Today was the day when Intel officially announced its CPUs Core Ultra under the new platform Meteor Lake. When it comes down to it there are no surprises, so we will simply do a brief summary of what will be the most important release of the year in terms of CPUs. While the Raptor Lake Refresh for desktop is pure rehash, and a launch devoid of any interest, the complete opposite is true with Meteor Lake. Although of course, the point “negative“, is that these processors are only focused on the portable market.
With the Intel Core Ultra we find the first CPUs for the consumer market with a chiplet design and with packaging technology Foveros. Additionally, it includes an NPU and great advances in energy efficiency thanks to the manufacturing process Intel 4. In addition, at the GPU level, an iGPU is offered with performance worthy of a dedicated GPU thanks to using Intel Arc graphics.
Of course, neither the models that will be available nor official performance tests were officially announced.
Highlights of Intel Core Ultra “Meteor Lake” CPUs
This chiplet desEsports Extrasbrings us a desEsports Extrasof four tiles. The most important is the Compute Tilewhich is where the cores of the Core Ultra CPU are housed under the architecture Intel 4. In these we find the high-performance cores (P-Core), the efficient cores (E-Core), L3 cache memory, and the interconnection ringbus.
P-Core cores have been renovated using the architecture Redwood Cove. These cores increase the IPC, the frequencies they are capable of reaching, and compatibility with a greater number of instruction sets. Of course, the maximum configuration will be 6x P-Core.
The P-Core are accompanied by a maximum of 8x E-Core cores. These also debut a new architecture called Crestmont. They improve IPC, offer greater performance per watt consumed, and will still not have SMT support. In this way, the maximum configuration will be 14 cores and 20 threads.
He Compute Tile is accompanied by SoC Tile. Here we meet with the NPU to speed up AI, and added 2x new LP-E Core cores (Low Power Island E-Cores). These will appear as additional cores in the OS and you will be able to monitor their usage. You have access to the same instructions as the E-Core. In this way, we are talking about a hybrid CPU with three types of cores. These cores will allow the system to be suspended with minimal temperature consumption.
These Low Power Island Cores will allow the x86 cores to be placed close to the other integrated controllers, especially the NPU. Second, it allows turn off Compute Tile main when not necessary.
We continue with the I/O Tile, which is in charge of connectivity (PCI-Express 5.0, Thunderbolt 4, USB 4, etc.). We finish with another of great relevance, the Graphics Tile. Since there is another noticeable jump in performance here, we take a leap to give it the prominence it deserves.
The Intel Arc “Xe-LPG” GPU requires its own prominence
Intel’s great advance is beyond the CPU in these Core Ultra. Specifically, it is related with integrated graphics. In essence, the integrated GPU makes use of the same architecture seen in Intel Arc desktop graphics. This graph can have a maximum of 8 Xe-Cores, which translates into a total of 1,024 coresalong with dedicated hardware for Ray Tracing in the form of 8 Ray Tracing Units.
As a reference, we would be talking about a Intel Arc A380 desktop tailored and compressed into an iGPU design. This chip is manufactured using a cutting-edge manufacturing process from TSMC. The rest of the Tiles have been manufactured by Intel with its Intel 4 node. At the performance level, it is expected that outperform the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 Ti. Not bad for an iGPU for laptops.
This powerful integrated graphics has it all. That is, it allows you to give life to panels with resolutions of up to 8K at 60Hzfour 4K panels at 60 Hz with HDR, or 1080p or 1440p monitors up to 360 Hz. Offers connectivity DisplayPort 2.1 + HDMI 2.1. The encoding and decoding of advanced formats such as VP9, AV1, HEVC and AVC could not be missing.
These Intel Meteor Lake processors are expected to will be released on December 14.
