Intel 14th Gen Meteor Lake-S Desktop CPUs Mentioned in Linux Patch Notes

[T0@st]

The Linux 6.3 Kernel has been patched and a couple of developer notes indicate that support for Intel's upcoming Meteor Lake-S Desktop CPU lineup has been added. The subject matter of this memo is "Add support for Meteor Lake-S SPI serial flash," and the driver list of supported devices has been updated with Meteor Lake-S PCI IDs. Intel is ramping up for the launch of its 14th generation processors, scheduled for a possible second half of 2023 release window, and is ready to roll out some new product naming spiel at the same time.

A "P" type 14th generation range is also discussed in the patch notes: "Intel Meteor Lake-S has the same SPI serial flash controller as Meteor Lake-P. Add Meteor Lake-S PCI ID to the driver list of supported devices." Meteor Lake-P likely refers to mobile variants, with a lot of previously leaked information providing an in-depth look at Intel's "Tile" chip design. Rumors of the desktop variants getting canned have persisted (in 2022 and early 2023) due to a lack of insider info, but last month it emerged that the Meteor Lake-S family was alive and well to some degree - Intel has restricted the product range with offerings of budget "i3" and mid-range "i5" SKUs only. Who knows what sort of branding/naming scheme they have in mind to distinguish between desktop and portable processors.



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[sethmatrix7]

Intel Core Ultra Giga 5 incoming

 

[Squared]

I'm hearing that Meteor Lake is coming to mobile platforms and mobile-derived desktop processors later this year, and rumors that Arrow Lake is coming early next year. It kind of sounds like Broadwell and Skylake, where Broadwell only came out in mobile and what I think were mobile-derived desktop processors, and was very quickly followed by Skylake which came to pure desktop chips. But Broadwell and Skylake were both 14nm; basically Skylake was ready by the time 14nm was. But I think Meteor Lake is Intel 4 and I hear Arrow Lake is Intel 20A. I'm not sure where Intel 3 fits in.

 

[Minus Infinity]

I'm hearing that Meteor Lake is coming to mobile platforms and mobile-derived desktop processors later this year, and rumors that Arrow Lake is coming early next year. It kind of sounds like Broadwell and Skylake, where Broadwell only came out in mobile and what I think were mobile-derived desktop processors, and was very quickly followed by Skylake which came to pure desktop chips. But Broadwell and Skylake were both 14nm; basically Skylake was ready by the time 14nm was. But I think Meteor Lake is Intel 4 and I hear Arrow Lake is Intel 20A. I'm not sure where Intel 3 fits in.

Meteor Lake was always slated to be a mobile centric cpu and that has only strenghtened as it's fallen over 12 months behind schedule. Let's not forget Gelsinger was crowing about early silcion that was already working in 2021 and it was supposed to be out by early 2023 at the latest. We are now hearing the IPC uplifts over RL have been downgraded considerably for both Redwood cove P cores and Crestmont E cores. It's main benefit over Raptor Lake R (the refresh) is 35-45% better efficiency. Now it could still mean a 14600K based on ML (I'm not sure how they'll name Raptor Lake R and Meteor Lake versions i5 14600K and Ultra 14600K, which would be stupidly confusing) will still be a better buy than the RL-R version. Even if a little slwoer if it oes use 35-45% less power it's a no brainer if you urgently need an update.

Personally while I'm hoping Meteor Lake is good, I'm really waiting for next year's Arrow Lake. it is improved in nearly every area over ML and gains large IPC (> 20%) uplifts for Lion cove P cores and Skymont will bring another 6-10% over Crestmont.

After Arrow Lake Lunar Lake is also said to be another mobile focused cpu and said to be a huge uplift in efficiency meaning for desktop we need to wait for Panther Lake

 

[kony]

So meteor lake focuses on better efficiency and probably it won't be much faster than 13th gen? Of course assuming same tier CPUs. But I guess it should improve battery life in many laptops.

 

[Squared]

It's main benefit over Raptor Lake R (the refresh) is 35-45% better efficiency. Now it could still mean a 14600K based on ML (I'm not sure how they'll name Raptor Lake R and Meteor Lake versions i5 14600K and Ultra 14600K, which would be stupidly confusing) will still be a better buy than the RL-R version. Even if a little slwoer if it oes use 35-45% less power it's a no brainer if you urgently need an update.

I doubt the efficiency will be as good on desktop as on mobile, since clock speeds tend to approach the limits of the chip on desktop. As I understand, the higher the clock speed the lower the efficiency, and this tends to be worse on new nodes, which could mean that Meteor Lake on desktop has lower clocks than Raptor Lake Refresh but still needs 90% of the power to get to that lower clock speed.