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

[Tigerick]

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 (20A)	Arrow Lake (N3B)	Lunar Lake	Panther Lake
Platform	Mobile H/U Only	Desktop Only	Desktop & Mobile H&HX	Mobile U Only	Mobile H
Process Node	Intel 4	Intel 20A	TSMC N3B	TSMC N3B	Intel 18A
Date	Q4 2023	Q1 2025 ?	Desktop-Q4-2024 H&HX-Q1-2025	Q4 2024	Q1 2026 ?
Full Die	6P + 8P	6P + 8E ?	8P + 16E	4P + 4E	4P + 8E
LLC	24 MB	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.)

 

[DokiDoki]

I wonder how what percentage of people who buy thin and light laptops get them with 64GB of RAM?

Why I won't buy an Intel Lunar Lake-powered laptop

Intel’s new mobile chips promise better performance and longer battery life, but they snub power users like me.

www.tomshardware.com

If you want a laptop with 64GB RAM, you buy a laptop with 64GB RAM.

You do not write asinine op-eds complaining about something that only supports a maximum of 32GB RAM.

 

[511]

I wonder how what percentage of people who buy thin and light laptops get them with 64GB of RAM?

Why I won't buy an Intel Lunar Lake-powered laptop

Intel’s new mobile chips promise better performance and longer battery life, but they snub power users like me.

www.tomshardware.com

It is <redacted> people buy 8GB Ram MacBook air thin and light and max memory on air is 24GB iirc LNL has 32 GB

Please refrain from using profanity in the tech section. -Moderator Shmee

 

[511]

I am sorry mod 🥲 didn't realise it

 

[Doug S]

I could count the %age on my hand. clickbait article

Its some weird sense of entitlement that people think that every product should be designed with their needs in mind. So someone announces a laptop with up to 32 GB and they whine that they want it with 64. Buy a different laptop if you want what it doesn't have! This is no different that you want a small laptop with a screen 13" or less but want a 4K display, and complain that you can't get a 4K display in that size and have to go up to nearly 16" to get that. If you have niche needs you're gonna have to face that most products won't be designed with your needs in mind.

 

[511]

32GB should be fine for the target audience also for 64GB we need a denser memory die or larger package size in LNL to accomodate it and i agree with you

 

[igor_kavinski]

Actually its ~35% on Intel. I tested it some time ago with my 13900K:

What RAM speed/timings for those results?

 

[igor_kavinski]

I could count the %age on my hand. clickbait article

Then you don't know power users. If you are buying something so expensive, better to have it maxed out rather than hitting a wall at some point in the device's life. Especially since maxing out the specs of the device will usually be a fraction of the total cost. Only the rotten fruit company forces people to sell their kidneys for more RAM.

 

[cebri1]

If you want a laptop with 64GB RAM, you buy a laptop with 64GB RAM.

You do not write asinine op-eds complaining about something that only supports a maximum of 32GB RAM.

He needs 64GB to run LLMs… at 1.4t/s

Jokes aside I think we are maybe a couple of gens away of running fairly large models on SoCs with large & cheap (&slow) memory with decent performance.

 

[poke01]

Then you don't know power users. If you are buying something so expensive, better to have it maxed out rather than hitting a wall at some point in the device's life. Especially since maxing out the specs of the device will usually be a fraction of the total cost. Only the rotten fruit company forces people to sell their kidneys for more RAM.

True but Power users don’t buy Lunar lake they buy Arrow lake H or HX with upgradeable memory. Memory can fail so it’s not good to solder it.

 

[igor_kavinski]

True but Power users don’t buy Lunar lake

They can buy 64GB Dell XPS with Snapdragon Elite X now. Lost sales for Intel.

 

[poke01]

They can buy 64GB Dell XPS with Snapdragon Elite X now. Lost sales for Intel.

touché

 

[Tup3x]

They can buy 64GB Dell XPS with Snapdragon Elite X now. Lost sales for Intel.

For power users it might be better option anyway since it has better mt performance. Assuming you don't have to worry about performance loss caused by emulation.

 

[jdubs03]

For power users it might be better option anyway since it has better mt performance. Assuming you don't have to worry about performance loss caused by emulation.

Yeah but then you have compatibility issues. Power users are probably the most likely to deal with programs that aren’t native to WoA. This is where it would be the HX 370s time to shine.

 

[SiliconFly]

Then you don't know power users. If you are buying something so expensive, better to have it maxed out rather than hitting a wall at some point in the device's life. Especially since maxing out the specs of the device will usually be a fraction of the total cost. Only the rotten fruit company forces people to sell their kidneys for more RAM.

It appears, with soldered LPDDR modules, this is the trend (both Apple & Intel). At least Intel isn't selling overpriced 8GB parts.

I could count the %age on my hand. clickbait article

If you want a laptop with 64GB RAM, you buy a laptop with 64GB RAM.

You do not write asinine op-eds complaining about something that only supports a maximum of 32GB RAM.

Typical click bait. He wants to run fully configured VMs on thin and lights! He's nuts.

32GB should be fine for the target audience also for 64GB we need a denser memory die or larger package size in LNL to accomodate it and i agree with you

64GB of LPDDR is very expensive. Not suitable for most of the target audience. An overkill.

He needs 64GB to run LLMs… at 1.4t/s

Jokes aside I think we are maybe a couple of gens away of running fairly large models on SoCs with large & cheap (&slow) memory with decent performance.

I think he wants a thin, light & portable super computer based on Lunar Lake. Not gonna happen.

They can buy 64GB Dell XPS with Snapdragon Elite X now. Lost sales for Intel.

An ARM laptop? Oh my! Wouldn't even touch it with a stick. 🤧

Yeah but then you have compatibility issues. Power users are probably the most likely to deal with programs that aren’t native to WoA. This is where it would be the HX 370s time to shine.

A 370 is far better than a ARM laptop.

 

[511]

From the rumours Xe3 will have 3072 bit XMX engines and 12 XMX unit with upto ~150 TOPS and the FP32 ALU count is 1536

 

[Anhiel]

Ignoring cost I don't think asking for 64GB is unreasonable.

case1 Mobile with 16GB and Windows 10: 2GB locked for W10; ~2GB for VRAM; you only have 12GB left. Upgrade to 32GB gives you 26GB of free RAM.

case2 Now with 32GB and Windows 11/12: 4GB locked for Windows(it scales with RAM amount); 16GB for Copilot; you only 12GB left not even counting VRAM allocation. In other words your 32GB upgrade gives you 0 more RAM.

And if you consider the forced move from 32b to 64b apps that will further diminish your free amount of RAM. If you want an equal upgrade gain as for case1 going the minimum is to go for 48GB.
There are tons of reason to have VM not to mention VBS and some antivirus app are running VMs. I see this as a future must have thing.

 

[SiliconFly]

...

You're wrong on so many levels. Makes me wonder...

Ignoring cost I don't think asking for 64GB is unreasonable.

Nope. RAM is still expensive. Otherwise, I'd prefer to have 1TB RAM.

case1 Mobile with 16GB and Windows 10: 2GB locked for W10; ~2GB for VRAM; you only have 12GB left. Upgrade to 32GB gives you 26GB of free RAM.

case2 Now with 32GB and Windows 11/12: 4GB locked for Windows(it scales with RAM amount); 16GB for Copilot; you only 12GB left not even counting VRAM allocation. In other words your 32GB upgrade gives you 0 more RAM.

Windows uses less than 1GB of VRAM during normal usage like browsing, office, etc. It dynamically allocates more system memory for VRAM only during GPU intensive tasks (like gaming).

You think co-pilot uses 16GB RAM? Hilarious. Thats the minimum system requirement. Not how much it uses.

And if you consider the forced move from 32b to 64b apps that will further diminish your free amount of RAM. If you want an equal upgrade gain as for case1 going the minimum is to go for 48GB.

Win64 requires 1 GB more RAM than Win32.

Also, 64bit apps in general do not use twice the amount of RAM compared to their 32bit counterparts. Just a tad more.

There are tons of reason to have VM

And for running VMs, we need go for platforms that are designed with such use cases in mind. Like ARL-H or AMD HX 370. Not thin and lights.

not to mention VBS and some antivirus app are running VMs. I see this as a future must have thing.

VBS is a thin virtualization layer built for kernel security, not a full blown virtual machine like you think. The difference is huge. And it does not use tons of RAM. Many Win10 machines and almost all Win11 machines use VBS by default (for many years now).

 

[511]

IMO asking for 64GB Ram is not wrong

 

[SiliconFly]

IMO asking for 64GB Ram is not wrong but asking l

Not wrong at all. But not a necessity for most average users in the world. The target market.

Most of the people in this forum tend to be power users and will need a minimum of 32 GB I'd say. Maybe more. Cos we're not the regular kind.

Ever since Win10, all my laptops have had a minimum of 32 GB. My current laptop has "only" 16 GB, and I might upgrade to 32 GB soon. But thats just us.

The average users or genpop tend to use light apps like google chrome & microsoft office most of the time. Maybe a few light games. Just sayin'. Most won't be needing 32 GB or 64 GB. And for the few who actually do need 64 GB or more, they're out of luck. They need to switch to ARL-H or HX 370.

 

[Anhiel]

You're wrong on so many levels. Makes me wonder...


Nope. RAM is still expensive. Otherwise, I'd prefer to have 1TB RAM.


Windows uses less than 1GB of VRAM during normal usage like browsing, office, etc. It dynamically allocates more system memory for VRAM only during GPU intensive tasks (like gaming).

You think co-pilot uses 16GB RAM? Hilarious. Thats the minimum system requirement. Not how much it uses.


Win64 requires 1 GB more RAM than Win32.

Also, 64bit apps in general do not use twice the amount of RAM compared to their 32bit counterparts. Just a tad more.


And for running VMs, we need go for platforms that are designed with such use cases in mind. Like ARL-H or AMD HX 370. Not thin and lights.


VBS is a thin virtualization layer built for kernel security, not a full blown virtual machine like you think. The difference is huge. And it does not use tons of RAM. Many Win10 machines and almost all Win11 machines use VBS by default (for many years now).

This is theoretical that's why I said ignoring cost.

Windows actually can use much less VRAM depending on the frame buffer. But most mobile have it set to 2GB. Again this is purely theory and normal cases not fringe case.

Yes, 16GB is Copilot requirement and since Windows auto locks for 2GB at this scale there's 14GB left (not counting VRAM) not much different to my generous allocation amount.

Try testing that 32b to 64b difference with something like GIMP with huge images (taking up 1GB VRAM). In my tests for 64b (v2.10) I can't get things done (as in hours) while the 32b (v2.8) It tooks only minutes. It's a significant difference eventhough RAM usage only had 1GB difference.

VBS uses 3% it's still a loss of RAM and performance.

 

[511]

This is theoretical that's why I said ignoring cost.

Windows actually can use much less VRAM depending on the frame buffer. But most mobile have it set to 2GB. Again this is purely theory and normal cases not fringe case.

i think you are wrong here cause cause AMD Reserves the Ram permanently unlike intel which only reserves like 128-256MB max everything else is shared pool which is dynamically allocated

VBS uses 3% it's still a loss of RAM and performance.

The performance loss is too much vs the ram loss in VBS sometimes we have so many amazing programs from Microsoft or our friendly OEMS and than we have our loard and savior Google chrome that hogs Ram like no other so 3% is still fine compared to them

 

[MarkPost]

What RAM speed/timings for those results?

dont remember for sure, but probably @6000 XMP timmings. Anyways, RAM speed or timmings are irrelevant in CB23

 

[Anhiel]

i think you are wrong here cause cause AMD Reserves the Ram permanently unlike intel which only reserves like 128-256MB max everything else is shared pool which is dynamically allocated


The performance loss is too much vs the ram loss in VBS sometimes we have so many amazing programs from Microsoft or our friendly OEMS and than we have our loard and savior Google chrome that hogs Ram like no other so 3% is still fine compared to them

I dunno about those differences but I do know it won't go down less than ~40 frames and up to about 256 frames; it takes whatever amount depending of your screen size.

The point of fixed allocation calculation is not about being precise but about making sure things can run under any circumstances. In other form of engineering you would call it safety margin.

Yes, considering most people use a browser all the time, then most likely a chat program like discord, all the other background apps and before you know it a lot of RAM is gone. Not even talking about apps getting less and less optimized.
Even if I just use Office suits (at least 2-3 open), likely also Adobe PDF, the amount of apps coming together is already at least 6 and that's before even starting on power using. I wouldn't say ordinary people these days don't need lots more than a decade ago.

 

[Wolverine2349]

Upon further checking my hope for more than 8 strong cores with good core to core latency is alive with Arrow Lake after all

https://images.anandtech.com/doci/21282/Intel%20Core%20Ultra%207%20155H%20Core%20to%20Core%20Latency.png

That is Core Ultra 155H which is Meteor Lake.

The Core to core latency between Cresmont cores which there are 8 of them (both in clusters of 4) have mid 30s ns consistent latency even with the cores in different 4 core cluster). So apparently at least with Meteor Lake which Arrow Lake is gonna have same latency per reports.

So with Arrow Lake, and Skymont e-cores having Raptor Cove IPC, maybe could buy the Core ultra 265K or 285K and disable Lion Cove cores and have a 12-16 Raptor Cove substitute cores with excellent and more importantly consistent core to core latency in mid 30s ms between all 12-16 Skymont cores regardless o which node they are in., And the Skymont cores run at 4.6GHz. Probably can get them overclocked to 5GHz and perfectly setup 12 P core Raptor Lake equivalent with slight lower 5GHz clock. I am excited.

 

[Wolverine2349]

Raptor Lake it seems there is a little more hit going to e-core clusters in latency where as Meteor Lake, there is none at all and in fact core to core latency even better between Crestmont cores even in different 4 core clusters *as long as on same ring as LPE cores of course are bad which desktop counterparts will not have and are excluded)

https://images.anandtech.com/doci/17601/Core%20i9-13900K%20Core%20to%20core%20latency%203.jpg

Though its a mild increase and pretty consistent even among the 4 different 4 core Gracemont clusters though not quite as good as Raptor Cove to Raptor Cove communication. And despite consistent 40s ns score to core latency GFracemont cores are Skylake IPC or weaker in certain aspects.

Consistency is key. AMD has even better core to core latency within a CCX than Intel as all numbers are in green. But once it exits a CCX/CCD, latency jumps enormously and it is bad as not consistent as a massive latency jump through IF.,

Supposedly AMD is supposed to improve it with Zen 6, but then again with Zen 5 was supposed to be much better, but cross CCD/CCX latency actually much worse than Zen 4 as with Zen 4 jumps into high 70s to 80s ns where as Zen 5 100s of ns almost like Laptop LPE e-cores of Meteor Lake which are irreverent for desktop on Intel side.

I am exited looking at the Core Ultra 155H graph and seeing consistent 30s core to core latency of the Crestmont cores even in different clusters on same ring. Figure Arrow Lake Skymont cores should be no different if not better and just as consistent. My dream chip may be there if I can disable the Lion Cove cores and use only Skymont with a mild 5GHz overclock. As long as Skymont can truly replicate Raptor Cove IPC and real world performance with HT disabled across the board all workloads with same RAM overclock and latency as well. But obviously with good stability and no degradation unlike RPL.