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In the coming months, Intel will be launching its 13th Gen Raptor Lake CPUs, but the rumor mill is already talking about the 14th Gen Meteor Lake CPUs and 15th Gen Arrow Lake CPUs based on a brand new Desktop CPU platform based on the LGA 2551 socket will appear.
14th Gen Intel Meteor Lake and 15th Gen Arrow Lake desktop CPUs will be launched in 2023-2024 on the new LGA 2551 socket platform
The latest details come from Moore’s Law is Dead, which says Intel is expected to launch its 14th Gen Meteor Lake CPUs in 2023 and 15th Gen Arrow Lake CPUs in 2024. Now both lineups have been confirmed by Intel itself, including generations beyond, codenamed Lunar Lake and Nova Lake. The key detail in the latest video is that both families will be using a brand new socket known as LGA2551.
Intel’s 14th Gen Meteor Lake and Arrow Lake desktop CPUs are expected to use the brand new LGA 2551 socket. (Image credit: Moore’s Law is Dead)
The Intel LGA 2551 socket replaces the current LGA 1700/1800 socket, which supports both 12th Gen Alder Lake CPUs and 13th Gen Raptor Lake CPUs. Intel is known to transition to newer sockets every 2 generations. The LGA 1200 socket also supported 10th Gen Comet Lake CPUs and 11th Gen Rocket Lake CPUs. While the socket remains the same, each CPU brings a variety of I/O improvements made possible by newer chips. The same philosophy is used by AMD and Intel as we see multiple chipset revisions and updates on the same socket.
According to the details, the Intel LGA 2551 socket for Meteor Lake and Arrow Lake CPUs will have exact dimensions of 38mm x 46mm and will be only slightly larger than the existing LGA 1700/1800 socket, which means that these 2551- Pins could be tightly packed in comparison to current designs, so the socket doesn’t take up much space on mainstream platforms. This makes the Intel LGA 2551 socket the largest for mainstream desktop PCs, with 751 pins more than Intel’s current mainstream socket and 833 pins more than AMD’s AM5 socket (LGA 1718). With the socket out of the way, let’s take a quick look at both the Meteor Lake and Arrow Lake CPU families.
Intel LGA 2551 socket (photo credit: Moore’s Law is Dead):
14th Gen Intel Meteor Lake CPUs: Intel 4 Process Node, Tiled Arc GPU design, hybrid cores, 2023 launch to tackle Zen 5
The 14th Gen Meteor Lake CPUs will be a gamer changer in that they take a brand new tiled architecture approach. Based on the “Intel 4” process node, the new CPUs offer a performance increase of 20% per watt through EUV technology and are expected to be on the market by the second half of 2022 (ready for production). The first Meteor Lake CPUs are scheduled to ship by H1 2023 and availability is expected later that year. The desktop parts are rumored to be hitting shelves in the second half of 2023 and will be looking at AMD’s Zen 5 CPUs until their launch.
According to Intel, the 14th Gen Meteor Lake CPUs will feature an all-new tiled architecture, which basically means the company has decided to go full-on chiplets. There are 4 main tiles on the Meteor Lake CPUs. There is the IO tile, the SOC tile, the GFX tile and the compute tile. The math tile includes the CPU tile and the GFX tile. The CPU tile will use a new hybrid core design comprised of Redwood Cove P-Cores and Crestmont E-Cores, delivering higher throughput at lower power consumption, while the graphics tile will be unlike anything we’ve seen before. CPUs are scaled from 5W to 125W, ranging from ultra-low TDP mobile devices to high-end desktop PCs.
As Raja Koduri notes, the Meteor Lake CPUs will use a tiled Arc graphics GPU, which will make them a whole new class of graphics on a chip. It is neither an iGPU nor a dGPU and is currently considered a tGPU (Tiled GPU / Next-Gen Graphics Engine). The Meteor Lake CPUs will use the all-new Xe-HPG graphics architecture, which enables higher performance with the same power efficiency as existing integrated GPUs. This will also allow for expanded support for DirectX 12 Ultimate and XeSS, features currently only supported by the Alchemist range.
15th Gen Intel Lunar Lake CPUs: Intel 20A Process Node, Brand new Lion Cove Core ‘Possible Jim Keller Design’ and in competition with Zen 6
Meteor Lake’s successor is Arrow Lake and the 15th generation lineup brings many changes. While it would be socket compatible wherever Meteor Lake lands, the Redwood Cove cores and Crestmont cores are upgraded to the brand new Lion Cove and Skymont cores. These are expected to bring great benefit with the increased core count expected to be 40/48 in the new SKUs (8 P cores + 32 E cores).
A previous leak had confirmed the mainstream parts of the desktop K series. The performance is said to be on par with AMD and Apple processors, which would mean that these would offer a double-digit increase. There is no information on the GFX Tile, but it should either have an updated architecture or more Xe cores. The I/O tile will be merged with Neural Engines (VPU) similar to those on Meteor Lake, which will use low-power Atomic cores.
Surprisingly, Intel would skip its “Intel 4” node and jump straight to 20A for the Arrow Lake CPUs. One thing that applies to both Meteor Lake and Arrow Lake chips is that they will keep their N3 (TSMC) process node for additional core IPs, presumably the Arc GPU cores. The Intel 20A node delivers a 15% increase in performance per watt by leveraging next-generation RibbonFET and PowerVia technology, and the first IP test wafers are planned to be running in factories by the second half of 2022.
So it looks like Intel is going down the more efficient route, at least for mobility, since they’re using a fraction of the full core configuration that the desktop chips will get. Also, there will be a four-chiplet design for Arrow Lake, the same as Meteor Lake but with more cores and IO functions. The 20A process node itself will bring a 15% increase in performance per watt, bringing RibbonFET and PowerVia technology to the table.
Comparing Intel mainstream desktop CPU generations:
| Intel CPU family | processor process | Processor cores/threads (max.) | TDP’s | platform chipset | platform | memory support | PCIe support | begin |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sandy Bridge (2nd generation) | 32nm | 4/8 | 35-95W | 6 series | LGA1155 | DDR3 | PCIe Gen 2.0 | 2011 |
| Ivy Bridge (3rd generation) | 22nm | 4/8 | 35-77W | 7 series | LGA1155 | DDR3 | PCIe Gen 3.0 | 2012 |
| Haswell (4th generation) | 22nm | 4/8 | 35-84W | 8 series | LGA1150 | DDR3 | PCIe Gen 3.0 | 2013-2014 |
| Broadwell (5th generation) | 14nm | 4/8 | 65-65W | 9 series | LGA1150 | DDR3 | PCIe Gen 3.0 | 2015 |
| Skylake (6th Generation) | 14nm | 4/8 | 35-91W | 100 series | LGA1151 | DDR4 | PCIe Gen 3.0 | 2015 |
| Kaby Lake (7th Generation) | 14nm | 4/8 | 35-91W | 200 series | LGA1151 | DDR4 | PCIe Gen 3.0 | 2017 |
| Coffee Lake (8th generation) | 14nm | 6/12 | 35-95W | 300 series | LGA1151 | DDR4 | PCIe Gen 3.0 | 2017 |
| Coffee Lake (9th generation) | 14nm | 8/16 | 35-95W | 300 series | LGA1151 | DDR4 | PCIe Gen 3.0 | 2018 |
| Comet Lake (10th generation) | 14nm | 20.10 | 35-125W | 400 series | LGA1200 | DDR4 | PCIe Gen 3.0 | 2020 |
| Rocket Lake (11th Gen) | 14nm | 8/16 | 35-125W | 500 series | LGA1200 | DDR4 | PCIe Gen 4.0 | 2021 |
| Alder Lake (12th generation) | Intel7 | 16/24 | 35-125W | 600 series | LGA1700 | DDR5/DDR4 | PCIe Gen 5.0 | 2021 |
| Raptor Lake (13th generation) | Intel7 | 24/32 | 35-125W | 700 series | LGA1700 | DDR5/DDR4 | PCIe Gen 5.0 | 2022 |
| Meteor Sea (14th Gen) | intel 4 | TBA | 35-125W | 800 series? | LGA2551 | DDR5 | PCIe Gen 5.0 | 2023 |
| Arrow Lake (15th generation) | Intel 20A | 40/48 | TBA | 900 series? | LGA2551 | DDR5 | PCIe Gen 5.0 | 2024 |
| Mondsee (16th gen) | Intel 18A | TBA | TBA | 1000 series? | TBA | DDR5 | PCIe Gen 5.0? | 2025 |
| Nova Lake (17th generation) | Intel 18A | TBA | TBA | 2000 series? | TBA | DDR5? | PCIe Gen 6.0? | 2026 |
With that in mind, Intel is expected to announce new details on its 14th Gen Meteor Lake and Arrow Lake CPUs at HotChip34 in August, so we’ll get a little more information on the next-gen chip line from Team Blue.
