The status of Intel "Meteor Lake-S" (MTL-S) desktop processors was the subject of much speculation throughout 2023—by September of that year, Team Blue leadership projected an upcoming launch in 2024. Technically, Meteor Lake was deployed to "sort-of desktops" platforms—albeit in mini-PCs that utilized Core Ultra mobile chips. Industry moles insisted that Intel was still actively engaged in production of MTL-S samples in late 2023. According to a recent ITHome report, those insider tales turned out to be legitimate. On Monday (March 24), the online publication revealed the existence of a mysterious "Q46W" engineering sample—courtesy of Kyoka (a trusted source). A CPU-Z diagnostic revealed the unannounced CPU's turboboost capability reaching 4.5 GHz, while base frequency sat at the 2.8 GHz mark.

According to ITHome's investigative piece, Team Blue: "tested a very special desktop processor: it uses the Meteor Lake architecture, has 6 performance cores and 8 energy efficiency cores (6P+8E), but the performance cores (P-cores) do not support Hyper-Threading. The production date of the product in hand is the 51st week of 2023, which is obviously later than the time when Meteor Lake-S was reported to be cancelled for external sales. From this situation, 'Q46W' may be a development test processor for FCLGA1851 platform or the 800 series chipset. Kyoka believes that the processor should be in the ES2 stage." A Xianyu seller—tbNick_3u8k4—is reportedly offloading a surprising quantity of "Intel Confidential Q46W" processors, allegedly manufactured back in early 2024. Photos show tray-mounted units available for sale on Taobao's second hand market platform. tbNick_3u8k4 mentions that this particular batch of Q46W chips "requires a special motherboard to light up," suggesting that readily available Intel 800 Series chipset-based models are not fit for purpose.

The fate of Intel's Meteor Lake-S desktop CPU lineup has been the topic of much debate since the end of last year - at the time, industry tipsters proposed that part of the product range had been disposed of entirely, but several leaks throughout the course of 2023 have indicated that MTL-S processors were on-track for a launch later in the year - albeit restricted to i3 and i5 offerings. An Intel employee has also confirmed that a new SKU naming system will be implemented as part of the upcoming Meteor Lake lineup - although he did not clarify whether this would encompass both mobile and desktop variants.

An alleged Intel client CPU roadmap has made its way onto the internet, and tipsters think that the information on hand shows that Team Blue has pulled the plug on its Meteor Lake-S (6 Performance and 8 Efficiency cores) desktop processors. The presentation slide was likely authored earlier this month - so these developments are relatively fresh, with provisions for Core S, H, PX, M, U & N series. The heavily redacted infographic maps out product release windows going as far forward as Q4 2026. OneRaichu posits that an Arrow Lake-S (6P + 8E) CPU lineup will replace MTL-S. It is possible that Intel's Raptor Lake-S refresh could serve as an interim release this year, since the Arrow Lake generation is expected to arrive in 2024.