Intel’s CPU roadmap appears to be solidifying in entrance of our eyes. Or possibly it is about to get extra complicated. I am not 100% certain proper now, however in response to contemporary rumours the brand new vary of desktop chips coming our approach in early 2024 needs to be Arrow Lake.
I do know, one other Lake, and even I—a repository of extra code names than any sane man ought to preserve locked of their head—am getting misplaced in all Intel’s myriad our bodies of water. Arrow Lake is the theoretical successor to Meteor Lake, and the primary with a compute tile manufactured on Intel’s future famous person 20A manufacturing node.
Meteor Lake in itself is Intel’s first chiplet processor, although the corporate is sticking with the ’tile’ nomenclature as an alternative. The brand new processors are being constructed on the Intel 4 node (nominally its 7nm node), and are due later this 12 months as Intel promises Meteor Lake is still on track (opens in new tab). However seemingly now it is positively not on the desktop.
The hearsay mongers have been flipping round on Meteor Lake’s desktop existence like some asphyxiating fish for the previous 12 months, and the most recent noises reported by Benchlife (opens in new tab) declare that the desktop Meteor Lake-S chip sporting six Efficiency-cores and 16-Environment friendly-cores is being cancelled in favour of Arrow Lake.
We have been fairly adamant all alongside that any Meteor Lake 6 + 16 design would have to be predominantly mobile-oriented (opens in new tab), and this newest hearsay appears to lend credence to that assumption.
As an alternative of Meteor Lake, Intel shall be bringing its Arrow Lake chips to desktop within the first half of 2024 with a most configuration matching immediately’s 8 + 16 limits with the Core i9 13900K (opens in new tab) of Raptor Lake fame.
That really looks as if Arrow Lake is being launched sooner than beforehand anticipated, suggesting possibly the 20A course of is additional down the street than we thought. Which might make Pat Gelsinger’s firm stance on the recent delay rumours (opens in new tab) appear on level.
“I really feel good that we now have turned the nook on lots of the execution challenges,” he stated in response to a query about speculated delays. “These rumours, like many others, shall be confirmed by our execution to be firmly false.”
Intel has stated lately that with the 20A development complete (opens in new tab) it will have chips manufactured within the first half of 2024. However we truthfully did not count on that may instantly translate into high-performance desktop chips being made accessible to shoppers within the first six months of the 12 months.
The 20A course of is critical for Intel because it’s the primary of the RibbonFet design (also called Gate All Round) in addition to the primary chip to make use of the brand new PowerVia bottom energy supply system. That ought to assist put the curbs on energy calls for rising ever greater, and while you couple that with promised advances to the Lion Cove Efficiency-core design, which may ship greater than 20% IPC uplift over Meteor Lake, you have obtained some probably very thrilling CPUs on the horizon from Intel.
Clearly, it being Intel you are going to want a complete new motherboard. The brand new chips will use an LGA 1851 socket, a socket with extra pins than the present LGA 1700 that homes the Alder and Raptor Lake generations. These 800-series boards are going to ship a pure-bred DDR5 platform as an alternative of the hybrid DDR4/5 configuration of the 600- and 700-series boards. However they’re additionally going to reportedly provide extra PCIe lanes, too, with 48 lanes in contrast with 28 of the most recent Intel chipsets.
So yeah, looks as if Intel would possibly nicely be “on monitor” as promised. Here is hoping.
