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.

 

[Hulk]

In terms of performance the 265k has been equal or better since I limited the 14900k to 200w. (Prefer reasonably quiet heatpipe based cooling over liquid.) I'm sure that raises an equally valid question of why I bothered with the 14900k in the first place. Answer there is I've been upgrading every generation and re-selling the used CPU+motherboard on eBay for roughly the original price paid since core 2 duo. Perk of having started my career at Intel and still having friends who work there is access to their employee purchase program. The at-cost pricing is far, far better than the 15-20% reimbursement AMD offers, or the 10% discount with NVIDIA. I had thought about skipping ARL, but the abnormally cheap pricing of the 265k combined with higher end z890 boards being re-sold at 1/2 to 1/3 of original price earlier this year made it a bit too tempting. (Thanks Newegg for your forced bundling of motherboards no one wanted with graphics cards far too many people wanted.)

I'd certainly like it if there were reasonable 2x performance opportunities to be had. It was fun getting those kinds of improvements from graphics cards for a bit without having to pay an obscene amount.

I was on the Raptor Lake train for a few years. They were good cpu's if run at sensible frequency/power. But at sensible frequency/power the 9950x runs circles around them. At least for my use cases it does. I'm excited to see what Nova brings to the table but for me to move to a new socket it would have to literally KO Zen 6.