Intel Meteor Lake chip appears in the UserBenchmark database

Intel is poised to launch Meteor Lake in the latter half of this year, a significant milestone for two reasons: firstly, it will be the inaugural processor to utilize Intel 4 technology; secondly, it will be the first processor to adopt a modular design, featuring four distinct modules—compute, SoC, I/O, and GPU—stacked together using different process nodes, interconnected with EMIB technology and Foveros packaging.

Recently, Twitter user @KOMACHI_ENSAKA discovered an early Intel Meteor Lake chip appearing in the UserBenchmark database, featuring a 4P+8E configuration with a total of 12 cores and 16 threads, housed within a Dell Inspirion test unit. This chip, labeled “U3E1,” has a base frequency of 1.2GHz, and, akin to many engineering samples, is subjected to testing at lower frequencies. Its integrated graphics is listed as “Intel Arc Graphics,” recognized as a discrete GPU, which correlates with Meteor Lake’s modular design.

Meteor Lake will employ second-generation hybrid architecture technology, with P-Core adopting the Redwood Cove architecture, replacing the Golden Cove architecture, and E-Core switching to the Crestmont architecture, supplanting the Gracemont architecture. Intel’s objective for Meteor Lake, as previously reported, is to enhance the energy efficiency, substantially improving performance and efficacy, with a 50% increase in performance-per-watt compared to Raptor Lake.

Meteor Lake’s GPU module, it is understood, is neither an iGPU nor a dGPU, but rather a tGPU (Tiled GPU). Utilizing the new Xe-HPG architecture, it boasts 128 EUs and frequencies exceeding 2GHz, yielding higher performance at the same power consumption. Additionally, it enhances support for DirectX 12 Ultimate and XeSS, with rumored performance doubling that of existing integrated graphics (96 EUs).

Meteor Lake will initially appear on mobile platforms, with the first batch of chips slated for mass production in the latter half of 2023. The situation for desktop platforms remains uncertain at this time. As the specific launch of Meteor Lake is still several months away, it is expected that more information will surface in due course.