In the latest Linux Kernel patches, Intel engineers are submitting initial support for Meteor Lake processor generation, with some interesting potential features. In a patch submitted yesterday, the Intel engineer noted, "On MTL, GT can no longer allocate on LLC - only the CPU can. This, along with the addition of support for ADM/L4 cache, calls a MOCS/PAT table update." What this translates to is that starting from Meteor Lake, the integrated graphics can no longer allocate on the last-level cache (LLC), the highest numbered cache accessed by the cores before fetching from memory. Instead, only the CPU cores can allocate to it. Even more interesting is the mention of the Meteor Lake platform's level 4 (L4) cache. For the first time since Haswell and Broadwell, Intel may be planning to bring back the L4 cache and integrate it into the CPU.

Usually, modern processors use L1, L2, and L3 caches where the L1 version is the fastest and smallest, while the others are larger but slower. The inclusion of L4 caches often is unnecessary, as this type of cache can consume a big area on the processor die while bringing little benefit, translating to the cost of manufacturing drastically soaring. However, with Meteor Lake and its multi-die tile design, we wonder where the L4 cache will end up. We could see integration into the base tile, which holds the compute cores and essential compute elements. This makes the most sense since the logic needs access to fast memory, and L4 could improve the performance in specific applications.

The Meteor Lake codename has been linked to the fourteenth generation of Intel's Core lineup for a while, following several significant leaks in 2022 and 2023. According to newly unearthed internal documentation and benchmark data, Intel has confirmed that the Meteor Lake family of CPUs will form its upcoming 14th Gen Core lineup - with laptop variations expected to arrive mid-2023 and heavily speculated desktop units in the fourth quarter, although a middle of the year refresh of Raptor Lake could push the entire Meteor Lake range's release window into 2024.

Meteor Lake is anticipated to be Intel's debuting of a "disaggregated" design - the most advanced laptop CPU variant features a top-of-the-line 6P+8E core configuration. Intel is solely responsible for fabrication of an IOE (I/O) tile (the company's own term for a chiplet) with PCIe 5.0 plus Thunderbolt 4, as well as an SoC tile. The GPU part of the design is rumored to be based on their own Arc Alchemist architecture, and TSMC has been contracted to manufacture this graphics tile - not a big surprise since Intel has also placed substantial manufacturing orders for discrete Arc cards with the Taiwanese foundry.

Late last year, it was reported that Intel is skipping its upcoming "Meteor Lake" microarchitecture for the desktop platform, giving it a mobile-platform debut in late-2023, with "Arrow Lake" following on in 2024, which would address both platforms. In the interim, Intel was expected to release a "Raptor Lake Refresh" architecture for desktop in 2023. It turns out now, that both the "Raptor Lake Refresh" and "Meteor Lake" architectures are coming to desktop—we just don't know when.

Apparently, Intel will brazen it out against AMD with a maximum CPU core-count of just 6 performance cores and 16 efficiency cores possible for "Meteor Lake." It's just that both the P-cores and a E-cores get an IPC uplift with "Meteor Lake." The processor features up to six "Redwood Cove" P-cores with an IPC uplift over the current "Raptor Cove" cores; and introduce the new "Crestmont" E-cores. A lot will depend on the IPC uplift of the latter. Leaf_hobby, a reliable source with Intel leaks on social media, has some interesting details on the I/O capabilities of "Meteor Lake" on the desktop platform.

Intel Corporation today announced that its board of directors has reset its dividend policy, reducing the quarterly dividend to $0.125 per share (or $0.50 annually) on the company's common stock. The dividend will be payable on June 1, 2023, to stockholders of record on May 7, 2023. Intel also reaffirmed its first-quarter 2023 business outlook provided at its most recent earnings call, including revenue of between $10.5 billion and $11.5 billion; gross margin of 34.1% on a GAAP basis and 39% on a non-GAAP basis; tax rate of (84%) on a GAAP basis and 13% on a non-GAAP basis; and earnings per share of $(0.80) on a GAAP basis and $(0.15) on a non-GAAP basis.

The decision to decrease the quarterly dividend reflects the board's deliberate approach to capital allocation and is designed to best position the company to create long-term value. The improved financial flexibility will support the critical investments needed to execute Intel's transformation during this period of macroeconomic uncertainty. Since first initiated in 1992, Intel's dividend has delivered more than $80 billion in cash returns to the company's stockholders, and the board is committed to maintaining a competitive dividend.

Intel's upcoming Meteor Lake processor family is supposedly looking good with the new performance/efficiency targets. According to the @OneRaichu Twitter account, we have a potential performance estimate for the upcoming SKUs. As the latest information notes, Intel's 14th-generation Meteor Lake will feature around a 50% increase in efficiency compared to the 13th-generation Raptor Lake designs. This means that the processor can use half the power at the same performance target at Raptor Lake, increasing efficiency. Of course, the design also offers some performance improvements besides efficiency that are significant and are yet to be shown. The new Redwood Cove P-cores will be combined with the new Crestmont E-cores for maximum performance inside U/P/H configurations with 15-45 Watt power envelopes.

For integrated graphics, the source notes that Meteor Lake offers twice the performance of iGPU found on Raptor Lake designs. Supposedly, Meteor Lake will feature 128 EUs running 2.0+GHz compared to 96 EUs found inside Raptor Lake. The iGPU architecture will switch from Intel Iris to Xe-LPG 'Xe-MTL' family on the 14th gen models, confirming a giant leap in performance that iGPU is supposed to experience. Using the tile-based design, Intel combines the Intel 4 process for the CPU tile and the TSMC 5 nm process for the GPU tile. Intel handles final packaging for additional tuning, and you can see the separation below.

Intel's server processor lineup led by the 4th Gen Xeon Scalable "Sapphire Rapids" processors face stiff competition from AMD 4th Gen EPYC "Genoa" processors that offer significantly higher multi-threaded performance per Watt on account of a higher CPU core-count. The gap is only set to widen, as AMD prepares to launch the "Bergamo" processor for cloud data-centers, with core-counts of up to 128-core/256-thread per socket. A technologically-embattled Intel is preparing quick counters as many as three new server microarchitecture launches over the next 23 months, according to Intel, in its Q4-2022 Financial Results presentation.

The 4th Gen Xeon Scalable "Sapphire Rapids," with a core-count of up to 60-core/120-thread, and various application-specific accelerators, witnessed a quiet launch earlier this month, and is shipping to Intel customers. The company says that it will be joined by the Xeon Scalable "Emerald Rapids" architecture in the second half of 2023; followed by "Granite Rapids" and "Sierra Forest" in 2024. Built on the same LGA4677 package as "Sapphire Rapids," the new "Emerald Rapids" MCM packs up to 64 "Raptor Cove" CPU cores, which support higher clock-speeds, higher memory speeds, and introduce the new Intel Trust Domain Extensions (TDX) instruction-set. The processor retains the 8-channel DDR5 memory interface, but with higher native memory speeds. The chip's main serial interface is a PCI-Express Gen 5 root-complex with 80 lanes. The processor will be built on the last foundry-level refinement of the Intel 7 node (10 nm Enhanced SuperFin); many of these refinements were introduced with the company's 13th Gen Core "Raptor Lake" client processors.

Intel in its Q4-2022 Financial release call reiterated that its Core "Meteor Lake" processor remains on course for a 2H-2023 launch. The company slide does not mention the client form-factor the architecture targets, and there are still rumors of a "Raptor Lake Refresh" desktop processor lineup for 2H, which would mean that "Meteor Lake" will debut as a high-performance mobile processor architecture attempting to dominate the 7 W, 15 W, 28 W, and 35 W device market-segments, with its 6P+16E CPU that introduce IPC increases on both the P-cores and E-cores; and a powerful new iGPU. The slide also mentions that its succeeding "Lunar Lake" architecture is on course for 2024.

"Meteor Lake" is Intel's first chiplet-based MCM processor, in which the key components of the processor are built on various silicon fabrication nodes, based on their need for such a cutting-edge node; such that the cost-optimization upholds the economic aspect of Moore's Law. The compute tile, the die that has the CPU cores, features a 6P+16E setup, with six "Redwood Cove" P-cores, and sixteen "Crestmont" E-cores. At this point it's not known if "Crestmont" cores are arranged in clusters of 4 cores, each. The graphics tile features a powerful iGPU based on the newer Xe-LPG graphics architecture that meets full DirectX 12 Ultimate feature-set. The processor's I/O is expected to support even faster DDR5/LPDDR5 memory speeds, and feature PCIe Gen 5.

Intel Corporation today reported fourth-quarter and full-year 2022 financial results. The company also announced that its board of directors has declared a quarterly dividend of $0.365 per share on the company's common stock, which will be payable on March 1, 2023, to shareholders of record as of February 7, 2023.

"Despite the economic and market headwinds, we continued to make good progress on our strategic transformation in Q4, including advancing our product roadmap and improving our operational structure and processes to drive efficiencies while delivering at the low-end of our guided range," said Pat Gelsinger, Intel CEO. "In 2023, we will continue to navigate the short-term challenges while striving to meet our long-term commitments, including delivering leadership products anchored on open and secure platforms, powered by at-scale manufacturing and supercharged by our incredible team."

Intel's 2023 roadmap for the desktop processor segment sees the company flesh out its 13th Gen Core "Raptor Lake" desktop family with 65 W (locked) SKUs, and the new i9-13900KS flagship; followed by a new lineup of processors under the "Raptor Lake Refresh" family, due for Q3-2023, with no mentions of a desktop "Meteor Lake" processor in the year. It turns out that "Raptor Lake Refresh" is being designed to fill in for these (i.e. there won't be any "Meteor Lake" desktop chips). This, according to OneRaichu, a reliable source with Intel leaks.

"Meteor Lake" is Intel's first client processor to fully incorporate the company's IDM 2.0 product development strategy of disintegrating the processor into multiple chiplets built on various foundry nodes based on design needs; and combining them onto a single package with a high-performance interconnect. "Meteor Lake" has just one problem and that is CPU core-counts, with rumors pointing to 6P+16E (6 performance cores + 16 efficiency cores) being the maximum core-count possible, something Intel probably feels won't be competitive in the desktop segment against AMD, which will probably have a lineup of "Zen 4" X3D processors out by Q3-2023, with up to 16 P-cores. The company will, however, give "Meteor Lake" a sizable launch in the various mobile segments.

A reliable source with CPU and platform leaks, ECSM_Official, made some new predictions about release timelines of upcoming desktop processors, and how 2023 could play out for Intel and AMD. 2022 is done, with no new desktop processor SKUs expected to launch from either brands. Intel is expected to flesh out its 13th Gen Core "Raptor Lake" desktop processor family in Q1 2023, with the addition of "locked" non-K SKUs spanning all four brand extensions (i3/i5/i7/i9). Besides these, Intel is expected to launch its new flagship, the Core i9-13900KS, with boost frequencies hitting the 6 GHz mark, in an attempt to ward off the threat from "Zen 4" with 3D Vertical Cache, a technology that springboarded "Zen 3" gaming performance to match that of "Alder Lake."

Both the i9-13900KS and AMD Ryzen 7000X3D processors are expected to launch toward the middle of H1-2023 (March-April). AMD is only expected to launch 6-core/12-thread and 8-core/16-thread SKUs with the 3DV cache technology. These would be single-CCD packages. There's no word on dual-CCD ones with 12-core or 16-core counts, so a Ryzen 9 7950X3D is not on the horizon. AMD is expected to debut its entry-level A620 motherboard chipset in Q2-2023. This chipset reportedly lacks CPU overclocking capability, is expected to lack PCIe Gen 5, and caps memory speed to DDR5-4800.

Keeping up with the cadence of two generations of desktop processors per socket, Intel will turn the page of the current LGA1700, with the introduction of the new Socket LGA1851. The processor package will likely have the same dimensions as LGA1700, and the two sockets may share cooler compatibility. The first processor microarchitecture to debut on LGA1851 will be the 14th Gen Core "Meteor Lake-S." These chips will feature a generationally lower CPU core-count compared to "Raptor Lake," but significantly bump the IPC on both the P-cores and E-cores.

"Raptor Lake" is Intel's final monolithic silicon client processor before the company pivots to chiplets built on various foundry nodes, as part of its IDM 2.0 strategy. The client-desktop version of "Meteor Lake," dubbed "Meteor Lake-S," will have a maximum CPU core configuration of 6P+16E (that's 6 performance cores with 16 efficiency cores). The chip has 6 "Redwood Cove" P-cores, and 16 "Crestmont" E-cores. Both of these are expected to receive IPC uplifts, such that the processor will end up faster (and hopefully more efficient) than the top "Raptor Lake-S" part. Particularly, it should be able to overcome the deficit of 2 P-cores.

Intel Corporation today reported third-quarter 2022 financial results. "Despite the worsening economic conditions, we delivered solid results and made significant progress with our product and process execution during the quarter," said Pat Gelsinger, Intel CEO. "To position ourselves for this business cycle, we are aggressively addressing costs and driving efficiencies across the business to accelerate our IDM 2.0 flywheel for the digital future."

"As we usher in the next phase of IDM 2.0, we are focused on embracing an internal foundry model to allow our manufacturing group and business units to be more agile, make better decisions and establish a leadership cost structure," said David Zinsner, Intel CFO. "We remain committed to the strategy and long-term financial model communicated at our Investor Meeting."

Intel's upcoming Meteor Lake (MTL) processor is set to deliver a wide range of exciting solutions, with the first being the Intel 4 manufacturing node. However, today we have some interesting Linux kernel patches that indicate that Meteor Lake will have a dedicated "Standalone Media" Graphics Technology (GT) block to process video/audio. Moving encoding and decoding off GPU to a dedicated media engine will allow MTL to play back video without the GPU, and the GPU can be used as a parallel processing powerhouse. Features like Intel QuickSync will be built into this unit. What is interesting is that this unit will be made on a separate tile, which will be fused with the rest using tile-based manufacturing found in Ponte Vecchio (which has 47 tiles).

Intel Linux PatchesStarting with [Meteor Lake], media functionality has moved into a new, second GT at the hardware level. This new GT, referred to as "standalone media" in the spec, has its own GuC, power management/forcewake, etc. The general non-engine GT registers for standalone media start at 0x380000, but otherwise use the same MMIO offsets as the primary GT.

Standalone media has a lot of similarity to the remote tiles present on platforms like [Xe HP Software Development Vehicle] and [Ponte Vecchio], and our i915 [kernel graphics driver] implementation can share much of the general "multi GT" infrastructure between the two types of platforms.

Intel's next-generation "Meteor Lake" processor is the first mass-production client processor to embody the company's IDM 2.0 manufacturing strategy—one of building processors with multiple logic tiles interconnected with Foveros and a base-tile (essentially an interposer). Each tile is built on a silicon fabrication process most suitable to it, so that the most advanced node could be reserved for the component that benefits from it the most. For example, while you need the SIMD components of the iGPU to be built on an advanced low-power node, you don't need its display controller and media engine to, and these could be relegated to a tile built on a less advanced node. This way Intel is able to maximize its use of wafers for the most advanced nodes in a graded fashion.

Japanese tech publication PC Watch has annotated the "Meteor Lake" SoC, and points out that the vast majority of the chip's tiles and logic die-area is manufactured on TSMC nodes. The MCM consists of four logic tiles—the CPU tile, the Graphics tile, the SoC tile, and the I/O tile. The four sit on a base tile that facilitates extreme-density microscopic wiring interconnecting the logic tiles. The base tile is built on the 22 nm HKMG silicon fabrication node. This tile lacks any logic, and only serves to interconnect the tiles. Intel has an active 22 nm node, and decided it has the right density for the job.

Intel's future Meteor Lake APUs seem to be playing catch-up to AMD's integrated graphics in more ways than one. Twitter user Coelacanth's Dream has dug up information that indicates Intel's commitment to bring ray tracing support to even its IGP (Integrated Graphics Processing) tiles. According to bits and pieces from Intel Graphics Compiler (IGC) code patches, it seems to be confirmed that ray tracing support is indeed coming to the TSMC-made, 3 nm GPU tiles in Meteor Lake. The kicker here is the presence of flags that detect whether the iGPU is of the "iGFX_meteorlake" type - if so, IGC sets ray tracing support to enabled.

Puzzlingly, Intel's upscaling technology, Xe SuperSampling (XeSS) could be out of the picture - at least for now. It seems that IGC patches for the upcoming APU family still don't allow for DPAS (Dot Product Accumulate Systolic) instructions - instructions that rely on XMX (Intel Xe Matrix Extensions), the AI engines responsible for executing 128 FP16/BF16, 256 INT8, or 512 INT4/INT2 operations per clock. These low-precision operations are the soul of algorithmic supersampling technologies such as XeSS.

Based on a report by TrendForce, Intel has yet again had to push back its upcoming Meteor Lake CPUs and it now appears that Intel will only be launching Meteor Lake towards the end of 2023. It's unclear why there has been yet another delay, but Intel is said to have cancelled most of its orders with TSMC for the 3 nm tGPU that Intel will have made at TSMC, for 2023. The knock-on effect of this, is that TSMC is said to be slowing down its production line expansion towards 3 nm, as the company is now unsure if it'll be able to fill its order books for all of 2023. TSMC's main customer for the 3 nm node is still going to be Apple, but with the loss of what is likely to be around six months worth of production from Intel, TSMC is said to be considering cutting its CapEx for 2023.

TSMC's other customers, such as AMD, MediaTek and Qualcomm aren't planning on moving to 3 nm until 2024, so unless there's a change in plans from either of these companies, or increased demand from Apple, TSMC is said to hit the brakes when it comes to starting up new, cutting edge production lines next year. TSMC is also likely to see reduced revenues during 2023 due to Intel's change of plans, although it's too early to make any assumptions. TrendForce also suggests that Intel might still use TSMC's 3 nm node as a backup plan, if Intel would fail to execute on moving to the Intel 4 process, but considering how complex it is to move a design between different foundry processes, this seems unlikely.

Intel yesterday confirmed its plans to extend its Meteor Lake architecture towards shores other than general processing. According to Phoronix, Intel posted a new driver that lays the foundations for VPU (Versatile Processing Unit) support under Linux. The idea here is that Intel will integrate this VPU within its 14th Gen Meteor Lake architecture, adding AI inferencing acceleration capabilities to its silicon. A sure-fire way to achieve enormous gains in AI processing, especially in performance/watt. Interestingly, Intel is somewhat following Apple's footsteps here, as the company already includes AI-dedicated processing cores in its desktop/laptop Apple Silicon processors since the M1 days.

Intel's VPU architecture will surely be derived from Movidius' designs, which Intel acquired back in 2016 for a cool $400 million. It's unclear which parts of Movidius/Intel IP will be included in the VPU units to be paired with Meteor Lake: whether a full-blown, SoC (System on Chip)-like VPU design such as the Myriad X VPU, or if Intel will take select bits of the architecture (plus the equivalent of five additional years of research and development), sprinkling them on top of their upcoming architecture. We do know the VPU itself will include a memory management unit, a RISC-based microcontroller, a Neural Compute System (what exactly entails this compute system and its slices is the mysterious part) and network-on-chip capabilities.

Intel's next-generation Core "Meteor Lake" processors will debut the new Xe-LPG graphics architecture for its iGPU. A successor to the Xe-LP architecture powering iGPUs since 11th Gen Core "Tiger Lake," the Xe-LPG graphics architecture is tailored for small-scale GPU designs such as iGPUs. It sheds much of the bulk that the Xe-HPG has, which is optimized for discrete GPU designs. A leaked block diagram of "Meteor Lake" describes Xe-LPG as featuring a new "extended gaming mode," new Adaptix power sharing, which is probably a power-management optimization that prioritizes power share to the iGPU; and even more media encode acceleration capabilities.

The Core "Meteor Lake" compute tile will also feature the latest Gaussian Network Accelerator, GNA 3.5, which speeds up AI deep-learning neural net building and training. The chip features a purpose-build VPU (visual processing unit), similar to the ones in mobile SoCs, which improves the device's ability to recognize faces, or even augmented-reality applications. Lastly, with "Meteor Lake," Intel is debuting the new "Crestmont" E-core clusters that introduce an IPC improvement over the "Gracemont" E-cores powering "Alder Lake" and "Raptor Lake."

Intel's semiconductors nodes have been quite controversial with the arrival of the 10 nm design. Years in the making, the node got delayed multiple times, and only recently did the general public get the first 10 nm chips. Today, at IEEE's annual VLSI Symposium, we get more details about Intel's upcoming nodes, called Intel 4. Previously referred to as a 7 nm process, Intel 4 is the company's first node to use EUV lithography accompanied by various technologies. The first thing when a new process node is discussed is density. Compared to Intel 7, Intel 4 will double the transistor count for the same area and enable 20% higher performing transistors.

Looking at individual transistor size, the new Intel 4 node represents a very tiny piece of silicon that is even smaller than its predecessor. With a Fin Pitch of 30 nm, Contact Gate Poly Pitch of 50 nm between gates, and Minimum Metal Pitch (M0) of 50 nm, the Intel 4 transistor is significantly smaller compared to the Intel 7 cell, listed in the table below. For scaling, Intel 4 provides double the number of transistors in the same area compared to Intel 7. However, this reasoning is applied only to logic. For SRAM, the new PDK provides 0.77 area reduction, meaning that the same SoC built on Intel 7 will not be half the size of Intel 4, as SRAM plays a significant role in chip design. The Intel 7 HP library can put 80 million transistors on a square millimeter, while Intel 4 HP is capable of 160 million transistors per square millimeter.

Intel's next-generation "Meteor Lake-P" mobile processor with a 6P+8E Compute Tile was shown off at the 2022 IEEE VLSI Symposium on Tech and Circuits (6 performance cores and 8 efficiency cores). We now have annotations for all four tiles, as well as a close-up die-shot of the Compute Tile. Intel also confirmed that the Compute Tile will be built on its homebrew Intel 4 silicon fabrication process, which offers over 20% iso-power performance increase versus the Intel 7 node, through extensive use of EUV lithography.

We had earlier seen a 2P+8E version of the "Meteor Lake" Compute Tile, probably from the "Meteor Lake-U" package. The larger 6P+8E Compute tile features six "Redwood Cove" performance cores, and two "Crestmont" efficiency core clusters, each with four E-cores. Assuming the L3 cache slice per P-core or E-core cluster is 2.5 MB, there has to be 20 MB of L3 cache on the compute tile. Each P-core has 2 MB of dedicated L2 cache, while each of the two E-core clusters shares 4 MB of L2 cache among four E-cores.

Intel's next-generation desktop processor socket will be the LGA1851. Leaked documents point to the next-generation socket being of identical dimensions to the current LGA1700, despite the higher pin-count, which could indicate cooler compatibility between the two sockets, much in the same way as the LGA1200 retained cooler-compatibility with prior Intel sockets tracing all the way back to the LGA1156. The current LGA1700 will service only two generations of Intel Core, the 12th Generation "Alder Lake," and the next-gen "Raptor Lake" due for later this year. "Raptor Lake" will be Intel's last desktop processor built on a monolithic silicon, as the company transitions to multi-chip modules.

Intel Socket LGA1851 will debut with the 14th Gen Core "Meteor Lake" processors due for late-2023 or 2024; and will hold out until the 15th Gen "Arrow Lake." Since "Meteor Lake" is a 3D-stacked MCM with a base tile stacked below logic tiles; the company is making adjustments to the IHS thickness to end up with an identical package thickness to the LGA1700, which would be key to cooler-compatibility, besides the socket's physical dimensions. Intel probably added pin-count to the LGA1851 by eating into the "courtyard" (the central gap in the land-grid), because the company states that the pin-pitch hasn't changed from LGA1700.

Hot Chips 34, the upcoming semiconductor conference from Sunday, August 21 to Tuesday, August 23, 2022, will feature many significant contributions from folks like Intel, AMD, Tesla, and NVIDIA. Today, thanks to Intel's registration at the event, we discovered that the company would present its work on Meteor Lake and Arrow Lake processors with the novel Foveros 3D packaging. The all-virtual presentation from Intel will include talks about Ponte Vecchio GPU and its architecture, system, and software; Meteorlake and Arrowlake 3D Client Architecture Platform with Foveros; and some Xeon D and FPGA presentations. You can see the official website here for a complete list of upcoming talks.

As a little reminder, Meteor Lake is supposed to arrive next year, replacing the upcoming Raptor Lake design, and it has already ahs been pictured, which you can see below. The presentation will be recorded and all content posted on Hot Chips's website for non-attendees to catch up on.

Le Comptoir du Hardware scored a die-shot of a 2P+8E core variant of the "Meteor Lake" compute tile, and Locuza annotated it. "Meteor Lake" will be Intel's first processor to implement the company's IDM 2.0 strategy to the fullest. The processor is a multi-chip module of various tiles (chiplets), each with a certain function, sitting on die made on a silicon fabrication node most suitable to that function. Under this strategy, for example, if Intel's chip-designers calculate that the iGPU will be the most power-hungry component on the processor, followed by the CPU cores, the graphics tile will be built on a more advanced process than the compute tile. Intel's "Meteor Lake" and "Arrow Lake" processors will implement chiplets built on the Intel 4, TSMC N3, and Intel 20A fabrication nodes, each with unique power and transistor-density characteristics. Learn more about the "Meteor Lake" MCM in our older article.

The 2P+8E (2 performance cores + 8 efficiency cores) compute tile is one among many variants of compute tiles Intel will develop for the various SKUs making up the next-generation Core mobile processor series. The die is annotated with the two large "Redwood Cove" P-cores and their cache slices taking up about 35% of the die area; and the two "Crestmount" E-core clusters (each with 4 E-cores), and their cache slices, taking up the rest. The two P-cores and two E-core clusters are interconnected by a Ring Bus, and share an L3 cache. The size of each L3 cache slice is either 2.5 MB or 3 MB. At 2.5 MB, the total L3 cache will be 10 MB, and at 3 MB, it will be 12 MB. As with all past generations, the L3 cache is fully accessible by all CPU cores in the compute tile.

Intel has allowed the media to get a closer look at the next generation of silicon that will power millions of systems in years to come during its private Vision event. PC Watch, a Japanese tech media, managed to get some shots of the upcoming Meteor Lake, Sapphire Rapids, and Ponte Vecchio processors. Starting with Meteor Lake, Intel has displayed two packages for this processor family. The first one is the ultra-compact, high-density UP9 package used for highly compact mobile systems, and it is made out of silicon with minimal packaging to save space. The second one is a traditional design with more oversized packaging, designed for typical laptop/notebook configurations.

Intel's upcoming "Meteor Lake" and "Arrow Lake" client mobile processors introduce an interesting twist to the chiplet concept. Earlier represented in vague-looking IP blocks, new artistic impressions of the chip put out by Intel shed light on a 3-die approach not unlike the Ryzen "Vermeer" MCM that has up to two CPU core dies (CCDs) talking to a cIOD (client IO die), which handles all the SoC connectivity; Intel's design has one major difference, and that's integrated graphics. Apparently, Intel's MCM uses a GPU die sitting next to the CPU core die, and the I/O (SoC) die. Intel likes to call its chiplets "tiles," and so we'll go with that.

The Graphics tile, CPU tile, and the SoC or I/O tile, are built on three different silicon fabrication process nodes based on the degree of need for the newer process node. The nodes used are Intel 4 (optically 7 nm EUV, but with characteristics of a 5 nm-class node); Intel 20A (characteristics of 2 nm), and external TSMC N3 (3 nm) node. At this point we don't know which tile gets what. From the looks of it, the CPU tile has a hybrid CPU core architecture made up of "Redwood Cove" P-cores, and "Crestmont" E-core clusters.