Meteor Lake

Lore & Background

Meteor Lake was initially announced in July 2021 with a TDP range of 5–125 W for segments from ultra low power mobile to enthusiast desktop. The first tape-in occurred in May 2021, and the CPU compute tile was confirmed to be fabricated on Intel's 7 nm process (later rebranded to Intel 4). In October 2021, Intel stated in an earnings call that the CPU compute tile had taped out and powered on within 30 minutes at expected performance levels. By April 2022, an assembled Meteor Lake mobile processor had been powered on for the first time as a development milestone.

In March 2023, reports indicated that Intel had canceled development of high-end Meteor Lake-S desktop processors, which were designed for the LGA 1851 socket. The top Meteor Lake-S SKU in development had 6 Redwood Cove P-cores and 16 Crestmont E-cores, two fewer P-cores than the Raptor Lake Core i9-13900K. At Intel's Innovation event in September 2023, Michelle Johnston Holthaus confirmed that some Meteor Lake-based processors would come to desktop in 2024, but Intel later clarified that socketable desktop versions would not reach the DIY market; instead, BGA-packaged Meteor Lake processors would appear in compact all-in-one PCs.

Production ramped in April 2023 at Intel's D1D facility in Hillsboro, Oregon, which has a total output of 40,000 wafers per month. Secondary production occurred at Fab 34 in the Republic of Ireland, where high-volume production began on September 29, 2023. The GPU, SoC, and I/O extender tiles were manufactured by TSMC in Taiwan. Meteor Lake was revealed at Intel's Innovation event on September 19, 2023, with Core Ultra branded processors launching on December 14, though no SKU list was provided at that time.

Reader's Guide

Meteor Lake represents a significant architectural shift for Intel, moving from monolithic dies to a disaggregated multi-chip module (MCM) approach, a strategy Intel had previously criticized in AMD's Ryzen and Epyc processors. This design allows for better modularity, higher silicon yields from smaller dies, and flexibility in using different process nodes for different tiles. The CPU compute tile uses Intel's 4 node, which employs extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography for the first time, while the graphics tile uses TSMC's N5 node, and the interposer base tile uses Intel's older 22FFL (Intel 16) process.

The new Core Ultra branding, announced in June 2023, dropped the 'i' from Core i and introduced Core 3, 5, and 7, with Core Ultra 5, 7, and 9 reserved for premium processors. This branding was perceived as creating more confusion rather than reducing it, with critics noting overlap between Core and Core Ultra tiers and suggesting Intel was emulating competitors rather than leading. Meteor Lake's architecture includes up to 6 Redwood Cove P-cores and 8 Crestmont E-cores, with Crestmont achieving a 3% IPC increase from VNNI support but lacking AVX-512. Testing showed an IPC regression in single-core workloads for Redwood Cove over the previous Raptor Cove core.

Did You Know?

• Meteor Lake is the first Intel mobile processor to use a chiplet architecture, making it a multi-chip module.
• The CPU compute tile is fabricated on Intel's 4 node, the first Intel node to use extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography.
• The top Meteor Lake-S desktop SKU in development had 6 P-cores and 16 E-cores, two fewer P-cores than the Raptor Lake Core i9-13900K.
• Intel's D1D fabrication facility in Hillsboro, Oregon, has a total output of 40,000 wafers per month.