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

[Tigerick]

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

Model	Code-Name	Date	TDP	Node	Tiles	Main Tile	CPU	LP E-Core	LLC	GPU	Xe-cores
Core Ultra 100U	Meteor Lake	Q4 2023	15 - 57 W	Intel 4 + N5 + N6	4	tCPU	2P + 8E	2	12 MB	Intel Graphics	4
?	Lunar Lake	Q4 2024	17 - 30 W	N3B + N6	2	CPU + GPU & IMC	4P + 4E	0	12 MB	Arc	8
?	Panther Lake	Q1 2026 ?	?	Intel 18A + N3E	3	CPU + MC	4P + 8E	4	?	Arc	12

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

	Meteor Lake	Arrow Lake (N3B)	Lunar Lake	Panther Lake
Platform	Mobile H/U Only	Desktop & Mobile H&HX	Mobile U Only	Mobile H
Process Node	Intel 4	TSMC N3B	TSMC N3B	Intel 18A
Date	Q4 2023	Desktop-Q4-2024 H&HX-Q1-2025	Q4 2024	Q1 2026 ?
Full Die	6P + 8P	8P + 16E	4P + 4E	4P + 8E
LLC	24 MB	36 MB ?	12 MB	?
tCPU	66.48
tGPU	44.45
SoC	96.77
IOE	44.45
Total	252.15

Intel Core Ultra 100 - Meteor Lake



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.)

 

[Thibsie]

I'm talking about the old Xbitlabs of course. There's another site I can't remember which had absolute gems of articles. Technically they were superior to Anandtech, and I learned a lot of fundamentals there. Anandtech had more articles and had more relevant bits most of the time plus they were closer to industry.

The writers then put in a lot more work compared to what they got out of it. The writers nowadays put a fraction of work for lot more reward. Now it's all about chasing that juicy viewer count or $. Back then it felt as if the writers owed their fans a service. I wasn't a fan of Ian Cuttress either. I could immediately feel the quality went down.

AcesHardware 🥰🥰🥰

 

[poke01]

I find chips and cheese articles to be nauseating. Too wordy and over the top language.

Anandtech was different, they were technical, dig deep and yet soft spoken. There was a human element and in deep dive articles this is a must.

 

[Thunder 57]

I find chips and cheese articles to be nauseating. Too wordy and over the top language.

Anandtech was different, they were technical, dig deep and yet soft spoken. There was a human element and in deep dive articles this is a must.

They can be useful, especially when Anandtech is gone. I am not a fan of George Cozma though.

 

[511]

We don't have an option except for Chips and Cheese the last RWT article I read was about Intel 4 technology and the first one was 22FFL iirc and there were some topics I can't remember.

 

[511]

Looks like Intel has cut funding by a goddamm amount

 

[dullard]

Sometimes I get annoyed at Chips & Cheese articles. They KNOW perfectly why Arrowlake sucks.

Writing 10,000 word articles to try to "technically explain" it away doesn't change that.

It's like trying to explain why someone has shot themselves on their foot.

To me, knowing the technical details is useful and informative. A decade+ of people posting that they dislike a company's management (and that goes for any / all companies that people dislike) in virtually every page of every thread in this forum is what is much more bothersome, worthless, overplayed, and doesn't change a thing. But, you do you.

 

[MS_AT]

I thought Ian was great

He was decent, but I miss Andrei's reviews the most. Even if he was too opininated at times.

But C&C is the only outlet doing that kind of thing in written form with any sort of regularity. Unfortunately it's hard to demand more of them seeing it's their hobby rather than main job.

I also like they stick to technical details without going into politics or investment advice. After all this is the content I visit them for, no need for them to take a side in usless fanboy wars of company X vs Y.

 

[Thunder 57]

He was decent, but I miss Andrei's reviews the most. Even if he was too opininated at times.

But C&C is the only outlet doing that kind of thing in written form with any sort of regularity. Unfortunately it's hard to demand more of them seeing it's their hobby rather than main job.

I also like they stick to technical details without going into politics or investment advice. After all this is the content I visit them for, no need for them to take a side in usless fanboy wars of company X vs Y.

GN has a written form now as well. They just come out a few days after their videos.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Looks like Intel has cut funding by a goddamm amount

Fine as long as we get something good in return.

 

[Doug S]

But I don't like them because they posed an open question; Should we move to Substack? The responses were a resounding no. They did it anyway. Why ask if you are going to do it regardless?

I guess you ask if you believe/hope the vote will go your way, then you can say "it was what our audience wanted". Or maybe they wanted to see how much of a risk they were taking of losing readership in the transition. You maybe can't tell that from a vote (unless it is yes/no/hell no and I'll take my ball and go home versus just yes/no) but assuming there were comments to go along with the votes you can get a good sense of that.

Not sure whether "there was a vote and they did exactly what people didn't want them to do" or "they just did it without even asking anyone" is worse. Both piss people off. Some people will pissed off more by the former, some by the latter.

 

[DavidC1]

To me, knowing the technical details is useful and informative. A decade+ of people posting that they dislike a company's management (and that goes for any / all companies that people dislike) in virtually every page of every thread in this forum is what is much more bothersome, worthless, overplayed, and doesn't change a thing. But, you do you.

Nope. Intel is still going down the drain. This isn't the usual "mismanagement" that you quote people complain all the time.

They can't explain it satisfactorily. No review, and no one can explain why Arrowlake sucks. It just does. It's myriads of technical issues that's caused solely by brain drain, lack of experts and mismanagement.

Pentium 4 and Prescott sucked as a product but there were bits of brilliant engineering in there. It was actually a very exciting thing to hope for it to be better. Arrowlake is a bunch of "what the hell" combined into one. How does a 10% faster P core and 32% faster E core result in slower than a predecessor? If overclocking the uncore was enough, then it would have pummeled Raptorlake.

And the worst part of Arrowlake is that it's BORING. It's as if Toyota made next year's Corolla bad.

 

[Thunder 57]

Nope. Intel is still going down the drain. This isn't the usual "mismanagement" that you quote people complain all the time.

They can't explain it satisfactorily. No review, and no one can explain why Arrowlake sucks. It just does. It's myriads of technical issues that's caused solely by brain drain, lack of experts and mismanagement.

Pentium 4 and Prescott sucked as a product but there were bits of brilliant engineering in there. It was actually a very exciting thing to hope for it to be better. Arrowlake is a bunch of "what the hell" combined into one. How does a 10% faster P core and 32% faster E core result in slower than a predecessor? If overclocking the uncore was enough, then it would have pummeled Raptorlake.

And the worst part of Arrowlake is that it's BORING. It's as if Toyota made next year's Corolla bad.

Regarding the Pentium 4, the trace cache was uniquie. The L1D cache was horribly small, probably because the die was huge. It did SSE(2) better than AMD. But is was power hungry and hot. Williamette only worked on Socket 423 with no replacement.Sort of what we are seeing now with ARL being the only CPU for it;s socket, ARL refresh doesn;t really count.

The P4 really only did well in optimized software (SSE2) or in code that wasn't very branchy (video transcoding). It was ahead of its time and as C&C points out some of its features were included in Sandy Bridge.

 

[511]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1930082242078073115

https://twitter.com/x/status/1930157575259238484

 

[dullard]

Arrowlake is a bunch of "what the hell" combined into one. How does a 10% faster P core and 32% faster E core result in slower than a predecessor?

It comes down to what you are interested in doing with the CPU. Here is a nice roundup of many reviews:

Eine Neubetrachtung der "Arrow Lake" Performance (Seite 2) | 3DCenter.org

Dienstag, 25. März 2025 / von Leonidas Nachfolgend sollen noch die einzelnen Performance-Werte der Hardware-Tester für die K-Modelle von Arrow Lake und Raptor Lake Refresh in den Vergleich zu den (drei größeren) X-Modellen von Zen

www.3dcenter.org

Test	14900K	285K
average application performance	92.1%	100%
average application power	187 W	144 W
	Overall 285K vs 14900K in apps:	7.9% faster using 23% less power
average game performance	103.6%	100%
average game power	136 W	100 W
	Overall 285K vs 14900K in games:	3.6% slower using 26% less power

If you are an office worker or a professional, 7.9% faster using 23% less power does NOT match your memory of Arrow Lake's performance. For this use, it clearly is not "slower than a predecessor" in your words.

If you are a gamer, there is less performance but much less power. So, that is a tradeoff that you'd have to think about. I assume that most gamers would prefer the performance of the 14900K, but not all. Yes, slower than a predecessor, but likely it would be unnoticeably slower and yet there is a noticeable power drop. So, it isn't a clear cut "what the hell" moment.

If you want to know why there was a slight gaming performance drop (other than the obvious 26% less power consumed), then Chips and Cheese gives a good technical reason.

 

[Doug S]

Regarding the Pentium 4, the trace cache was uniquie. The L1D cache was horribly small, probably because the die was huge.

The L1D wasn't small because of the die size - L1D takes up a small amount of the overall die even back then. The reason L1D was small was because of how fast the CPU was clocked, if they made it any bigger they would have had to add another cycle of latency which would have made the P4's high clock rate and double pumped ALU much less effective.

 

[Thunder 57]

The L1D wasn't small because of the die size - L1D takes up a small amount of the overall die even back then. The reason L1D was small was because of how fast the CPU was clocked, if they made it any bigger they would have had to add another cycle of latency which would have made the P4's high clock rate and double pumped ALU much less effective.

OK, but they doubled it with Prescott and it clocked faster. Or did they get away with that because of the longer pipeline? Or something else?

 

[Cheesecake16]

I like their content usually. But I don't like them because they posed an open question; Should we move to Substack? The responses were a resounding no. They did it anyway. Why ask if you are going to do it regardless?

That I take full responsibility for. I miscommunicated what I wanted to have happen to the rest of CnC and by the time I realized the miscommunication the site had already been moved over to Substack.

My original plan was to have the Substack up but that be the secondary site with something like substack.chipsandcheese.com as the URL for the Substack and the Wordpress to stay the main chipsandcheese.com website. I didn't communicate that clearly enough so all fault WRT the move and how that was implemented falls on me.

However, in hindsight with the stuff happening between WP Engine and Automattic, which was just starting to kick off between the 2 at the time of the move, having a second version of the site I think is a good thing regardless.

 

[Cheesecake16]

They can be useful, especially when Anandtech is gone. I am not a fan of George Cozma though.

Yeah, I don't like him either ;p

 

[Thunder 57]

That I take full responsibility for. I miscommunicated what I wanted to have happen to the rest of CnC and by the time I realized the miscommunication the site had already been moved over to Substack.

My original plan was to have the Substack up but that be the secondary site with something like substack.chipsandcheese.com as the URL for the Substack and the Wordpress to stay the main chipsandcheese.com website. I didn't communicate that clearly enough so all fault WRT the move and how that was implemented falls on me.

However, in hindsight with the stuff happening between WP Engine and Automattic, which was just starting to kick off between the 2 at the time of the move, having a second version of the site I think is a good thing regardless.

I appreciate you taking the time to make this post and inform us as to what had happened. I do enjoy your content, it is some of the best around. Sorry I spoke poorly of you as I am now better informed. Keep up the good work.

 

[511]

That I take full responsibility for. I miscommunicated what I wanted to have happen to the rest of CnC and by the time I realized the miscommunication the site had already been moved over to Substack.

My original plan was to have the Substack up but that be the secondary site with something like substack.chipsandcheese.com as the URL for the Substack and the Wordpress to stay the main chipsandcheese.com website. I didn't communicate that clearly enough so all fault WRT the move and how that was implemented falls on me.

However, in hindsight with the stuff happening between WP Engine and Automattic, which was just starting to kick off between the 2 at the time of the move, having a second version of the site I think is a good thing regardless.

I enjoy your content keep up the good work 😍.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Does this mean we can have our Cheesecake and...

 

[igor_kavinski]

Sorry I spoke poorly of you as I am now better informed. Keep up the good work.

Time to write an apology for Cozma too when he shows up here

 

[Thunder 57]

Time to write an apology for Cozma too when he shows up here

I thought @Cheesecake16 was George Cozma? If not then I apologize for being critical about the whole substack thing now that I am more informed.

 

[igor_kavinski]

I thought @Cheesecake16 was George Cozma?

Oh wow. You are right! No apology needed then

 

[igor_kavinski]

Since @Cheesecake16 is here, Imma gonna ask the question that's on everybody's mind: How mad are you that Intel messed up so badly? Do you believe Nova Lake will fix everything that's been wrong with Intel CPU architectures since Skylake?