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.

 

[DavidC1]

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]

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.

 

[TESKATLIPOKA]

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]

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]

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

 

[DavidC1]

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]

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.
And you have an actual TS score for LNL, unless that is a fake.

 

[DavidC1]

1.5x performance was calculated based on TS and against MTL 165U and that one has 4 XEs.
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.

 

[TESKATLIPOKA]

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]

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).

 

[Philste]

https://tieba.baidu.com/p/9073067021#/

 

[Henry swagger]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1807808541010591796

27% single core improvement 😁.. lion cove is roaring up the charts

 

[SiliconFly]

-

 

[Henry swagger]

OMG!!! Is this even REAL??? or FAKE?

Thats a massive 27% single-core uplift. That too against RPL. Against MTL, it'll be well above 30%.

Assuming it's real, it's time for me say "I told you so" to around a dozen people here.

Hold on! @SiliconFly is typing...

I.ve already said desktop lion cove will be 25% or 30% plus over raptor cove.. in the forum they said its using 20A node 🤔

 

[SiliconFly]

-

 

[SiliconFly]

-

 

[Hitman928]

All aboard!!

I guess some people won’t learn.

 

[whoshere]

• CPU-Z has never been considered a valid/good/decent benchmark.
• Arrow Lake is at least Q4/2024, it's too early for such leaks. Intel last weak announced they had starting to tap out Lunar Lake CPUs.
• Such a screenshot is too easy to photoshop. Don't get your hopes high. We've already seen fabricated Zen 5 screenshots from China.

GB6/GB5 ST results will show a much better picture. MT not so much.

 

[SiliconFly]

-

 

[AcrosTinus]

• CPU-Z has never been considered a valid/good/decent benchmark.
• Arrow Lake is at least Q4/2024, it's too early for such leaks. Intel last weak announced they had starting to tap out Lunar Lake CPUs.
• Such a screenshot is too easy to photoshop. Don't get your hopes high. We've already seen fabricated Zen 5 screenshots from China.

GB6/GB5 ST results will show a much better picture. MT not so much.

It is a alright benchmark that at least scales compared to GB6. CPU-Z is a good indicator if compared against other Intel CPUs.
Chips and Cheese analyzed the bench and came to the conclusion that the instruction mix does not accurately resemble consumer workloads.
I call half BS on that, which bench really resembles consumer workloads SPEC - FP or INT, Cinebench, all the other crazy SIMD benches ?
I think the bench got overcriticized because AMD is slow in it, showing that the Zen4 core is less wide AND SLOWER, which it is.

I cannot make this sh... up, wait for GB6 benches and don't trust CPU-Z.....

The leaks seem possible, E-Cores are buffed beyond 50% and the P core are min +15% faster with additional news of the new layout.
Current System (13700K@1,34V 2P@5,8 6P@5,7 8P@5,5 8E@4,4 = CPU-Z : ST=938, MT= 13100), so quite realistic.

 

[H433x0n]

Can we please not hype an easily faked benchmark? Even if it somehow is not faked, CPU-Z is not representative of anything.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Because in reality there was no IPC increase from Zen3 to Zen4.

Wow that's some . . . interesting analysis there!

 

[AcrosTinus]

Wow that's some . . . interesting analysis there!

I am right, the bench showed nearly zero IPC gain (CPU-Z), the performance increase in CPU-Z was due to clocks. I think other benches on average showed 10% or 13% increase from Zen3 to Zen4 or is that wrong ?

 

[DrMrLordX]

I am right, the bench showed nearly zero IPC gain (CPU-Z), the performance increase in CPU-Z was due to clocks. I think other benches on average showed 10% or 13% increase from Zen3 to Zen4 or is that wrong ?

And yet other benches showed IPC gains for Zen4. Have you ever considered the possibility that CPU-z benchmark is flawed?

 

[Abwx]

All conspiracy with no evidence. SKL is faster than Zen1 in all cases.

Lol, it s documented by CPU Z themselves, they explained the "reasons" for such a downgrade after they revised the 1.73 version wich was released in december 2016 and "updated" in may 2017 after they noticed the surprisingly good score of the 1800X.