Intel is simultaneously (A) discussing lots of information about Meteor Lake and (B) holding the important Meteor Lake cards close and undisclosed. They are trying to drum up excitement for their technology (Intel 4, Foveros, etc) while not revealing too much for competition reasons. More is scheduled to be announced at Hot Chips 34 on Aug 23, 2022:
https://hotchips.org/advance-program/ That hopefully will clarify a lot about Meteor Lake.
First people claimed Meteor Lake would be mobile only with a 2 + 8 tile (even though Intel kept saying 125 W chips would be made and listed desktop power supplies for meteor lake). Then the 6 + 8 tile was revealed. Unless you have inside information, no one knows how many other compute tiles Intel has (if any). For example, Moore's Law Is Dead claims an unconfirmed 8 + 16 tile is in the works for Meteor Lake. I think that 8 + 16 tile would make sense as a backup in case Arrow Lake is delayed, but might not see the light of day if Arrow Lake is doing well.
That is the point of tiling, they can much more easily swap in a new tile if needed.
Now some people are claiming that there are additional cores in the large SOC tile on Meteor Lake. There is a hint at that if you read between the lines on a presentation, but that really is stretching the imagination until we get more concrete info.
My reading of the tea leaves is that for
desktop, Raptor Lake will be a bit better than many people expect and Meteor Lake will be worse that many people expect. I think Arrow Lake is the one to really wait for. Although I think it will likely be a bit later than
@IntelUser2000 estimate of March 2024. Maybe June 2024?