Discussion Intel Meteor, Arrow, Lunar & Panther Lakes Discussion Threads

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Tigerick

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As Hot Chips 34 starting this week, Intel will unveil technical information of upcoming Meteor Lake (MTL) and Arrow Lake (ARL), new generation platform after Raptor Lake. Both MTL and ARL represent new direction which Intel will move to multiple chiplets and combine as one SoC platform.

MTL also represents new compute tile that based on Intel 4 process which is based on EUV lithography, a first from Intel. Intel expects to ship MTL mobile SoC in 2023.

ARL will come after MTL so Intel should be shipping it in 2024, that is what Intel roadmap is telling us. ARL compute tile will be manufactured by Intel 20A process, a first from Intel to use GAA transistors called RibbonFET.



Comparison of upcoming Intel's U-series CPU: Core Ultra 100U, Lunar Lake and Panther Lake

ModelCode-NameDateTDPNodeTilesMain TileCPULP E-CoreLLCGPUXe-cores
Core Ultra 100UMeteor LakeQ4 202315 - 57 WIntel 4 + N5 + N64tCPU2P + 8E212 MBIntel Graphics4
?Lunar LakeQ4 202417 - 30 WN3B + N62CPU + GPU & IMC4P + 4E08 MBArc8
?Panther LakeQ1 2026 ??Intel 18A + N3E3CPU + MC4P + 8E4?Arc12



Comparison of die size of Each Tile of Meteor Lake, Arrow Lake, Lunar Lake and Panther Lake

Meteor LakeArrow Lake (20A)Arrow Lake (N3B)Lunar LakePanther Lake
PlatformMobile H/U OnlyDesktop OnlyDesktop & Mobile H&HXMobile U OnlyMobile H
Process NodeIntel 4Intel 20ATSMC N3BTSMC N3BIntel 18A
DateQ4 2023Q1 2025 ?Desktop-Q4-2024
H&HX-Q1-2025
Q4 2024Q1 2026 ?
Full Die6P + 8P6P + 8E ?8P + 16E4P + 4E4P + 8E
LLC24 MB24 MB ?36 MB ?12 MB?
tCPU66.48
tGPU44.45
SoC96.77
IOE44.45
Total252.15

LNL-MX.png

Intel Core Ultra 100 - Meteor Lake

INTEL-CORE-100-ULTRA-METEOR-LAKE-OFFCIAL-SLIDE-2.jpg

As mentioned by Tomshardware, TSMC will manufacture the I/O, SoC, and GPU tiles. That means Intel will manufacture only the CPU and Foveros tiles. (Notably, Intel calls the I/O tile an 'I/O Expander,' hence the IOE moniker.)



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coercitiv

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Saw this on Videocardz, a diagram for 800 series and Arrow Lake-S I/O capabilities:
ARROW-LAKE-Z890.jpg


The good news is we're apparently getting another bundle of PCIe lanes that can be used for a second SSD connected directly to the CPU.
 
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dullard

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Desktop arrow lake will have lp cores according to mild
Then he's very wrong. Unless he got some hot off the press info
MLID claims the LP-E cores are in Arrow Lake. But he didn't specify desktop, mobile, or both. https://videocardz.com/newz/intel-r...-refresh-featuring-8p32e-cores-for-2025-debut

WCCFTech claims that mobile Arrow Lake will have LP-E cores--Crestmont based, not Skymont based. https://wccftech.com/intel-arrow-la...ke-h-16-core-cpus-spotted-higher-base-clocks/ and https://wccftech.com/intel-arrow-lake-cpu-core-ultra-200-branding-raptor-lake-h-refresh-core-200h/

TechSpot (via Golden Pig) claims mobile Arrow Lake will have LP-E cores, but not desktop. https://www.techspot.com/news/102149-intel-arrow-lake-s-desktop-processors-ditch-lp.html
 
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TwistedAndy

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MLID claims the LP-E cores are in Arrow Lake. But he didn't specify desktop, mobile, or both.

It appears that both the desktop (ARL-S and ARL-S) and mobile (ARL-H) will have LP-E cores. They are not necessary for desktops but might be pretty useful for ARL-H and ARL-HX. The same can be said about two embedded TB4 controllers.

It looks like Intel is going to make ARL-HX more mobile-friendly while using the unified design with desktop ARL-S.
 
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TwistedAndy

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Wonder what the performance impact is changing the layout of the cores?

The performance impact of moving the IMC to the SoC tile will be minimal (0-5% IPC). Here's a comparison of Raptor Lake (13500H) to Meteor Lake (125H):

 

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SiliconFly

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It appears that both the desktop (ARL-S and ARL-S) and mobile (ARL-H) will have LP-E cores. They are not necessary for desktops but might be pretty useful for ARL-H and ARL-HX. The same can be said about two embedded TB4 controllers.

It looks like Intel is going to make ARL-HX more mobile-friendly while using the unified design with desktop ARL-S.
It's already kinda established that those 2 Crestmont LPE cores in MTL SoC tile aren't powerful enough to handle the background tasks. If the same cores are gonna feature in ARL, they're still not gonna be very useful. Or am I missing something crucial?
 

DavidC1

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2. If #2 is not the case (the sequential nature of the code isn't the main bottleneck) then could it be that the current P core architecture has maxed out from an IPC point-of-view and a completely new and different direction is required, something more along direction of Skymont?
It can't be the limit, because clearly Apple is way higher.

Based on David Huang's analysis, Zen 5 is a regression in structure size for many aspects, looking more like a careful(attempted?) balance to increase performance.

That's likely the reason for why Zen 5 didn't increase in performance so much. Smaller uop cache, reduced performance in certain instructions and the clustered decode setup akin to Tremont but a more niche implementation that doesn't work as often in ST and is tailored for more MT performance. It's probably better for perf/watt but not outright performance.

We can't say sure for Lion Cove yet, but we don't know the full details on why the gain is only 16% for such a big on paper improvement. Think of RDNA3 how on paper it looked impressive but turned out to be a situational benefit and it was done to save area with the dual issue unit. It could be the Lion Cove core just like Zen 5 and RDNA3 took steps to reduce gains in transistor count thus the performance ended up middling.

Also don't discount the possibility that the team could simply not be executing that well.
MLID claims the LP-E cores are in Arrow Lake. But he didn't specify desktop, mobile, or both. https://videocardz.com/newz/intel-r...-refresh-featuring-8p32e-cores-for-2025-debut
It's useless in Meteorlake, so it'll be worse in Arrowlake. They probably didn't bother changing the SoC Tile much from the MTL version if it indeed is found to have the LPE cores. The utopian idea that chiplets/tiles will allow changing every block with no consequence is probably just that - a dream.

Hopefully at least it's more power efficient rather than the amazing 150mW savings only possible when it's a best case scenario.
 
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dullard

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It's already kinda established that those 2 Crestmont LPE cores in MTL SoC tile aren't powerful enough to handle the background tasks. If the same cores are gonna feature in ARL, they're still not gonna be very useful. Or am I missing something crucial?
I think there were two main issues with the Meteor Lake's LP-E implementation.

1) There were 4 types of ways to run a thread. Threads ran on (1) P cores, (2) E cores, (3) LP-E cores, and (4) hyperthreading on the P cores. Scheduling this was not as good as Intel hoped. Too many options and not enough software written yet to specify which core to run on.

2) The LP-E cores were just clocked too low. The goal was to be as low of power as possible, but Intel went too low. Depending on the CPU, the LP-E cores in Meteor Lake had a base clock of 400 MHz to 1 GHz! When was the last time you ever felt 400 MHz to be sufficient? Turbo clocks were also pretty low: 2.1 GHz to 2.5 GHz and that is if there was thermal and power headroom to do turbo.

If (and this is an if that seems likely) Arrow Lake ditches hyperthreading, then the scheduling does get significantly easier to get right. And if the much smaller node lets them run faster, then I think the LP-E cores could actually perform how they were intended.
 
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DavidC1

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2) The LP-E cores were just clocked too low. The goal was to be as low of power as possible, but Intel went too low. Depending on the CPU, the LP-E cores in Meteor Lake had a base clock of 400 MHz to 1 GHz! When was the last time you ever felt 400 MHz to be sufficient? Turbo clocks were also pretty low: 2.1 GHz to 2.5 GHz and that is if there was thermal and power headroom to do turbo.
The Skymont cores on Lunarlake runs 10% faster clocks with twice the amount of cores while performing 38%/68% faster per clock for MT, and runs 70% faster in ST, meaning it gets both uarch benefit and clock increases.

Meteorlake's measurements show that the LPE cores were useless, consuming more power than the E cores at all frequency levels. The E core was more efficient than the "LP" E cores and not by a small amount.

I am not sure if they really need a third cluster and if they could just make it work with two clusters like with Lunar Lake. It would be easier to just disable a cluster completely if low power operation is needed from a scheduling point of view.
 

TESKATLIPOKA

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No one seems to mind that LNL iGPU performance shown in two least representative 3DMark tests, TS and WLE.
At least with ARC, TS score has little to do with gaming performance. The same goes for Nomad

The Fire Strike Extreme is way more suitable for comparing Intel and AMD GPUs in real-world gaming tasks.
LNL has a new GPU architecture, so we don't know If TS score will be inflated or not or by how much compared to MTL.
On the other hand, even If It is inflated, It is not a low value.
If It was TS Graphics, It would be better, but whatever.

TS score(Highest for the given TDP from notebookcheck database):
15/15W 8840U -> 2688 (100%)
17W LNL -> 3438 (128%)
64/20W MTL 185H -> 3537 (132%)

32/27W 8840HS -> 3203 (99%)
54
/28W 7840U -> 3232 (100%)
64/28W MTL 155H -> 3710 (115%)
30W LNL -> 4151 (128%)

At low TDPs It looks the most impressive. If Intel will keep improving their drivers, then It could be interesting.

edit: added PL2 for Phoenix and 8840HS.
 
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DavidC1

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TS score(Highest for the given TDP from notebookcheck database):
15W 8840U -> 2688 (100%)
17W LNL -> 3438 (128%)
64/20W MTL 185H -> 3537 (132%)

28W 7840U -> 3232 (100%)
64/28W MTL 155H -> 3710 (115%)
30W LNL -> 4151 (128%)

At low TDPs It looks the most impressive. If Intel will keep improving their drivers, then It could be interesting.
Xe2 with the hardware changes will do better than Xe. Xe's deficiency likely makes it harder for the driver team.

Look at what Tom Petersen has been saying:
-SIMD16 internals allow much more games to run OOB, meaning it won't need Day 1 changes just to make it work
-Draw/Execute Indirect boosts performance, especially in UE5 games
-Fast Clear native hardware for Xe2.

The strong demand on the iGPUs from synthetic benchmarks such as Time Spy makes Alchemist look better than it is. Realistically Xe2 will do better in games because of the changes. Supporting Fast Clear only now is a big surprise too. Someone said AMD/Nvidia had it for more than a decade or something? Fast Clear also means needing less memory BW per performance.

Also note that 155H's Arc 7 tops at 2.25GHz GPU Turbo, while Lunarlake is only 2.05GHz. So it's faster even though the top clocks are lower.
 

TwistedAndy

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It's already kinda established that those 2 Crestmont LPE cores in MTL SoC tile aren't powerful enough to handle the background tasks. If the same cores are gonna feature in ARL, they're still not gonna be very useful. Or am I missing something crucial?
I guess we will get similar Crestmont cores. Probably, they won't be exposed to the system.

I think Intel would like to use the SoC from Meteor Lake in Arrow Lake, but it won't match Microsoft's 40 TOPs requirement. So, Intel probably has to make some changes to the SoC tile. Maybe we will get Skymont cores and the Side Cache there, but it's unlikely.
 
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TESKATLIPOKA

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Lunar Lake is going to be a big improvement for small form factor laptops. Imagine a low power laptop with 8 Raptor Cove cores. Pretty good. Now imagine 4 Lion Cove + 4 Raptor Cove. Even better. Top of the stack parts might well compete with the 14500.
I would wait for reviews, but so far nT performance doesn't look very strong against competition, which is kinda expected considering It has only 8 cores and no HT.
Compared to Ultra 5 135U 59/18W (2P+8E+2LP), which managed higher 9315pts in CB R23 this one should still be better in comparison from 1->8 threads.

It won't be a bad SoC or anything.
Yes, If you check raw performance of the CPU part then It will loose against Strix maybe even against Kraken at the same TDP, but mostly due to higher core count or SMT or both.
Still, I can agree that not many users would realistically need more than 8 cores or use more than 8 threaded Apps, so this limitation shouldn't be a real problem.
The question is at what price It will be sold compared to competition.
 

Magio

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LNL has a new GPU architecture, so we don't know If TS score will be inflated or not or by how much compared to MTL.
On the other hand, even If It is inflated, It is not a low value.
If It was TS Graphics, It would be better, but whatever.

TS score(Highest for the given TDP from notebookcheck database):
15W 8840U -> 2688 (100%)
17W LNL -> 3438 (128%)
64/20W MTL 185H -> 3537 (132%)

28W 7840U -> 3232 (100%)
64/28W MTL 155H -> 3710 (115%)
30W LNL -> 4151 (128%)

At low TDPs It looks the most impressive. If Intel will keep improving their drivers, then It could be interesting.
Is the 15W 8840U score with a 15W PL1/2, or just a 15W PL1? Because the guy who gave the 17W LNL score confirmed it's 17W PL1/PL2.
 

TESKATLIPOKA

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Xe2 with the hardware changes will do better than Xe. Xe's deficiency likely makes it harder for the driver team.

Look at what Tom Petersen has been saying:
-SIMD16 internals allow much more games to run OOB, meaning it won't need Day 1 changes just to make it work
-Draw/Execute Indirect boosts performance, especially in UE5 games
-Fast Clear native hardware for Xe2.

The strong demand on the iGPUs from synthetic benchmarks such as Time Spy makes Alchemist look better than it is. Realistically Xe2 will do better in games because of the changes. Supporting Fast Clear only now is a big surprise too. Someone said AMD/Nvidia had it for more than a decade or something? Fast Clear also means needing less memory BW per performance.

Also note that 155H's Arc 7 tops at 2.25GHz GPU Turbo, while Lunarlake is only 2.05GHz. So it's faster even though the top clocks are lower.
155H uses ARC 8 at 2.25GHz and even If LNL has lower turbo, It's highly possible It can keep higher sustained clocks than MTL, so I wouldn't make conclusions based on It.

So the question is how much better will Battlemage do than Alchemist in games. We don't know that yet.

@Magio I edited my original post, It is 15W PL1/PL2 GPD Win Mini Zen 4
 
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DavidC1

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155H uses ARC 8 at 2.25GHz and even If LNL has lower turbo, It's highly possible It can keep higher sustained clocks than MTL, so I wouldn't make conclusions based on It.

So the question is how much better will Battlemage do than Alchemist in games. We don't know that yet.

@Magio I edited my original post, It is 15W PL1/PL2 GPD Win Mini Zen 4
Alchemist is shown by C&C to have significant flaws that it can't take advantage of neither the 512GB/s memory nor the full architecture unless it has higher workload, which is why it's significantly better on 4K and high setting setups. It sounds like you didn't read all of my post.

Also without the Day 1 driver optimizations it often does not work out of the box which Peterson said the SIMD16 will make it have many more games work without changes.

The changes highlighted doesn't sound like something trivial. It sounds like it'll be quite a bit better on games too. Like I said, 3DMark benchmarks pummel iGPUs with mostly unplayable frame rates, which favors Alchemist. Battlemage will do better without some unforseen errors.

Look at the graph where Intel says it's "1.5x" performance. It calculates out to be 1.3x at the high end, so if you assume similar clocks it's 1.5x faster.
 

TESKATLIPOKA

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Look at the graph where Intel says it's "1.5x" performance. It calculates out to be 1.3x at the high end, so if you assume similar clocks it's 1.5x faster.
1.5x performance was calculated based on TS and against MTL 165U and that one has 4 XEs at 2GHz.:D
And you have an actual TS score for LNL, unless that is a fake.
 

DavidC1

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1.5x performance was calculated based on TS and against MTL 165U and that one has 4 XEs.:D
And you have an actual TS score, unless that is a fake.
Take a look at the Lunarlake presentation.

1.5x is against the -U but at far lower power. It performs 2.25x as fast in it's full envelope. It's more than 1.3x over -H. They sandbagged it. I bet that's not over.
 
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TESKATLIPOKA

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Take a look at the Lunarlake presentation.

1.5x is against the -U but at far lower power. It performs 2.25x as fast in it's full envelope. It's more than 1.3x over -H. They sandbagged it. I bet that's not over.
I don't need to look at anything from Intel's presentation, we already have LNL scores in TS at 17W and 30W unless they are fake.
We just don't know how It performs in actual games and this we won't know for some time unless another leak is out.
 

dullard

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But aren't they reusing the exact same TSMC N6 SoC tile from MTL? If thats the case, how can we expect any improvement? :(
I didn't realize there were no changes. If so, then we'd only get scheduling improvements (and possibly different power levels available but that wouldn't change much).
 

SiliconFly

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