Intel Meteor Lake will have a VPU unit: Brings better AI acceleration to Windows 11

Intel’s Meteor Lake is set to be their first processor adopting a chiplet design, and it will also debut as their first PC platform equipped with a Vision Processing Unit (VPU), an AI engine integrated directly on the SoC, providing AI acceleration for machine learning and deep learning models on the new version of Windows 11.

The Neural Network Processing Unit (VPU) on Meteor Lake serves as a dedicated AI acceleration unit. In conjunction with AI accelerators on the CPU and GPU, it can substantially enhance performance, offering a superior overall user experience across various applications. For instance, this includes the newly added multimedia function operations of automatic reconstruction and scene editing detection in Adobe Premiere Pro. Intel’s declaration is in fact part of Microsoft’s revelation about the enhanced WinML/DirectML acceleration in Windows 11. Intel’s VPU unit is likely to utilize these to implement new features.

In their Q1 2023 financial report, Intel discussed the status of their next-generation Core, namely, the Meteor Lake project. They expressed that they are hastening the mass production work for Meteor Lake, planning to launch related products in the second half of 2023, and aiming to ship millions of new processors before the end of next year.

For Intel, Meteor Lake is a chip of significant importance, involving several key points. Firstly, it is the inaugural processor adopting the new Intel 4 process. Secondly, it is the first processor utilizing a modular design, enabling the stacking of modules fabricated at different process nodes, subsequently interconnected using EMIB technology and encapsulated with Foveros packaging technology. Finally, the P-Core will switch from the Golden Cove architecture to the Redwood Cove architecture, and the E-Core will transition from the Gracemont architecture to the Crestmont architecture, purportedly accompanied by the L4 cache once again.