A new report from sources in Taiwan paints a sobering picture of Intel’s plans for the processors it’s preparing to release next year.
The company is supposed to launch Meteor Lake CPUs this year, followed by Arrow lakes in early 2024. However, DigiTimes’ sources say that Intel will delay its order for Arrow Lake wafers from TSMC until the end of 2024.
If the information is confirmed, this means that Intel will not be able to release the processors in large quantities until sometime in 2025. This could also deal a huge blow to the company’s release schedule and leave a huge gap between Raptor Lake and its successor, Arrow Lake. Making matters worse is a new report stating that there will be no Meteor Lake processors for desktop computers. Instead, Intel will focus only on laptops, a rumor that has been heard before.
DigiTimes also cites its sources as “PC manufacturers” while the report states that Intel will use TSMC’s 3nm manufacturing process for the iGPU in the Arrow Lake processors.
The company was originally going to use the 3nm process for its Meteor Lake iGPU, so maybe Intel is sticking with the N4 or N5 because that’s (supposedly) coming out this year. Since Intel won’t be ordering Arrow Lake processors for nearly two years, the question remains what it will do for desktop users until then. The delays have reportedly led Intel to plan a refresh of Raptor Lake this year instead of a portion of Meteor Lake for desktops that is expected to replace it. Now a reliable leak states that the desktop CPUs, Meteor Lake, have indeed been cancelled.
However, it is unclear which CPU family will come after that. Assuming the Meteor Lake architecture is not replaced, Arrow Lake is the true successor to desktop cpu’s. One of the reasons why these reports can be confirmed is that all these new CPU architectures require smaller nodes. Intel is currently using the Intel 7 manufacturing method for the Raptor Lake architecture, and will then move to Intel 4 for the Meteor Lake processors, formerly known as 7nm.
For Arrow Lake, it leaves FinFET behind and goes to 20A with RibbonFET transistors. Although the tile will be Intel 20A, the iGPU will be from TSMC.
As always, until there is confirmation or denial directly from Intel, we should be cautious with these reports. In Intel’s recent financial results report, company CEO Pat Gelsinger confirmed that Meteor Lake is still on target for release in 2023. Whether that will include a desktop SKU is unknown at this time.
We’re on target, maybe ahead of our goal of five nodes in four years,” Gelsinger said. “Intel 7 is now in high-volume production for both clients and servers.
On Intel 4, we’re today ready for production and we look forward to MTL (Meteor Lake) for the second half of the year.”
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