Intel’s 14th generation CPU family, codenamed ‘Meteor Lake,’ is set to be introduced in the second half of 2023. It will supersede the Raptor Lake processor series, which was introduced in September.
According to industry reports, Intel Meteor Lake will be more than simply another yearly upgrade and will represent Intel’s transition from the Intel 7 process (based on the third-generation 10-nanometer architecture) to the Intel 4 process (based on 7-nanometer architecture).
The Intel 4 process is thought to represent a significant improvement over the Intel 7 process. It is intended to give a 20% gain in performance while maintaining the same power envelope and a 40% decrease in power consumption while maintaining the same clock speed.
Transistors are placed closer together on chips with fewer nanometers, reducing the distance traveled by electrons. As a consequence, electrical impulses travel more quickly while using less energy. This makes them both speedier and more efficient.
The Intel 4 method will also be the first to adopt EUV (extreme ultraviolet) lithography, which uses dramatically shorter wavelengths to imprint circuit designs onto silicon wafers. Intel built its first EUV lithography machine for generating Intel 4 process nodes at the Fab34 foundry in Ireland in March.
The number of cores in the Intel Meteor Lake CPU will be another departure. Intel introduced 8 more cores with Raptor Lake, bringing the total number of cores to 24. It has eight performance cores and sixteen efficiency cores. Alder Lake’s predecessor has 16 cores split among 8 performance and 8 efficiency cores.
Though Intel is known to increase the number of cores with each CPU generation, this may not be the case with Meteor Lake. Meteor Lake may only feature 22 cores, divided between 6-speed cores and 16 efficiency cores, according to a claim in PC Games.
In addition, South Korean tech leaker Coelacanth’s Dream claims that Intel intends to add Ray Tracing capabilities to Intel Meteor Lake’s integrated GPU.
The capability is generally found in discrete GPUs and is used to simulate real-world-like light movement in virtual worlds such as games. It is unclear what benefit this will provide because Ray Tracing requires specialized RT cores, which are not present in Integrated GPUs.
Experts believe that the Intel Meteor Lake chip will help Intel reclaim its position and compete with AMD’s Ryzen processor built on 5 nanometers. AMD’s newest Ryzen 7,000 desktop CPU, announced in August, is built on the Zen 4 architecture on 5 nanometers.
