Intel May Cancel Meteor Lake Desktop CPUs in Favor of Raptor Lake Refresh

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(Credit score: Intel)Intel famously stalled at 14nm for a few years, permitting AMD to leapfrog it within the course of with TSMC know-how. Now it could be experiencing that drawback once more making an attempt to make the soar from 10nm to 7nm.

That mentioned, Intel is anticipated to launch its first tile-based CPU subsequent 12 months, aka Meteor Lake. That is the corporate’s first break up CPU, with totally different tiles constructed on totally different processes. The CPU tile is regarded as the results of a node soar, going from Intel 7 (10nm) to Intel 4 (7nm). It’s a watershed product for the corporate because it transitions from monolithic and hybrid designs to tiles. Nonetheless, although Meteor Lake has already been delayed many instances, it’s now rumored to be cancelled. No less than, the desktop elements are most likely on the chopping block. Due to this fact, it could nonetheless launch in some unspecified time in the future, however just for cell.

The dangerous information for Chipzilla comes from a Twitter person Raichu, a dependable leaker of confidential data, who says that Meteor Lake for desktop is “probably” canceled as a result of Intel sees it as uncompetitive. Intel deliberate to supply solely six efficiency cores, together with 16 efficiency cores. That was organized in a front leak of Intel’s plans. As you recall, its present Raptor Lake flagship has eight efficiency cores, and 16 effectivity cores, so Meteor Lake could be a step again. It could possibly be true that Intel would not suppose it is aggressive, and it may be true that it has delayed once more. The precise cause for the alleged cancellation is just not clear. Nonetheless, it’s now planning a refresh of Raptor Lake in 2023, as we noted before.

The leaked roadmap for 2023 above doesn’t point out Meteor Lake. As an alternative, Intel will supply a Raptor Lake refresh utilizing a refined 10nm course of. That ought to allow it to squeeze a couple of hundred megahertz out of the chips, and enhance its effectivity a bit. The excellent news for Intel followers is that it’ll use the identical LGA 1700 socket that it at the moment presents. There have been rumors that Meteor Lake would seem after Raptor Lake on a brand new LGA 1851 socket. That may give LGA 1700 solely two generations of CPUs. Now it seems to be like will probably be three: Alder Lake, Raptor Lake, and the Raptor Lake refresh.

As you could recall, Raptor Lake solely exists as a result of Intel realized over two years in the past that Meteor Lake was not hitting its growth objectives. That was it confirmed by Intel, so it isn’t a rumor. Quick ahead to now in 2022, and nobody could be stunned if it nonetheless has points with it. Nearly each article we have written about Meteor Lake offers with delays. There have been rumours it canceled the 3nm GPU tile of TSMC as a result of delays. As an alternative, it might use the corporate’s current 5nm node. It was additionally reported in July that Meteor Lake has been delayed till the tip of 2023. For those who scroll up and have a look at these roadmaps, you possibly can see Meteor Lake is gone from the 2023 timeline.

Now it appears that evidently Intel feels that Raptor Lake will likely be extra aggressive than Meteor Lake towards AMD’s upcoming choices. That’s anticipated to be extra Zen 4 CPUs together with multiple V-Cache SKUs. Additionally, possibly its present tile-based plans will likely be higher for effectivity than straight horsepower. That may clarify Meteor Lake being a cell platform as an alternative of a desktop one. So Arrow Lake would take the coat on the desk. That may occur someday in 2024 in line with Intel’s 20A course of. Arrow Lake is meant to be resuming the 8/16 core depend it at the moment makes use of.

In an October earnings name, CEO Pat Gelsinger made the next assertion, in line with wccftech: “On Intel 4, we’re progressing to high-volume manufacturing and will likely be tapering manufacturing at Meteor Lake in This autumn. Intel 4 and three are our first nodes to deploy EUV and can characterize a serious step ahead by way of transistor efficiency per watt and density.”

If that is true, it signifies that Intel is already producing early variations of Meteor Lake now. We’ll have to attend and see if that is the case, however Intel would not normally reply to allegations like these.

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