Intel's Tom Petersen Dishes On Battlemage, Meteor Lake Gaming Handhelds, And More

We met up with Tom "TAP" Petersen at CES 2024, but schedules didn't line up and we didn't have time to sit down with him for a chat. However, PC World did, and the man delivered on some pretty interesting interview topics. Chief among them was the new MSI Claw handheld, of course, but he had more interesting comments on Meteor Lake itself, as well as the future of Intel's graphics division.

According to Tom, Meteor Lake is exceptionally-suited for handhelds due to its high power efficiency, and for that same reason, it also would be well-suited to use in handhelds meant for streaming—although perhaps a lower-end SKU, as the potent CPU performance of Meteor Lake would be gross overkill for such a device. He says that Intel collaborated with MSI on the Claw, particularly on the thermal solution and the board design. Notably, the MSI Claw uses a stock Core Ultra 7 processor, not a customized one. However, Intel is open to creating custom processors for handhelds, according to TAP.


Tom also noted that the handheld form factor is actually rather similar to the thin and light laptop form factor, as well as tablets. While a handheld is a much smaller device than a laptop, if you actually look at the size of the cooling apparatus inside most thin and light laptops—including the MSI Prestige 16 AI EVO that we used as our Meteor Lake review vehicle—it's actually about the same size as what you'd find in something like the Claw. We faced some criticism for comparing the Core Ultra 7 165H against AMD's Ryzen Z1 Extreme, but in reality the comparison is quite apt and Tom clearly agrees.


Some people have expressed concern at the use of Arc Graphics for a gaming handheld, but as our own testing has shown, Arc's drivers have matured at an impressive pace thanks to the hard work of Intel's graphics team. As you are likely aware (if you're reading this), the "Meteor Lake" Core Ultra processors have integrated graphics that are very close cousins to the Arc Alchemist discrete GPUs, so they benefit from all that same hard work.

At one point, PC World's Adam Patrick Murray asks Tom about the Meteor Lake NPU, and notes that the Claw is the first handheld with an NPU onboard. That's not actually true, though; companies including AYANEO, OneNotebook, and GamePad Digital (GPD) have all released machines with the Ryzen 7 7840U, which includes an AMD XDNA-based "Ryzen AI" NPU.


Going by Intel's own figures, the Meteor Lake NPU isn't really competitive with the one in AMD's Hawk Point silicon, but TAP indirectly addresses this by noting that it's really intended for extremely low-power acceleration of "always on" AI features, like facial or gesture recognition. He theorizes that, in the future when NPUs become commonplace, they could be used in games for things like NPCs or dynamic animation.

Toward the end of the interview, PC World asks TAP about Battlemage. He didn't have much to say for obvious reasons, but earlier in the interview, he noted that "the idea of islands could come to discrete GPUs," and pointed out that Ponte Vecchio is already doing that. Regarding Battlemage specifically, he says that the first silicon for the upcoming Intel GPUs is already in the labs, and that "30% of [Intel's] graphics engineers" are working on software for Battlemage, as the hardware guys have already moved on to the next thing.


You can check out the whole interview above if you're interested; there are a few choice quips from TAP, including "if you give me the ability to do segment-specific SKUs, I will literally go crazy." Here's looking forward to the "more good news" that he promised about Battlemage, hopefully sooner than later.