Intel shows off Meteor Lake prototype: 16 cores and 22 threads, equipped with VPU unit

Meteor Lake signifies Intel’s inaugural venture into the realm of Tile-designed client processors, employing the second-generation hybrid architecture technology. The P-Core will initiate the Redwood Cove architecture, replacing the prevailing Golden Cove architecture, while the E-Core will adopt the Crestmont architecture, superseding the Gracemont architecture. Diverse processor modules can be fabricated using different process nodes, then stacked and interconnected using EMIB technology and the Foveros packaging technique.

Intel has also provisioned every Meteor Lake chip with a VPU unit, a technology derivative from the Movidius acquisition in 2016, offering AI acceleration for ML and deep learning models on the novel version of Windows 11. With AI recently capturing industry-wide attention, Intel displayed notebooks equipped with Meteor Lake during Computex, also demonstrating generative AI content, all based on OpenVINO, Intel’s deep learning toolkit.

According to VideoCardz, Intel’s showcased Meteor Lake comprises a 6P+8E+2E combination, totaling 16 cores and 22 threads. It’s understood that this configuration belongs to the Meteor Lake-P chip. The demonstrated Meteor Lake possesses a 1.6MB L1 cache, an 18MB L2 cache, and a 24MB L3 cache. When idle, it operates at 0.37GHz, with a base frequency of 3.1GHz. Owing to the engineering sample in use, the processor frequency may not necessarily align with the final retail version.

As per Intel’s prior announcements, Meteor Lake is anticipated to arrive before the close of this year, initially debuting on mobile platforms. Over the past few months, rumors circulated that Intel had abandoned Meteor Lake-S, intended for desktop platform use, though Intel has consistently refrained from responding to these reports.