Intel hasn’t shied away from sharing its long term roadmap because it appears to be like to regain course of management, each within the close to future and into the so-called angstrom period. The additional down the roadmap we journey the much less particulars Intel shares, however we not less than get a tough define of what is in retailer. And looking out simply previous Raptor Lake, Intel will pivot to a smaller node for its 14th Gen Core Meteor Lake processors.
Skeptics will marvel if Intel can preserve the aggressive tempo of innovation it is set earlier than itself, and that is a good query after witnessing the stumble to 10 nanometers. Bear in mind Cannon Lake and the hype that preceded it? That is all now previously and as we have seen with Alder Lake, Intel has regained its footing because it appears to be like to dash forward.
To that finish, a contemporary Digitimes studies claims that the chip maker’s Intel 4 node is on monitor for quantity manufacturing within the second half of 2022. That was all the time plan (Intel bragged in April that it powered up a Meteor Lake CPU and booted to Home windows), however what the unofficial replace suggests is that Intel has not run into any snags, final minute or in any other case. That is vital as Intel will get prepared for a node shrink.
The place issues can get complicated from the skin trying in is with the node naming scheme. Intel shifted to a brand new naming scheme round this time final yr, beginning with Intel 7 for Alder Lake. Intel 7 had beforehand been referred to an 10nm Enhanced SuperFin. And looking forward to Meteor Lake, the Intel 4 node was beforehand known as 7nm.
A part of the explanation for the shift is as a result of nodes from one producer and one other should not created equal. From a really excessive stage overview, that is to say that Intel 4 (7nm) isn’t the identical as TSMC’s 7nm node that AMD’s Zen 3 chips are primarily based on.
The shift to Intel 4 is an enormous deal for Intel. It represents the primary full node shrink since Intel rolled out its new labels, and it comes with some massive efficiency claims. For instance, Intel says it would ship a 20 % efficiency per watt enchancment over Intel 7, or allow 40 % much less energy on the identical clock frequency. This will even be Intel’s first node to make full use of EUV lithography.
One other notable facet of Meteor Lake is a shift to a chiplet make-up with a versatile tiled structure (graphics, CPU cores, and I/O are on a separate die). Apparently, the CPU tiles are fabricated by Intel whereas TSMC is making the GPU tiles. We nonetheless do not know what the desktop configurations will appear to be, however on cell, we’re doubtless taking a look at 6-8 Redwood Cove P-cores, 0-16 Crestmont E-cores, and Battlemage built-in GPUs with as much as 192 EUs.
For many causes, Meteor Lake is an even bigger bounce in structure from Raptor Lake, than Raptor Lake might be to Alder Lake. So it is good to apparently be taught that Intel 4 quantity manufacturing is on monitor.
