It’s been reported that Intel might cancel its upcoming Meteor Lake architecture for desktop PCs and offer it as a mobile-only platform. The reason is its configuration of 6P+16E cores is a reduction from Raptor Lake. It will likely not be competitive on desktop, but it could be suitable for a low-power, mobile platform. A new rumor says Intel will cancel it altogether and rename it Arrow Lake. Intel’s CEO vehemently stated recently that Meteor Lake is still in the pipeline, so take this rumor with a grain of salt.
The new info comes from a source that spoke to Benchlife, which has accurately predicted upcoming hardware previously, according to Videocardz. This source says that Meteor Lake-S, the desktop part, was delayed until early 2024. Previously, it was scheduled to launch in the second half of 2023. Regardless, in early 2024 it will reportedly be scrapped and replaced with Arrow Lake. Both platforms use the all-new LGA 1851 socket. Arrow Lake will be the proper desktop replacement for Raptor Lake, as it offers the same 8P+16E core configuration as the current Core i9-13900K.
We’re all patiently waiting to see if Intel will update this at some point, to either knock down or verify the numerous leaks about Meteor Lake.
Credit: Intel
In addition, Intel will be launching new 800-series chipsets, namely Z890, B860, and H610 for desktops and W880 and Q870 for workstations. The Z890 chipset will offer 60 PCIe lanes/HSIO channels, with 26 dedicated to the CPU. That’s six more than the i9-13900K offers and higher than Meteor Lake’s 24 lanes. Support for DDR4 memory is going away, too, which has been previously reported. Instead, like AMD’s AM5 platform, it will be DDR5 only, supporting speeds up to 6400 MT/s. It will also support the new 48GB modules.
If this all pans out, Intel will likely launch a Raptor Lake refresh in the second part of 2023 instead of Meteor Lake as initially planned. It will then follow that up with Arrow Lake in early 2024. It would be shocking if it just scrapped Meteor Lake altogether, though, as we’ve been looking at pictures of it for over a year now. It would be tough for Intel to swallow, having done years of work on a platform only to toss it in the bin right at the finish line.
Also, Meteor Lake was supposed to be the company first tile-based design using the Intel 4 process. Arrow Lake is two nodes beyond that, in the Angstrom era with the RibbonFET 20A process. That’s a massive leap in a short amount of time. However, as stated in the past, Intel may be doing very well with its advanced nodes.
If Intel changes its desktop strategy, it will mirror its recent decision to scrap Rialto Bridge and Lancaster Sound data center GPUs. It announced its new server product roadmap on a Friday afternoon in early March and set off a few alarm bells. It stated it would be moving to a new two-year cadence for server GPUs and pushing back its following product to 2025, code-named Falcon Shores.
