Discussion Intel Meteor, Arrow, Lunar & Panther Lakes Discussion Threads

Tigerick · Aug 22, 2022

As Hot Chips 34 starting this week, Intel will unveil technical information of upcoming Meteor Lake (MTL) and Arrow Lake (ARL), new generation platform after Raptor Lake. Both MTL and ARL represent new direction which Intel will move to multiple chiplets and combine as one SoC platform.

MTL also represents new compute tile that based on Intel 4 process which is based on EUV lithography, a first from Intel. Intel expects to ship MTL mobile SoC in 2023.

ARL will come after MTL so Intel should be shipping it in 2024, that is what Intel roadmap is telling us. ARL compute tile will be manufactured by Intel 20A process, a first from Intel to use GAA transistors called RibbonFET.

Comparison of upcoming Intel's U-series CPU: Core Ultra 100U, Lunar Lake and Panther Lake

Model	Code-Name	Date	TDP	Node	Tiles	Main Tile	CPU	LP E-Core	LLC	GPU	Xe-cores
Core Ultra 100U	Meteor Lake	Q4 2023	15 - 57 W	Intel 4 + N5 + N6	4	tCPU	2P + 8E	2	12 MB	Intel Graphics	4
?	Lunar Lake	Q4 2024	17 - 30 W	N3B + N6	2	CPU + GPU & IMC	4P + 4E	0	12 MB	Arc	8
?	Panther Lake	Q1 2026 ?	?	Intel 18A + N3E	3	CPU + MC	4P + 8E	4	?	Arc	12

Comparison of die size of Each Tile of Meteor Lake, Arrow Lake, Lunar Lake and Panther Lake

	Meteor Lake	Arrow Lake (N3B)	Lunar Lake	Panther Lake
Platform	Mobile H/U Only	Desktop & Mobile H&HX	Mobile U Only	Mobile H
Process Node	Intel 4	TSMC N3B	TSMC N3B	Intel 18A
Date	Q4 2023	Desktop-Q4-2024 H&HX-Q1-2025	Q4 2024	Q1 2026 ?
Full Die	6P + 8P	8P + 16E	4P + 4E	4P + 8E
LLC	24 MB	36 MB ?	12 MB	?
tCPU	66.48
tGPU	44.45
SoC	96.77
IOE	44.45
Total	252.15

Intel Core Ultra 100 - Meteor Lake

As mentioned by Tomshardware, TSMC will manufacture the I/O, SoC, and GPU tiles. That means Intel will manufacture only the CPU and Foveros tiles. (Notably, Intel calls the I/O tile an 'I/O Expander,' hence the IOE moniker.)

OneEng2 · Nov 3, 2024

SiliconFly said:
Are we seeing patterns already?

Only 2024 client cpu tiles (ARL/LNL) were outsourced because they didn't have a choice. And things are coming back to IFS next year. And if I'm right, as of now, almost all server cpu tiles too are not outsourced either. Even the upcoming DNR is on 18A-P I think. All IFS only. So what imaginary pattern are you talking about?

18A volume ramp should happen H2 next year. Starting then, I think IFS would be on a better/more solid foundation. Meaning, IFS would be in a lot better position than they have ever been in the last 10 years. Also, IFS has a High-NA lead over competition.

Certainly we have seen slippage in the Intel process roadmap even since the 5 nodes in 4 years thing came up. Then there was 14+++++ followed by 10++++ renamed to Intel 7, etc. While none of this means 18A is going to be abandoned for any tiles at all in 2025, it certainly presents one with ample reason to doubt that 18A will be a smooth and on-time launch. In fact, we have already seen the metrics for 18A relaxed significantly from original targets as well as 20A being dumped.

I am pulling for Intel. They really need 18A to go well.

trivik12 · Nov 3, 2024

adroc_thurston said:
But they did, LNL is monolithic.

Is it though? I thought they used different tiles for CPU, GPU and SOC? where is the memory controller in Lunar Lake?

adroc_thurston · Nov 3, 2024

trivik12 said:
Is it though?

Yea.

trivik12 said:
I thought they used different tiles for CPU, GPU and SOC

That's MTL/ARL.

trivik12 said:
where is the memory controller in Lunar Lake?

On the CPU tile.
It's the one CPU+PCH combo, just on a 2.5D slab.

Thibsie · Nov 3, 2024

adroc_thurston said:
But they did, LNL is monolithic.

And without child. They do something well and it had to be a "oops, won't do it again !"
I dunno if Gelsinger is the messiah but if some magic has to happen, it'd better come quickly.

jpiniero · Nov 3, 2024

SteinFG said:
Does panther lake have laptop dGPU designs? or is it just arrow lake for two years there? Cause the latest rumor is that top panther lake die will be 4P+8E+4LPE like 12600H or smth

Presumably Bartlett?

Thibsie · Nov 3, 2024

OneEng2 said:
Indeed! Now the only thing missing from your observations are a cross-tab of major features for each core (SMT, AVX512, etc).

I keep hearing how impressive the M4 and M3 are; however, neither one has SMT and neither one supports AVX512 (or 256 for that matter I believe).

Considering what they do well though, it seems to come down to an argument about how specific you want your CPU design to be to a particular market segment.

Seems like the M3/4 design is uniquely qualified for thin-and-light laptops and tablets, but totally useless for a DC processor design.

Zen5 on the other hand seems to cover bases up and down the market chain, but is not as good as M3/4 where the M3/4 is strongest. This makes a great deal of sense to me since AMD is targeting the high margin (and rapidly growing) DC market where M3/4 are not (As far as I know anyway).

Better where? Better how?

Mmm maybe.
OK, let's say QC Oryon and Apple M-cores are similar, at least compared to Zen cores. Correct ?
Since Oryon is really a server oriented core repurposed to serve client workloads, I wouldn't be that sure.

GTracing · Nov 3, 2024

adroc_thurston said:
But they did, LNL is monolithic.

trivik12 said:
Is it though? I thought they used different tiles for CPU, GPU and SOC? where is the memory controller in Lunar Lake?

adroc_thurston said:
Yea.

I think you have a different definition of monolithic than most people.

poke01 · Nov 3, 2024

GTracing said:
I think you have a different definition of monolithic than most people.

LNL isn’t monolithic it’s using tiles, better than MTL but still tiles. HX 370 and M4 are monolithic.

GTracing · Nov 3, 2024

poke01 said:
LNL isn’t monolithic it’s using tiles, better than MTL but still tiles. HX 370 and M4 are monolithic.

Yeah, I agree. I'm confused why adroc is saying it's monolithic.

fastandfurious6 · Nov 3, 2024

511 said:
you need a good product not a high end product look at 4060/4070 lol it is not high end but Nvidia still makes nice money

apples and oranges

they want a piece of DLSS, CUDA and the #1 gpu company. otherwise AMD is better bang4buck

none of these apply for general purpose CPUs or Intel

adroc_thurston · Nov 3, 2024

GTracing said:
I think you have a different definition of monolithic than most people.

Sticking PCH on the package does not make it a non-monolithic design. Hope that helps!

poke01 said:
LNL isn’t monolithic it’s using tiles

Yeah it is, it's the old CPU + PCH setup, just on a 2.5D slab.

Josh128 · Nov 3, 2024

Can any Arrow Lake or Lunar Lake owners run Dolphin Bench 5.0? Curious to see how it does there, havent seen it anywhere.

[Unofficial] New Dolphin 5.0 CPU benchmark - results automatically updated!

DISCLAIMER: The purpose of this thread is to use Dolphin and luabench as a general CPU benchmark that can used to determine a CPU architecture's relative capabilities in emulation-based workloads; it

forums.dolphin-emu.org

Racan · Nov 4, 2024

Josh128 said:
Can any Arrow Lake or Lunar Lake owners run Dolphin Bench 5.0? Curious to see how it does there, havent seen it anywhere.

[Unofficial] New Dolphin 5.0 CPU benchmark - results automatically updated!

DISCLAIMER: The purpose of this thread is to use Dolphin and luabench as a general CPU benchmark that can used to determine a CPU architecture's relative capabilities in emulation-based workloads; it

forums.dolphin-emu.org

I found this:

CPU Performance - Page 3 - LanOC Reviews

Product Name: Intel Core Ultra 200S Review Samples Provided by: Intel Written by: Wes Compton Amazon Affiliate Links: Intel Core Ultra 9 285K Intel Core Ultra...

lanoc.org

poke01 · Nov 4, 2024

Racan said:
I found this:

CPU Performance - Page 3 - LanOC Reviews

Product Name: Intel Core Ultra 200S Review Samples Provided by: Intel Written by: Wes Compton Amazon Affiliate Links: Intel Core Ultra 9 285K Intel Core Ultra...

lanoc.org

Yep this is accurate. My 7700X does it in 182 seconds.

coercitiv · Nov 4, 2024

adroc_thurston said:
Sticking PCH on the package does not make it a non-monolithic design. Hope that helps!

Historically GPUs and MCs weren't part of the CPU die either, and we still considered them monolithic. Obviously what constitutes a "monolithic" chip is a moving target these days, and it would help to look at what the product is trying to achieve before assigning a label or the other. In the case of LNL the intent was to achieve a very similar effect to complete PCH integration on the die, the same way AMD did their mobile chips for a while now (which we also consider as monolithic, seems this term is very... inclusive). From this point of view one might consider LNL is not monolithic anymore, since the target has moved.

Going back to @trivik12 original observation though, I would agree with @adroc_thurston - LNL is optimally consolidated and integrating the PCH wouldn't help. To use the car analogies which we all love so so much, LNL has an engine problem and not a transmission problem. I'll see myself out.

Racan · Nov 4, 2024

poke01 said:
Yep this is accurate. My 7700X does it in 182 seconds.

I don’t understand why their 9600X is faster than the 9700X though.

lightmanek · Nov 4, 2024

Racan said:
I don’t understand why their 9600X is faster than the 9700X though.

According to my wife, sometimes smaller is better ...

darkswordsman17 · Nov 4, 2024

So Lunar Lake is the only chip that's gonna have the DRAM on package? What a baffling move, especially since it seems to have paid off for performance and efficiency.

trivik12 said:
They should have killed p cores with Arctic wolf itself taking care of everything. Reduce complexities and even go back to monolithic for laptop soc.

If performance is there I'd agree, but if not, then it could lead to Atom part 2 where companies will eschew it, especially now that there's very competitive options.

I do feel like Intel could benefit from simplifying their products some. Maybe they should do what I've been saying AMD should do. Go efficient in their consumer CPU cores, maybe they could go 12 or 16, with say half being able to clock extra low for low idle stuff. Then for gaming, build APUs, where you make cores targeting gaming performance, where they also share memory (maybe even large cache). That would give them a reason to keep dGPU, would let their dGPU standout. It should also be decent for other tasks, or take the same design and replace the GPU with AI, or if they can tweak their GPU to do that as well would make a larger market for them to sell to.

poke01 · Nov 4, 2024

MarkPost said:
yeah no difference with and without AVX512:

9950X DDR5 6400 with AVX512 enabled in BIOS ((3512 / 23571): https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/8043533
View attachment 108413

9950X DDR5 6400 with AVX512 disabled in BIOS (3510 / 23613): https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/8044153
View attachment 108414

Can you test Geekbench 5.x.x please?

I believe AES-XTS takes advantage of AVX-512 which is missing in GB6.

Rheingold · Nov 4, 2024

adroc_thurston said:
But they did, LNL is monolithic.

adroc_thurston said:
Sticking PCH on the package does not make it a non-monolithic design. Hope that helps!

While the "monolithic" regarding the CPU might be debatable, the "on the package" regarding the PCH is misleading. While the memory is "on the package", the PCH is put on there in the same fashion as with ARL, with all the associated additional manufacturing steps and costs.

reaperrr3 · Nov 4, 2024

Racan said:
I don’t understand why their 9600X is faster than the 9700X though.

Their 7600X is also faster than their 7700X and their 7900s are faster than their 7950X.

One possible explanation: The benchmark may be low-threaded but not really single-threaded, so having 2 cores per CCD disabled frees up just enough L3 for a tiny IPC boost, and/or thermal/power headroom to keep up turbo clocks more consistently.

reaperrr3 · Nov 4, 2024

darkswordsman17 said:
So Lunar Lake is the only chip that's gonna have the DRAM on package? What a baffling move, especially since it seems to have paid off for performance and efficiency.

Probably not in terms of margin, though. I remember in a previous call they hinted that LNL hurts(!) their margins, so it seems to be more expensive to make in this form than they can sell it at.

darkswordsman17 said:
Then for gaming, build APUs,

That didn't even work for AMD, despite superior GPU IP.
Whether on Llano, Trinity, Kaveri, Carrizo or RR/Picasso, in hindsight AMD mostly threw margin away with those unneccessarily big iGPUs, because big APUs are inherently "neither fish nor flesh" products. Not fast enough for real gaming without tons of cache or wider mem interfaces, wasted silicon for most non-gaming workloads.

darkswordsman17 said:
if they can tweak their GPU to do that as well would make a larger market for them to sell to.

They can't and won't, even if they had more skilled people and no layoffs/cost-cutting going on.
APUs as you envision them are simply extremely hard to monetize, as AMD has proven before (and my hunch is telling me that even Strix Halo won't exactly be a homerun in that regard).

The only point I agree with is that Intel should be smarter about how to invest their die area, especially for products they make at TSMC, where they can't even justify big dies with keeping their own fabs utilised.

MoistOintment · Nov 4, 2024

Yeah, PTL-

SteinFG said:
Does panther lake have laptop dGPU designs? or is it just arrow lake for two years there? Cause the latest rumor is that top panther lake die will be 4P+8E+4LPE like 12600H or smth

H (the 4+8+4) model will have dGPU options. 4+8+4 honestly makes more sense than 6+8 (the 2 LP-E cores are near useless in MTL/ARL) considering how close the E core to P core gap is getting and how area inefficient P cores are.

csbin · Nov 4, 2024

Z890 CUDIMM

https://twitter.com/x/status/1853371337173274624

MarkPost · Nov 4, 2024

poke01 said:
Can you test Geekbench 5.x.x please?

I believe AES-XTS takes advantage of AVX-512 which is missing in GB6.

Sure

9950X PBO DDR5 6400 with AVX512 enabled in BIOS (2703 / 28719): https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/23027280

9950X PBO DDR5 6400 with AVX512 disabled in BIOS (2458 / 28569): https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/23027302

So, AVX512 are only implemented in AES-XTS ST, but not in MT

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