra 200S series processors for desktop PCs, codenamed Arrow Lake, were launched by the company on Thursday. This is the first desktop offering by the chip maker with a dedicated neural processing unit (NPU). With 36 trillion operations per second (TOPS) performance claimed, these will also be the first Intel chipsets to power AI PCs. Apart from 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 in retail and online stores as well as via OEM partner systems starting October 24.

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 as well as five other desktop processors. All of these feature 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 higher performance in multi-threaded workloads compared to the previous generation. The processors also sport a built-in Iris Xe GPU.

Intel highlighted that the Arrow Lake processors are focused towards power efficiency, and offer up to 58 percent lower package power while running everyday apps and up to 165W lower consumption of system power during gaming.

Coming to the NPU, the dedicated system 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 chip maker also claimed that the Core Ultra 200S series can offer up to 50 percent faster performance in AI-enabled creator applications compared to competing processors.

For 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. Additionally, they also support two integrated Thunderbolt 4 ports, Wi-Fi 6E, and Bluetooth 5.3.