Intel Core Ultra 1st Generation Processor Appears: Equipped with 128MB of L4 cache

Previously, Intel announced a significant enhancement to its Core brand, bifurcating it into the novel Intel Core Ultra, targeting flagship-grade products, and the Intel Core processor brand for mainstream products. From this year’s Meteor Lake processors, the brand will embark on a fresh naming approach.

Recently, Twitter user @momomo_us detected a Meteor Lake-P processor in the SiSoftware database, revealing further intricacies of its design. It forms part of the first generation of Intel Core Ultra processors and will presumably be designated as “Core Ultra 1xxx”. However, this chip remains an early engineering sample, with a base frequency of 1.9GHz, and the eventual retail product will assuredly be substantially faster.

The information indicates that this Meteor Lake-P chip will feature an “encapsulated cache” function, the so-called Adamantine cache (L4 cache), with a capacity of 128MB. This constitutes part of the fundamental module in Intel’s multi-chip design, accessible to both computation and graphics modules. The substantial cache stack can effectively bolster performance. Reports suggest that the L4 cache size for Meteor Lake ranges between 128MB and 512MB, even harbouring the potential for expansion to the GB level.

The core brand for the new generation Meteor Lake processors will transition from “Iris Xe” to “Intel Graphics,” part and parcel of the renaming of the Intel Core brand. This iteration of Meteor Lake-P possesses an integrated GPU with 64 EUs, with a maximum configuration of 128 EUs, theoretically matching the performance of mobile GPUs such as the GTX 1650 and even the RTX 3050.