Just a few days ago, Intel's upcoming Arrow Lake-S desktop refresh was leaked again, and this time, we learned that it's allegedly coming in the second half of 2025. Paired with a new NPU and higher clock speeds, the refresh would still be binned on Intel's 20A node and bring modest improvements to the lineup. However, a new tweet from leaker Jaykihn now suggests that there won't be any upgrades to AI capability in Arrow Lake 2.0, as it's said to retain the same NPU present in the current processors.
Intel introduced the upgraded NPU 4 in last year's Lunar Lake. It leapfrogged the company's existing mobile chips to become Microsoft Copilot+ certified, as the NPU has up to 48 TOPS of AI performance. Arrow Lake, Intel's desktop lineup, has the older NPU 3, which debuted back in 2023 with Meteor Lake. As such, it falls short of the 40 TOPS minimum requirement for Copilot+ because NPU 3 is only capable of 11.5 TOPS. If the tipster is to be believed, even two years later, Intel's desktop CPUs will still be equipped with an outdated AI module that cannot compete with mobile-first offerings from AMD or Apple.
