At the Intel Accelerated Innovation: Process Technology and Packaging Technology Online Conference, Intel demonstrated a series of underlying technology innovations, introduced a new naming system for its process nodes, and announced the process roadmap from now to 2025. During the introduction, Intel combined many of its products that will be released in the future, including Alder Lake, Meteor Lake, Sapphire Rapids, Granite Rapids, etc.
Compared to Alder Lake, which will be launched this year, Meteor Lake, which is the 14th generation Core series processor, is more eye-catching. It is expected to be released in 2023. Intel will introduce the LGA 1700 socket in Alder Lake, and Raptor Lake will continue to use it later, while Meteor Lake may be replaced with a new socket. It is said that the LGA 1800 socket will support PCIe Gen5 standard and DDR5 memory.
Meteor Lake is Intel’s first 7nm process technology (Intel 4) product for the consumer market, which incorporates EUV lithography technology and will use Foveros packaging technology. This means that Meteor Lake can be modularly designed and stacked with modules of different process nodes. The package may be the first module manufactured by other fabs (TSMC). Foveros packaging technology can omit all the redesign, testing, tapeout, and other processes, and directly encapsulate various mature solutions with different IPs and different processes, thereby greatly reducing costs and increasing product launch speed. Previously, Intel has decided to outsource individual chip production to a third party from 2023, and Foveros packaging technology will help Intel better arrange production for its own chips.
According to Intel’s introduction, Meteor Lake will adopt a tile design, with three modules, namely a computing module, a SOC-LP module (responsible for I/O), and a GPU module, and its TDP will be between 5W and 125W. However, Intel has not disclosed how many cores Meteor Lake will have and how it will be configured. In addition, Meteor Lake is likely to be Intel’s first processor to bid farewell to the ring bus interconnection architecture and will replace it with a new interconnection method. In this generation of products, Intel will greatly improve its graphics technology. At present, Intel processors and core displays have a maximum configuration of 96 EUs, but when it comes to Meteor Lake, the minimum configuration is 96 EUs, and the maximum can be configured with 192 EUs, which doubles the upper limit.
Meteor Lake will adopt a new performance core called the “Redwood Cove” core architecture to replace the “Golden Cove” used on Alder Lake. According to previous documents leaked by Intel, “Redwood Cove” has been redesigned in order to adapt to production in different fabs. This means that it is likely that TSMC will produce some of the computing modules required by Meteor Lake processors in the future, or include third-party foundry in the backup plan.
