Intel Core Ultra Meteor Lake CPU Breaks Cover With 128 GPU Cores And A Branding Update

by Zak Killian — Monday, May 01, 2023, 05:15 PM EDT

The game itself may not be that popular—with a 24-hour peak user count of 67—but the Ashes of the Singularity benchmark database continues to be a fertile breeding ground for hardware leaks. The latest leak to pop out of that place is for an Intel Core Ultra 5 1003H CPU. Say what?

Yes, indeed—look for yourself in the screenshot below. What is a Core(TM) Ultra 5? Good question. It's entirely possible that this is just some wacky name that Intel stuck on an engineering sample and that it doesn't mean anything. We've seen that before from Intel, where early Alder Lake CPUs were known as "Core-1800."

We'd probably dismiss it as just that if not for a tweet today from Bernard Fernandes, Intel's Director of Global Communications. In the tweet, reproduced below, Mr. Fernandes says that Intel is "making some brand changes" because the company is "at an inflection point in its client roadmap." He clarifies that he's specifically talking about Meteor Lake, and promises more information in "the coming weeks."

The leaked processor in the Ashes benchmark is almost assuredly a Meteor Lake CPU. The "Core Ultra 5 1003H" is reported as having 18 logical cores, which is very strange and doesn't line up to any known processor. It also doesn't match neatly with common core configurations for Raptor Lake. E-cores, as far as we know, come in quad-core clusters, and it's very unusual to see them in any other configuration.

So saying, this 18-thread processor is most likely a configuration with four P-cores, eight E-cores, and then the two LP-E-cores found on the Meteor Lake SoC tile. That gives us ten E-cores and four Hyper-Threaded P-cores for a total of eighteen threads. Alternatively it's a configuration with six P-cores and six E-cores, which could include the two LP-E-cores, but we find that unlikely considering the "5" branding for an "H" SKU.

sisoft sandra benchleaks — *This image and above from @BenchLeaks on Twitter.*

Interestingly, searching the graphics driver string from the Ashes benchmark in SiSoft Sandra's benchmark database reveals more details about the graphics processor in question. It's apparently a 128-EU Arc part that runs up to 2.1 GHz. 128 EUs gives it 1024 shaders—relatively a lot for an integrated processor, and equivalent to an Arc A380, with a higher clock to boot.

While the Core Ultra's IGP benefits from architectural refinements made since the release of the original Arc GPUs, it also has to share its memory bus with the rest of the SoC. However, if a processor like this includes the "Adamantine" L4 cache, it could sidestep that issue quite handily. We'll be very curious to compare the discrete Arc A380 against one of these Core Ultra processors.

Tags: Intel, (NASDAQ:INTC), xe, meteor lake

Intel Core Ultra Meteor Lake CPU Breaks Cover With 128 GPU Cores And A Branding Update

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