Tuesday, June 18th 2024
TSMC Begins 3 nm Production for Intel's "Lunar Lake" and "Arrow Lake" Tiles
TSMC has commenced mass-production of chips for Intel on its 3 nm EUV FinFET foundry node, according to a report by Taiwan industry observer DigiTimes. Intel is using the TSMC 3 nm node for the compute tile of its upcoming Core Ultra 300 "Lunar Lake" processor. The company went into depth about "Lunar Lake" in its Computex 2024 presentation. While a disaggregated chiplet-based processor like "Meteor Lake," the new "Lunar Lake" chip sees the CPU cores, iGPU, NPU, and memory controllers sit on a single chiplet called the compute tile, built on the 3 nm node; while the SoC and I/O components are disaggregated the chip's only other chiplet, the SoC tile, which is built on the TSMC 6 nm node.
Intel hasn't gone into the nuts and bolts of "Arrow Lake," besides mentioning that the processor will feature the same "Lion Cove" P-cores and "Skymont" E-cores as "Lunar Lake," albeit arranged in a more familiar ringbus configuration, where the E-core clusters share L3 cache with the P-cores (something that doesn't happen on "Lunar Lake"). "Arrow Lake" also features a iGPU based on the same Xe2 graphics architecture as "Lunar Lake," and will feature an NPU that meets Microsoft Copilot+ AI PC requirements. What remains a mystery about "Arrow Lake" is the way Intel will go about organizing the various chiplets or tiles. Reports from February 2024 mentioned Intel tapping into TSMC 3 nm for just the disaggregated graphics tile of "Arrow Lake," but we now know from "Lunar Lake" that Intel doesn't shy away from letting TSMC fabricate its CPU cores. The first notebooks powered by "Lunar Lake" are expected to hit shelves within Q3-2024, with "Arrow Lake" following on in Q4.
Source:
DigiTimes
Intel hasn't gone into the nuts and bolts of "Arrow Lake," besides mentioning that the processor will feature the same "Lion Cove" P-cores and "Skymont" E-cores as "Lunar Lake," albeit arranged in a more familiar ringbus configuration, where the E-core clusters share L3 cache with the P-cores (something that doesn't happen on "Lunar Lake"). "Arrow Lake" also features a iGPU based on the same Xe2 graphics architecture as "Lunar Lake," and will feature an NPU that meets Microsoft Copilot+ AI PC requirements. What remains a mystery about "Arrow Lake" is the way Intel will go about organizing the various chiplets or tiles. Reports from February 2024 mentioned Intel tapping into TSMC 3 nm for just the disaggregated graphics tile of "Arrow Lake," but we now know from "Lunar Lake" that Intel doesn't shy away from letting TSMC fabricate its CPU cores. The first notebooks powered by "Lunar Lake" are expected to hit shelves within Q3-2024, with "Arrow Lake" following on in Q4.
6 Comments on TSMC Begins 3 nm Production for Intel's "Lunar Lake" and "Arrow Lake" Tiles
As an aside, why is TPU still writing this as 3 nm? We know it's nowhere near 3nm (what is it 20nm?) and that's why even TSMC gave it another name like N3 or similar, like Intel does now too.