Intel Meteor Lake has been introduced formally, making this their 14th-generation lineup of processors. The American chipmaker lately held its Intel Innovation 2023 occasion, the place it introduced the brand new Intel 14th Gen laptop computer CPU structure. We’re discussing Intel’s Meteor Lake processors right here, which can be included in lots of new 14th-Gen powered Home windows laptops quickly. These Meteor Lake-powered laptops may land within the arms of customers by the tip of 2023 or early 2024. Formally, Meteor Lake is launching on December 14th, 2023. So, with out additional ado, let’s be taught the whole lot there’s to learn about Intel 14th-Gen Meteor Lake structure, together with the brand new Intel 4 course of node, upgraded GPU, and extra.
Intel 14th Gen Meteor Lake: ‘Intel 4’ Manufacturing Course of
Intel Meteor Lake marks the corporate’s greatest innovation within the final 40 years. The brand new 14th-generation microprocessor structure marks an inflection level for Intel, making Meteor Lake CPUs fairly an enormous deal.
That is additionally why the corporate has rebranded the processors, as defined above. The brand new Intel 4 manufacturing course of brings 20% higher energy effectivity, as in comparison with the beforehand used Intel 7 course of that was on Raptor Lake (twelfth gen) & Alder Lake (thirteenth gen) processors. Intel additionally leverages machine studying & AI applied sciences to convey a 20% energy discount with Meteor Lake.
The tile structure has been innovated upon, with devoted SoC, Compute, and Graphics tiles every having their respective features. Intel has modified the sport on Meteor Lake, by encompassing collectively a lot of their newest microprocessor architectural improvements.
Intel’s Foveros 3D Packaging presents high-density inter-die connections between the graphics, compute, and SoC tiles. Intel’s newest design permits them to simplify the creation of various processors, and in addition convey increased yields making the manufacturing course of extra environment friendly.
There are optimizations performed on the working system degree too. Meteor Lake additionally brings low-power island E-Cores for superior effectivity together with improved compute tile P-Cores & E-Cores. There’s additionally a brand new NPU, which accelerates on-device AI. We’ll focus on all these improvements, beginning with the graphics tile.
Intel 14th Gen Meteor Lake: Supercharged Intel Arc Graphics
Intel Meteor Lake options new and improved built-in graphics. Now, Intel is bringing the facility of the Arc graphics structure to cellular CPUs! This can be a large change and basically implies that the built-in graphics efficiency of Intel 14th-gen laptop computer CPUs is getting a lot quicker.
Intel Arc graphics is a part of Meteor Lake processors and is constructed on the Xe LPG microarchitecture. There’s a devoted graphics tile on each Meteor Lake processor, containing the Intel Arc graphics. The brand new Xe Media Engine comes with AV1 help, in addition to variable charge shading. DX12 API efficiency is sort of aggressive now, with the built-in GPU now being able to working AAA video games like Forza Horizon 5 at playable framerates on 1080p.
Intel Meteor Lake GPU additionally helps real-time ray tracing. For those who didn’t know, ray tracing is without doubt one of the greatest improvements lately within the 3D graphics area. You’ll be able to be taught extra about what’s ray-tracing and the way it modifications your video games right here.
The brand new Intel Meteor Lake GPU helps 8K decision, as much as 60Hz. It helps the most recent requirements akin to HDMI 2.1 and DisplayPort 2.1 – which makes the Nvidia RTX 40 Collection the one graphics card producer that’s nonetheless caught on DisplayPort 1.4, with even AMD having made the change.
With the brand new Arc-powered Intel Meteor Lake GPU, customers can supercharge their content material creation or gaming experiences. Whereas the ray-tracing right here is just not similar to the extra highly effective devoted graphics, such because the Nvidia RTX 40 Collection, the Intel Arc graphics chip that makes up Intel Meteor Lake’s GPU remains to be extremely aggressive.
Intel 14th Gen Meteor Lake: Low Energy Island E-Cores
Intel’s earlier processors already featured a hybrid P-core + E-Core structure, in order that they switched to devoted cores for efficiency & effectivity respectively. Now, Meteor Lake additionally implements Low Energy Island E-Cores, additionally known as LP E-Cores.
These are equally designed Crestmont cores, identical to the E-Cores current on the compute tile. However, these are designed otherwise and the LP E-Cores are positioned within the SOC tile as an alternative. What do they do?
The Low Energy Island E-Cores are constructed for the perfect effectivity, for all kinds of duties that don’t actually require the P-Cores to develop into lively. The LP E-core part has its built-in low-power AI engine and it helps numerous mild workloads.
For instance, background work (like IT) runs on low-power E-Cores. Intel additionally confirmed a pre-production laptop computer that had a Meteor Lake CPU, wherein a film was working in a loop. The CPU utilization of the compute tile was not going up! Basically, the LP E-cores had been lively on this case.
Accordingly, if a workload requires extra compute efficiency, the duty might be assigned to the compute tile E-Cores & P-Cores as an alternative. Within the case of a presently-running, compute-heavy utility (akin to a content material creation app), Meteor Lake CPUs will assign the P-Cores to the compute-heavy activity. Sure low-utilization background apps would run on the compute tile E-core or SoC tile LP E-cores.
With the addition of low energy island E-cores, Intel has undoubtedly made Meteor Lake much more hybrid and versatile as in comparison with earlier era processors.
Intel 14th Gen Meteor Lake: Hybrid Tile Structure
The Intel 14th Gen Meteor Lake processors use an developed hybrid structure, made up of P-Cores and E-Cores within the compute tile, in addition to devoted SoC, Graphics, and IO tiles which have their respective features. This time round, Intel has added the low energy island to the SoC tile as effectively. As we defined above, this protects on vitality by working many low-power duties on the LP E-cores, conserving the compute tile free.
Let’s discuss what every of the respective tiles (IO, SoC, Graphics, and Compute) in Meteor Lake are chargeable for.
- The Graphics tile is what incorporates Intel’s Arc graphics that speed up 3D efficiency on the Meteor Lake CPU. So, the brand new Intel Xe LPG graphics are current within the graphics tile and chargeable for high-performance graphics acceleration.
- The SoC tile incorporates Intel’s new NPU for accelerating AI, together with the low-power island E-cores. This additionally consists of the Silicon Safety Engine and extra.
- The I tile is chargeable for PCI Specific ordering. The IO cloth additionally consists of elements for PCI Specific, WiFi & Bluetooth, USB4, Thunderbolt, and extra.
- The Compute tile is the place the brand new Redwood Cove Efficiency (P) cores and Crestmont Effectivity (E) Cores reside in Meteor Lake processors. All of the computational efforts are dealt with right here and shared between the P-cores & E-cores primarily based on their workloads.
Intel 14th Gen Meteor Lake: NPU AI Engine
Based on Intel, synthetic intelligence has develop into the know-how of as we speak, reasonably than the longer term. So, within the current period of computing, the bogus intelligence trade & ecosystem are quickly rising.
With that, Intel is bringing many new AI developments to Meteor Lake CPUs. All these are powered by the brand new NPU, and we beforehand did know that AI would play a key function in Intel 14th Gen CPUs. With the brand new NPU, Intel is bringing synthetic intelligence to the trendy PC and opens up many new potentialities. Beforehand, AI duties had been performed on the cloud, however now they are often performed on-device!
Usually, in case you have any activity for an AI akin to GPT, you give it the information that it wants (akin to stories, emails, and so forth.) in your immediate. Now, you are able to do issues like this on the system itself. With Intel Meteor Lake, the corporate brings AI on the PC. Due to this, there are numerous benefits:
- Decrease latency & working prices
- No extra slow-downs attributable to web issues
- Improved privateness & safety
- Makes utilizing AI on the each day a extra handy affair
- As much as 8X extra environment friendly in workloads in comparison with previous-gen CPUs
Intel has basically created Meteor Lake CPUs to be an influence environment friendly platform that’s purpose-built for the AI period. Many new potentialities open up with this, and the tech demos proven for Intel Meteor Lake had been fairly spectacular.
Intel Meteor Lake 14th-gen processors additionally include an on-device Silicon Safety Engine, that ensures the person’s knowledge is protected whereas they use the on-device AI platform powered by the NPU. Intel touts Meteor Lake CPUs will characteristic improved safety due to this. We’ll quickly see many on-device AI enhancements, because of the NPU in 14th-generation Meteor Lake CPUs!
Intel 14th Gen Meteor Lake: WiFi 7 5Gbps & Bluetooth LE Audio
Wi-Fi 7 is being launched in Intel Meteor Lake processors, bringing a brand new customary of connectivity that will increase reliability, pace, and decrease latency. Wi-Fi 7 helps 5Gbps speeds, with GCMP-256 encryption. It additionally helps the brand new 6GHz band, which reduces latency as much as 60% decrease (~4ms vs ~10ms) as in comparison with Wi-Fi 6.
Along with this, Intel Bluetooth LE Audio is coming to 14th Gen Meteor Lake processors. It brings many new advantages, together with options like shared listening and improved accessibility with listening to aids. In comparison with the earlier Bluetooth requirements, Bluetooth LE Audio requires much less energy and brings superior high quality with decrease latency.
In Intel Bluetooth LE Audio, there’s additionally a brand new LC3 Codec which improves listening high quality even at decrease bitrates, as in comparison with the SBC codec utilized in earlier Bluetooth requirements. It has decrease energy and bandwidth necessities general, so new wi-fi audio merchandise that help it may convey improved battery life.
Intel 14th Gen Meteor Lake: New Branding & Variants
Intel Meteor Lake introduces the corporate’s newest branding replace, which removes the ‘i’ from their Intel Core processor mannequin names. This has been performed to mark the monumental shift to a a lot newer manufacturing course of.
Intel’s new branding will title Meteor Lake CPUs below the brand new naming scheme. Intel has solely introduced the structure for now, and never the variants. So, we are going to replace this part as soon as we all know extra about new Meteor Lake CPUs. Nonetheless, here’s what they might be referred to as in line with the revised CPU mannequin names:
Base Variants:
- Core 3
- Core 5
- Core 7
- Core 9
Extremely Variants:
- Core Extremely 5
- Core Extremely 7
- Core Extremely 9
As you may know, Intel’s newest processors use a hybrid structure that includes particular cores for various duties – the efficiency cores (P-Cores) and effectivity cores (E-Cores). In Meteor Lake, Intel has carried out quicker Redwood Cove P-Cores and much more environment friendly Crestmont E-Cores.
‘Core Extremely’ variants are quicker, as denoted by their suffix. Basically, the successors of high-performance H or HX collection processors just like the Intel Core i9-13980HX will come below the brand new Intel Core Extremely 9 branding.
Equally, successors of decrease energy, U/P collection processors akin to Core i5-1340P or the Core i7-1365U will now come below the Core 5 & Core 7 brandings respectively. Intel’s rebranding for the brand new 14th-Gen Meteor Lake processors in addition to future merchandise appears to be like like this: