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

[Tigerick]

Wildcat Lake (WCL) Preliminary Specs

Intel Wildcat Lake (WCL) is upcoming mobile SoC replacing ADL-N. WCL consists of 2 tiles: compute tile and PCD tile. It is true single die consists of CPU, GPU and NPU that is fabbed by 18-A process. Last time I checked, PCD tile is fabbed by TSMC N6 process. They are connected through UCIe, not D2D; a first from Intel. Expecting launching in Q2/Computex 2026. In case people don't remember AlderLake-N, I have created a table below to compare the detail specs of ADL-N and WCL. Just for fun, I am throwing LNL and upcoming Mediatek D9500 SoC.

		Intel Alder Lake - N	Intel Wildcat Lake	Intel Lunar Lake		Mediatek D9500
Launch Date		Q1-2023	Q2-2026 ?	Q3-2024		Q3-2025
Model		Intel N300	?	Core Ultra 7 268V		Dimensity 9500 5G
Dies		2	2	2		1
Node		Intel 7 + ?	Intel 18-A + TSMC N6	TSMC N3B + N6		TSMC N3P
CPU		8 E-cores	2 P-core + 4 LP E-cores	4 P-core + 4 LP E-cores		C1 1+3+4
Threads		8	6	8		8
Max Clock		3.8 GHz	?	5 GHz
L3 Cache		6 MB	?	12 MB
TDP		7 W	Fanless ?	17 W		Fanless
Memory		64-bit LPDDR5-4800	64-bit LPDDR5-6800 ?	128-bit LPDDR5X-8533		64-bit LPDDR5X-10667
Size		16 GB	?	32 GB		24 GB ?
Bandwidth			~ 55 GB/s	136 GB/s		85.6 GB/s
GPU		UHD Graphics		Arc 140V		G1 Ultra
EU / Xe		32 EU	2 Xe	8 Xe		12
Max Clock		1.25 GHz		2 GHz
NPU		NA	18 TOPS	48 TOPS		100 TOPS ?

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.

 

[dullard]

??!? Think about what you are saying. You can't get 10 hours on a 70WHr battery with 30W power average. It's 7W average.

30 W when not in idle.

 

[DavidC1]

30 W when not in idle.

I get what you are saying, but using numbers like that doesn't make you sound very knowledgeable about this.

Battery life on light load is dominated by idle power, and the ability of the platform to reach those idle states. Very little to do with TDP.

Apple got this formula down long time ago. Intel made lot of BS about "this power savings" and "that power savings" with no real result(except few like with Pentium M and Haswell). I've read countless claims like oh this new transistor offers 0.05V reduction or how it can power down between keystrokes and reviews would show pretty much same as the predecessor. Intel talks too much. They should shut up and just deliver.

Apple figured out that you could have a core as big and wide as they'd like(simplifying things here), but all they needed to do is have really really low platform idle power, and the CPU to be able to reach it.

Dell's claims are basically almost complete idle. Look back on that article you linked.

an astonishing 19 hours and 41 minutes based on our web surfing results with its screen set to 150 nits of screen brightness, though Dell promised it could get up to 27 hours when playing 1080p video.

So according to their own tests, 27 = 19.7, so why would they believe the new results? If you take the same ratio then Lunarlake would get 22.

 

[dullard]

So, please help me out. I'll try to boil your argument down:

Apple got this formula down long time ago.

All garbage.

Then, Intel beats Apple in battery life:

 

[DavidC1]

So, please help me out. I'll try to boil your argument down:


Then, Intel beats Apple in battery life:
View attachment 106902

The same test shows MBA having not a big advantage over Meteorlake. I'd wait until more tests.

Yes and Lunarlake finally got them to use the same method to get to their levels. But you know, that's only going to last one generation, because they'll give that up on Pantherlake.

If the rumors are saying 35% reduction in SoC power, I don't see how they'll achieve that over Lunarlake. It's probably over Meteorlake.

The garbage statement is about people saying 10 hours is some fancy never-before seen figure when we got that with a 50WHr battery back with Broadwell in 2015. For battery life test, it really sucks. And M3/Snapdragon sucking is additional proof.

 

[Khato]

Yes and Lunarlake finally got them to use the same method to get to their levels. But you know, that's only going to last one generation, because they'll give that up on Pantherlake.

What aspects of PTL are going to make it vastly inferior to LNL with respect to power consumption exactly? They aren't continuing the on package memory which will indeed be unfortunate, but beyond that?

 

[OriAr]

Oof if these are the yields for a 100mm2 chip on Intel 3

https://twitter.com/x/status/1831598153692545468

https://twitter.com/x/status/1831621821894160887

I am gonna call BS on that as there is no way Intel would have ramped up SRF and GNR if yields were that bad.
Raichu already said d0 for Intel 3 is somewhere in the 0.1-0.15 range.

 

[SiliconFly]

.

 

[cannedlake240]

but beyond that?

Splits off the GPU tile(and likely media engine with it), so that's going to have some power D2D penalty. There's also a rumor that it reverts back from LNL style PMICs. Maybe a more efficient process node and LP-E core could make up for that, idk... Doesn't help that Intel nodes are typically worse than TSMC at this

 

[digitaldreamer]

30 W when not in idle.
View attachment 106899

Correct me if I'm wrong: Wouldn't a 30W draw only last 2.3 hours on a 70Wh battery?

 

[SiliconFly]

.

 

[poke01]

There is no way lunar is at 30 watts during the web browser test

 

[DavidC1]

What aspects of PTL are going to make it vastly inferior to LNL with respect to power consumption exactly? They aren't continuing the on package memory which will indeed be unfortunate, but beyond that?

They can go On Package memory with PTL-U if they want, but that won't do anything.

Lunarlake has a purpose optimized LPDDR PHY for lower power when in previous generations it just had it for supporting it. There's always potential, but it needs to be released/used before it can be kinetic.

Lunarlake also has an SLC cache because proximity determines power efficiency. Lunarlake also doesn't need to deal with three types of cores and majority of workloads will run on the E core, which is actually efficient.

GPU tile is separate on Pantherlake, which will increase both interconnect power use(won't be significant but still) and latency. Latency is the key to both performance and low power. IO on a separate tile doesn't matter as much because the bandwidth demands are low.

GPU on the other hand is going to have to go through the interconnect to communicate both with the CPU and with the memory controller. A bus is the last thing that can be powered off, because it's like a road. If you have just one car travelling, you need it. So now you have a high demand device on a slower, higher power lane.

Ultimately the problem is ideology, which is that Intel is run by beancounters and they don't view needing a separate purpose optimized SoC for low power.

Let me put it this way. If Pantherlake is well executed it can be an improvement over Meteorlake. But it could have been the best if they put all Lunarlake had. Let's quote Bionic_Squash again. Lunarlake does not have a direct successor.

The new Lunar Lake laptop use LPDDR and hence when they sleep their power usage is so negligible it appears to us as thought the system doesn't use any power at all during sleep.

What? No. Every laptop since Sandy Bridge or something uses LPDDR of some sort. But that's the thing. It's just for support. Lunarlake has a purpose optimized LPDDR interface, it's not just "Oh you can stick LPDDR now". So you get that benefit plus whatever little LPDDR itself offers.

 

[cannedlake240]

problem is ideology

They want be an AI chip company now. Apparently that's what they are investing in, next gen GPU ip and stuff. No cash left for the low power niche

 

[DavidC1]

Lunar Lake CPU alone can't bring in that much efficiency. It's the bundled LPDDR & other tightly integrated system components (not just in the SoC but also possibly in the motherboard too) & the accelerators & the system drivers too might have power efficiency specific optimizations that overall help the Lunar Lake system achieve higher efficiency.

Please people, do a little bit of research, read a bit of history before you say something.

They have been doing what you've been saying since at least Haswell. I can tell you that my chip can go to 0.5W on HWInfo with the screen-on. It won't happen if I have a mouse connected. It won't happen if sound is on. I bought a Haswell device just for the fun of optimizing it. It wouldn't reach below 1.5W for CPU power. I found out it's due to the crappy Qualcomm WiFi. I switched it out for an Intel WiFi and it dropped to 0.9W.

The CPU since Haswell is like a driver for a car. It has a leash to all the other components, and if one component misbehaves, the CPU itself can't power down. That's what the EVO certification is about too. A reduction in CPU power is more than just CPU. It's almost everything, even a little bit of screen.*

From the Lunarlake GPU presentation:
-Display buffering for race to halt on memory access
-Skip fetching and transmitting repeated frames
-Skip waking cores on repeated frames
-Queueing frame into display to reduce core wakeups
-Early transport

The above is the summary of just display-related power savings in Lunarlake.

 

[dullard]

Correct me if I'm wrong: Wouldn't a 30W draw only last 2.3 hours on a 70Wh battery?

30 W when under load. Much lower (but unreported) in idle. The load power could be set as low as 8 W for the CPU. I haven't seen how low it idles yet.

Since you don't know the idle time nor the idle power, you can't just take 70 Whr / 30 W and get 2.3 hr. Doing so would be setting it at max CPU power constantly. Very few laptop use cases do that.

That is why @DavidC1 is completely mixed up in this thread. He is so against Lunar Lake that he can't think clearly right now. Simple math like that isn't sufficient. Plus, there is his laughable idea that a 4 P + 4 E Panther Lake-U is not a successor for a 4 P + 4 E Lunar Lake-U. He thinks Lunar Lake is a one-off. Let alone his idea that his 2017 Yoga laptop is comparable to a 2024 Lunar Lake laptop. The Lunar Lake laptop would run circles around his 2017 Yoga. Low power consumption gives great battery life, but we actually need performance too. Heck, I could build a laptop, put a useless CPU in it with low idle power and show massive battery life--but if it takes hours to do anything, no one would want it.

But, suppose a random laptop with a random CPU does work at 30 W and then say idles down to 5 W. Suppose it gets the work done quickly enough that it spends 95% of the time in idle mode. Then, that CPU would average 30 W * 5% + 5 W * 95% = 6.25 W. With a 70 Whr battery, it would get (70 Whr) / (6.25 W) = 11.2 hours of run time at that 30 W load power setting.

 

[OriAr]

Lunar Lake power draws while doing various tasks according to Jaykihn:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1827630742765191254

 

[cannedlake240]

Panther Lake-U is not a successor for a 4 P + 4 E Lunar Lake-U. He thinks Lunar Lake is a one-off.

This is true though. PTL-U is not a direct successor to LNL the way M2 is to M1. LNL is Intel's attempt at an M1, ARM soc competitor. If the latter were the case Intel would be doubling down on driving maximum efficiency at all levels. PTL however is more of a regular Intel mobile SoC iteration that integrates only some of the improvements found in LNL.
Plus it's targeting the more mainstream -U segment with 4Xe3 iGPU, while LNL is a premium tier design using the best igpu Intel has to offer.

 

[SiliconFly]

.

 

[dullard]

This is true though. PTL-U is not a direct successor to LNL the way M2 is to M1. LNL is Intel's attempt at an M1, ARM soc competitor. If the latter were the case Intel would be doubling down on driving maximum efficiency at all levels. PTL however is more of a regular Intel mobile SoC iteration that integrates only some of the improvements found in LNL.
Plus it's targeting the more mainstream -U segment with 4Xe3 iGPU, while LNL is a premium tier design using the best igpu Intel has to offer.

How would you predict these two chips will compare as a whole?

1. Lunar Lake: 17 W, 4 P, 4E, 8 Xe2 cores (60 TOPS on the iGPU)
2. Panther Lake: 15 W, 4P, 4E, 4 Xe3 cores (double the iGPU performance of Lunar Lake: 120 TOPS on the GPU). Supposedly 35% more energy efficient than Lunar Lake. https://forums.anandtech.com/thread...akes-discussion-threads.2606448/post-41189786

Panther Lake-U: up to four high-performance cores, up to four ultra-low-power cores, and up to four Xe graphics clusters. These CPUs will have a processor base power of 15W, which is in-line with contemporary thin-and-light notebook processors.

https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-com...e-configurations-for-laptops-after-lunar-lake

 

[SiliconFly]

.

 

[mikk]

How would you predict these two chips will compare as a whole?

1. Lunar Lake: 17 W, 4 P, 4E, 8 Xe2 cores (60 TOPS on the iGPU)
2. Panther Lake: 15 W, 4P, 4E, 4 Xe3 cores (double the iGPU performance of Lunar Lake: 120 TOPS on the GPU). Supposedly 35% more energy efficient than Lunar Lake. https://forums.anandtech.com/thread...akes-discussion-threads.2606448/post-41189786

https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-com...e-configurations-for-laptops-after-lunar-lake

4 Xe3 2x faster than 8 Xe2? I would tone down your expectations lol. 120 TOPS certainly comes from the bigger 12 Xe3.


PTL-U is more a traditional U chip for cheaper devices. There is no on package RAM and it has a smaller iGPU. From the Dell roadmap next after LNL-MX with 20W TDP comes NVL, maybe LNL-MX gets a real successor with a chip from the Nova Lake generation. However PTL also should get a big battery life increase (over MTL) just from the 4xLPE Darkmont in the compute tile, this is the big thing on Lunar Lake. Also the refreshed Cove+Mont cores might be even more opimized for efficiency.

 

[Khato]

Thanks for the opinions regarding why PTL isn't going to measure up to LNL on power efficiency. No question that the integrated graphics being subject to a D2D interface isn't ideal from an efficiency perspective. Will be interesting to see how opinions shift as correct implementation details make their way out.

 

[SiliconFly]

.

 

[majord]

Lunar goodness

the run times he's getting on all these laptops for netflix are so bad for such huge batteries I don't know what to make of it..

What is his testing conditions? max brightness+ max performance mode?!

 

[poke01]

the run times he's getting on all these laptops for netflix are so bad for such huge batteries I don't know what to make of it..

What is his testing conditions? max brightness+ max performance mode?!

I would wait for third party reviews as this is a Lenovo+Intel sponser review but it’s looking good.

Dave 2D often doesn’t tell the whole story ie how’s the battery under load and how is sleep etc