Intel 14th Gen Meteor Lake CPUs Destined For Cosmic Debut With Up To 192 EU GPU

For some background, the current 11^th generation Rocket Lake processors are built using Intel's 10nm process node. However, 12^th generation Alder Lake, which will arrive around October 2021, will use the 10nm Enhanced SuperFin process node (now known as Intel 7). Its successor, 13^th generation Raptor Lake, will also be based on Intel 7.

That brings us to 14^th generation Meteor Lake processors, which will take advantage of the Intel 4 -- previously identified as a 7nm -- process node. Given that Meteor Lake uses a tile-based architecture, not every single tile has to use Intel 4. Instead, Intel can pick and choose which nodes in a way that is most efficient and economical, thanks to Foveros 3D packaging. Intel famously deployed Foveros with its unloved 10^th generation Lakefield hybrid processors.

According to Dr. Ann B. Kelleher, Senior Vice President and General Manager for Technology Development, Meteor Lake will have a thermal range from 5 watts to 125 watts (flagship CPUs). The Foveros packaging technology combines three separate chiplets: the compute die, a GPU die, and a SOC-LP die (for I/O).

Interestingly, Intel promises that the Meteor Lake GPU will have a minimum of 96 EUs, whereas the current Xe-based offerings max out at 96 EUs. Meter Lake's maximum GPU count, on the other hand, doubles to 192 EUs. That should result in a significant uplift in performance, although we still don't know what Intel has in store for the GPUs tied to its 12^th and 13^th generation processors.

Alder Lake and Raptor Lake processors will use Intel's new LGA 1700 socket and support PCIe 5.0 and DDR5 memory technologies. However, we don't know at this time if Meteor Lake will also adopt LGA 1700, as we're still too far away from its eventual launch date.