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]

It’s past the point where IFS can bail out Intel, money in 2027 and 2028 isn’t going to keep the lights on right now.

This could have worked, but the real mistake is not cutting out the cruft back in 2021 timeframe when he became CEO. They should have cut all of it immediately back then. Stock buybacks, dividends, cutting out the "hot lots", trimming the roadmaps and other efficiency they were quoting in 2023 should have been done 2 years ago. They probably would have ended up with $20 billion more which would have been a big deal.

The real mistake is not seeing the demand plummeting. Everything else is really a consequence of that. Maybe they were expecting lockdowns to persist forever.

 

[ajsdkflsdjfio]

AND, obviously, the board will know things we don't. Assuming things are good for the future does not reconcile with shaking the company so severely. The safest assumption, is that things are bad with the present path AND is not expected to recover anytime soon. Pie in the sky projections seems to have met their match with reality, which always win.

Anyone has a read on employee reactions. This will be telling.

Quite ironic as I was accused of spreading FUD with Intel 2 days ago, now this.

The board surely knows things we don't, but at the same time that doesn't suddenly make the board right. It might be true that there is some major problem that hasn't been revealed to the public, I might even prefer that to be the case because then there would've been actual cause to fire Pat. But if the board simply got fed up waiting, I think that this is simply a problem of patience and shortsightedness. Regardless of pie in the sky projections it's true that Intel 18a, Pat's golden egg, is finally moving into production along with clearwater forest and panther lake, Intel's first real chance at regaining the lead in some segment. To fire Pat before his plan is finally about to come to pass is just weird.

I'd also argue that the reactions to firing Pat have been pretty mixed and have come with fears of a future fractured Intel among other things. If anything, the FUD is coming from Pat being fired not the other way around.

 

[ajsdkflsdjfio]

He wasn't a perfect CEO. He definitely missed the boat on AI. He could have accelerated it, but didn't see it coming. He also missed forecasting that the revenues will plummet after the lockdowns were over, and interest expenditures skyrocketed. Real estate foreclosures increased a ton.

I see an argument for those other things but I don't really see the missing the boat on AI thing. The AI boom really happened shortly after Gelsinger took the CEO position and by that time it's already too late. Nvidia was able to take such good advantage of the boom because their ecosystem and hardware development that took decades to build were perfectly fit for AI. Intel never had that sort of development in the market and even if Pat was perfectly aware of the AI boom I don't think there was realistically that much he could've done in that short of a time period.

 

[Saylick]

AND, obviously, the board will know things we don't. Assuming things are good for the future does not reconcile with shaking the company so severely. The safest assumption, is that things are bad with the present path AND is not expected to recover anytime soon. Pie in the sky projections seems to have met their match with reality, which always win.

Anyone has a read on employee reactions. This will be telling.

Quite ironic as I was accused of spreading FUD with Intel 2 days ago, now this.

Yeah, pretty much what you said in the bolded portion is true. A reasonable and logically-minded Board should have a good reason to rock the boat, assuming they are kicking out Pat and he's not leaving voluntarily for personal reasons. A Board simply doesn't kick out a CEO for no reason.

 

[Doug S]

I mean, think about it. Why wouldn't Nvidia, AMD and Qualcomm get onboard since they badly need lower prices than what TSMC is offering?

In what world does Nvidia "badly need lower prices"?

 

[desrever]

How does he suck excluding all that? Excluding all that his, 5n4y plan is just coming into fruition despite it's extremely ambitious goals of going from -2 node disadvantage to node parity with 18a vs N3/N2. As for appeasing investors, sorry that investors aren't happy in the short term when significant money is spent to rebuild intel from the ground up and when the actions of previous Ceos are finally hitting during the current year. It isn't magic that Intel missed the EUV train and lost a significant process advantage to TSMC over the span of a decade to the point where they were behind by multiple process nodes.

Also why does everybody blame missing the AI train on Pat. He was too optimistic on reporting Gaudi success but at the same time what do you expect from the CEO? No CEO is completely honest about how successful the company's products are doing. The fact is Intel had missed the AI/GPU train a long time ago. Pat is not responsible for missing out on AI and on the contrary it could be argued that he has build a solid foundation for intel to finally start to grow again. How do you expect intel to compete with no foundry business, no GPU experience, lackluster design. At least pat sought to fix some of those things in the long term even if it doesn't pay off now.

18A isn't out yet and is >2 years behind TSMC still. 5n4y never happened, even if it did, TSMC would have had 10 nodes the same time frame since intel is counting optimization nodes like Intel 3 vs Intel 4 and 20A and 18A.

Intel over hired massively just to fire them, speaks of bad execution and completely Pat's fault. When you are CEO, you need to understand the market and direct the company at this scale.

Intel had poor internal and external projections of many of their business units while Pat is CEO, completely on Pat. There is a reason their stock dropped 20% on a single day after they pretty much fail to project a downturn of that magnitude and then release massive losses out of "nowhere".

Intel lied about Gaudi. Intel lied about everything is on track with nodes until 20A is just canceled.

Intel did not have any coherient plans with what they want to do except node leadership which they never got and at this point we can see they will never get. This is completely Pat's fault too.

Pat did a poor job aligning the company and has been the worst COE of Intel ever. Intel canceled free coffee while Pat was CEO, this kind of failing is on another level.

 

[ajsdkflsdjfio]

18A isn't out yet and is >2 years behind TSMC still. 5n4y never happened, even if it did, TSMC would have had 10 nodes the same time frame since intel is counting optimization nodes like Intel 3 vs Intel 4 and 20A and 18A.

18A isn't out so we don't have any actual numbers, but most people and internal sources point to it being better than N3P and slightly behind N2. That is not >2 years behind TSMC. Even if you were to eliminate the pipe cleaner nodes i4 and 20A, intel still jumped from i7 vs N5 to 18A vs N3. To say that intel's process technology isn't competitive with TSMC is just a complete lie. You can say anything you want about the economics about Intel's IDM 2.0 strategy but you certainly can't say they don't have the technology.

Intel had poor internal and external projections of many of their business units while Pat is CEO, completely on Pat. There is a reason their stock dropped 20% on a single day after they pretty much fail to project a downturn of that magnitude and then release massive losses out of "nowhere".

When your foundry is poor, your design teams are poor, you missed AI and mobile, ofc there is going to be a large downward trend. The fact that investors/board didn't see this coming earlier is on them. It is exactly as you say, the losses didn't come from "nowhere".

Intel did not have any coherient plans with what they want to do except node leadership which they never got and at this point we can see they will never get. This is completely Pat's fault too.

While I cannot speak on Pat's plans for things other than the foundry. I can speak to the fact that the poor planning of client/dc/AI markets long predates Pat. As for node leadership, it is the first problem that Intel needed to fix before they could get all their other ducks in a line. The foundry has always been a core part of their business and hopefully will remain part of it.

IDK how you get the idea that intel's nodes aren't competitive with TSMC. You point to 20A being cancelled but that was never meant to be a mass production node anyways. 18A in foundry terms is literally right around the corner. Multiple companies have tested it and signed on to utilize it in future products, Intel itself is returning to producing their own products in house using 18A over N3. Why would they design their future products on an inferior process when they are already at a disadvantage in performance? They don't just decide these things out of nowhere, clearly they have tested the process and deemed it to be satisfactory enough to use it in future products in lieu of TSMC.

 

[maddie]

The board surely knows things we don't, but at the same time that doesn't suddenly make the board right. It might be true that there is some major problem that hasn't been revealed to the public, I might even prefer that to be the case because then there would've been actual cause to fire Pat. But if the board simply got fed up waiting, I think that this is simply a problem of patience and shortsightedness. Regardless of pie in the sky projections it's true that Intel 18a, Pat's golden egg, is finally moving into production along with clearwater forest and panther lake, Intel's first real chance at regaining the lead in some segment. To fire Pat before his plan is finally about to come to pass is just weird.

I'd also argue that the reactions to firing Pat have been pretty mixed and have come with fears of a future fractured Intel among other things. If anything, the FUD is coming from Pat being fired not the other way around.

Assumption: To fire Pat before his plan is finally about to come to pass is just weird.

Fact: He is being fired. This is when all assumptions should be questioned. Did I ( the general I), accept all statements too uncritically? Is 18A really that good technically OR cost competitive? Might we have spent so much to have a mediocre process? I don't know the answer, but it should be asked.

 

[desrever]

18A isn't out so we don't have any actual numbers, but most people and internal sources point to it being better than N3P and slightly behind N2. That is not >2 years behind TSMC. Even if you were to eliminate the pipe cleaner nodes i4 and 20A, intel still jumped from i7 vs N5 to 18A vs N3. To say that intel's process technology isn't competitive with TSMC is just a complete lie. You can say anything you want about the economics about Intel's IDM 2.0 strategy but you certainly can't say they don't have the technology.

When your foundry is poor, your design teams are poor, you missed AI and mobile, ofc there is going to be a large downward trend. The fact that investors/board didn't see this coming earlier is on them. It is exactly as you say, the losses didn't come from "nowhere".

While I cannot speak on Pat's plans for things other than the foundry. I can speak to the fact that the poor planning of client/dc/AI markets long predates Pat. As for node leadership, it is the first problem that Intel needed to fix before they could get all their other ducks in a line. The foundry has always been a core part of their business and hopefully will remain part of it.

IDK how you get the idea that intel's nodes aren't competitive with TSMC. You point to 20A being cancelled but that was never meant to be a mass production node anyways. 18A in foundry terms is literally right around the corner. Multiple companies have tested it and signed on to utilize it in future products, Intel itself is returning to producing their own products in house using 18A over N3. Why would they design their future products on an inferior process when they are already at a disadvantage in performance? They don't just decide these things out of nowhere, clearly they have tested the process and deemed it to be satisfactory enough to use it in future products in lieu of TSMC.

Nice excuses lol. Maybe if you write 10 more paragraphs, Pat will get hired again.

 

[Joe NYC]

I'm sure 18A is far better than TSMC A16.

No, actually, 18A is worse that TSMC N2. Which is why Intel is buying N2 capacity from TSMC for high end Nova Lake (according to this leak).

So this (if legit) clearly hints at Intel falling way short with 18A

https://twitter.com/x/status/1862391833738813706

 

[ajsdkflsdjfio]

Nice excuses lol. Maybe if you write 10 more paragraphs, Pat will get hired again.

Arguing that 18A is technologically competitive with N3/N2 is an excuse?

 

[maddie]

He wasn't a perfect CEO. He definitely missed the boat on AI. He could have accelerated it, but didn't see it coming. He also missed forecasting that the revenues will plummet after the lockdowns were over, and interest expenditures skyrocketed. Real estate foreclosures increased a ton.

Pushing to a new process I still think was a right choice. He was too optimistic in the regard, and the road to the destination having numerous troubles, but overall positive.

Every CEO has their own way of doing things. Having to go through a period of changing CEOs again is going to have further negative impact. Intel was criticized for having bad BoD for a while.

This is very negative for Intel long term. They aren't ready for splitting of the company, but that may be the future facing them. Neither will likely survive, or be much of left over when the dust settles.

On this, I would give him a pass. Sure, they failed, but Koduri was assigned that task, and to be honest the AI mania/boom took everyone by surprise, even Nvidia and TSMC. When you have expected shortages of memory & advanced packaging extending out for several years, then, almost by definition, it was unforeseen.

 

[ajsdkflsdjfio]

Assumption: To fire Pat before his plan is finally about to come to pass is just weird.

Fact: He is being fired. This is when all assumptions should be questioned. Did I ( the general I), accept all statements too uncritically? Is 18A really that good technically OR cost competitive? Might we have spent so much to have a mediocre process? I don't know the answer, but it should be asked.

Let me rephrase then because clearly you misinterpreted my statement:

"To fire Pat before his plan was finally going to come to fruition, according to all publicly known information and most rumors/speculation, is weird."

Of course we should take a critical (not negative but analytical) approach to Intel's statements. But it is true that most speculation, rumors, publicly known information did not point to a fatal flaw in 18A, it's products, or anything of the type. I literally said the following in the same post:

It might be true that there is some major problem that hasn't been revealed to the public, I might even prefer that to be the case because then there would've been actual cause to fire Pat.

I did in fact consider that there may be some sort of issue that we are not aware of. When I said it was weird they suddenly fired Pat before his plan had a chance to pay off, I simply spoke from the point of view of an outsider (you, me, most people on this forum).

Fact: He is being fired. This is when all assumptions should be questioned. Did I ( the general I), accept all statements too uncritically? Is 18A really that good technically OR cost competitive? Might we have spent so much to have a mediocre process? I don't know the answer, but it should be asked.

I agree, we should all view these as possible outcomes. But it is also possible that the decision to fire him was not based on some sudden disaster or revelations of fatal flaws in his plans. For most people Pat being fired now of all times in the midst of his restructuring plan is surprising. Anyone who says otherwise only sees stock prices and earnings reports based on products whose development cycles predate Pat. I won't say Pat did a good job outside of foundry, but to say he was the one that missed AI, missed GPU, and developed all these fail products is just insane.

 

[oak8292]

They don't just decide these things out of nowhere, clearly they have tested the process and deemed it to be satisfactory enough to use it in future products in lieu of TSMC.

I would say that Intel’s wafer supply has never been as complex as it is today. I believe they have a multi year wafer supply agreement with TSMC, initiated under Swan. They also have wafer supply agreements with each of their SCIP partners. These supply agreements were written with preliminary process data. Intel may be economically forced to use a sub optimal process.

P.S. I always find it interesting when processes are compared on some ‘technical merit’ when I believe the reality cost is the primary driver. Intel needs cost leadership and designing processes for frequency doesn’t appear to be working.

 

[ajsdkflsdjfio]

I would say that Intel’s wafer supply has never been as complex as it is today. I believe they have a multi year wafer supply agreement with TSMC, initiated under Swan. They also have wafer supply agreements with each of their SCIP partners. These supply agreements were written with preliminary process data. Intel may be economically forced to use a sub optimal process.

P.S. I always find it interesting when processes are compared on some ‘technical merit’ when I believe the reality cost is the primary driver. Intel needs cost leadership and designing processes for frequency doesn’t appear to be working.

I'd tend to agree, cost is a large driver for choosing internal nodes vs external. But if intel 18a were not competitive with N3, I'd fail to see how producing future products on an inferior 18a would be viable even if it's cheaper. If 18a is not economical then it must be more performant than n3. Both cannot be true at the same time unless intel has royally fked up, I'd give them the benefit of the doubt since even with preliminary numbers usually you can get a good enough idea. Even if things were that disastrous they would have seen it a while ago and would have made some changes to their plan. Up until Pat's retirement today it seemed like everything was still on track, with nothing major in the information pipeline even less than a year out from panther lake / clearwater.

Intel have made inferior node technologies work in the past but but at the cost of datacenter performance and customer reputation all while consistently losing market share to AMD. With how things are, producing even one or two generations of future products on an inferior node would just serve to put Intel further behind when they are already hanging on by a thread. Either 18a is competitive enough or the last straw for Intel is coming imo.

 

[oak8292]

I'd tend to agree, cost is a large driver for choosing internal nodes vs external. But if intel 18a were not competitive with N3, I'd fail to see how producing future products on inferior nodes would be viable even if it's cheaper. Intel have made inferior node technologies work in the past but but at the cost of datacenter performance and customer reputation all while consistently losing market share to AMD. With how things are, producing even one or two generations of future products on an inferior node would just serve to put Intel further behind when they are already hanging on by a thread. Either 18a is competitive enough or the last straw for Intel is coming imo.

Apple, AMD and Nvidia all built businesses on what was generally considered ‘inferior nodes’. It has only been in the last couple of years where there has been any acknowledgment that TSMC may have ‘superior’ transistors. Even today the frequency performance suggests to some that TSMC transistors are actually inferior.

 

[adroc_thurston]

It has only been in the last couple of years where there has been any acknowledgment that TSMC may have ‘superior’ transistors

TSM had better nodes for 6 years now, which is an eternity in tech timelines.

Even today the frequency performance suggests to some that TSMC transistors are actually inferior.

que?

 

[ajsdkflsdjfio]

Apple, AMD and Nvidia all built businesses on what was generally considered ‘inferior nodes’. It has only been in the last couple of years where there has been any acknowledgment that TSMC may have ‘superior’ transistors. Even today the frequency performance suggests to some that TSMC transistors are actually inferior.

Apple has been on the leading edge for a while now with great success. Even when their chips were being made when TSMC didn't have a significant lead over intel back in early 2010s, they still did well not because they chips were better but because of their software, mindshare, and design. I remember multiple generations of Iphone where obscure phones from LG had stronger chips but failed to capture much of the market. AMD and Nvidia have not been on inferior nodes for well over a decade and in fact have been on superior nodes to Intel for a while now. Inferior doesn't mean inferior to leading edge, inferior means worse than competition node. It has been well known that Intel has fallen behind, Pat's entire turnaround plan was based on that fact. Also I'd argue that Apple, AMD, Nvidia successes are also because of competitive designs not just process node.

What I was saying in that statement that with intel's design not being competitive, their mindshare already gone basically, their market share down in every segment that matters and their company in a really rough spot, designing future products on an inferior node compared to TSMC is not a viable choice unless they really are doomed and can't do anything else.

 

[511]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1863779690546147767

Something i agree with

 

[igor_kavinski]

In what world does Nvidia "badly need lower prices"?

Jensen is a notorious penny pincher. There's no other explanation for his obsession with 8GB. The idiot even re-released 3060 with 8GB despite originally launching that GPU with 12GB.

 

[igor_kavinski]

The real mistake is not seeing the demand plummeting. Everything else is really a consequence of that. Maybe they were expecting lockdowns to persist forever.

They have always depended too much on their CPUs. That was fine back when there was no Ryzen to threaten their "Intel Inside" monopoly and they used their billions to try out different things and get into new markets. But they didn't change the way they do things once they started to lose both marketshare and mindshare to Ryzens and Epycs. They got into GPUs too late. They even wasted resources on a mining ASIC at the tail end of the mining boom. They just can't see the future very well.

I personally thought AMD was nuts to spend so much on acquiring Xilinx but they made it work for them and did it at the right time whereas Intel just wasted the potential of all of their AI related acquisitions. Intel's best bet now is to become laser focused on being a CPU company and maybe a 3rd tier GPU company and they need to do that while becoming as lean as possible. Arrow Lake is virtually their Bulldozer moment and they need to rise up stronger from the ashes. Don't know if they have the necessary leadership to do that, though.

 

[fastandfurious6]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1863779690546147767

Something i agree with

100%, they are the source of the problem

Pat's 'node leadership' plan didn't work out but what else could he do? what else could anyone do?

What that board did over the previous decade is like massive fatbergs accumulating in sewers and generating exploding shitstorms making things worse for the years to come

Overinvest, overpromise, invest in architects and hope for the best, Pat knew that performance is king and tried to make it happen but it's just not possible anymore

RIP Intel !!!!!!

 

[adroc_thurston]

RIP Intel !!!!!!

they're not dead but this really is the wrong move.

 

[511]

they're not dead but this really is the wrong move.

They will be dead if they not realise folly of their idiotic decision board need to be changed

 

[adroc_thurston]

They will be dead if they not realise folly of their idiotic decision board need to be changed

Their roadmap is fine now so they ain't dying. But again, this is the wrong move.