Intel’s Meteor Lake processors are coming in 2023 with a new Intel Process Mode 4 and a design that uses 3D Foveros stacking. These steps will be extremely important for Intel, and the chip seems to work very well in its first prototypes.
Intel Meteor Lake, first prototype created two years before the launch
The Meteor Lake core architecture will be Intel’s first design to use Fovero’s 3D stacking technology, this time for the 14th generation Core series.
With two years to go before launch, Intel has managed to develop an initial prototype, and the company has announced that its performance is in line with expectations.
“On Intel 4, we had our compute chip etched for Meteor Lake, and this quarter it came out of the factory and started up for 30 minutes with exceptional performance, right where we expected it to be,” Pat Gelsinger, Intel’s chief executive, said on the company’s earnings call this week. “Overall, this is one of the best product ramps we’ve seen recently, which speaks to the health of the process.”
Power-up is an important moment in any chip that shows whether the first version of silicon can turn on and work. At this point, no one expects the silicon to show breakthrough performance or run 100% stable, but to reveal all of its quirks so developers can optimize their design and build their platforms around it.
As mentioned earlier, Meteor Lake will bring the 14th generation of the Core to life. This generation will feature Foveros packaging and stacking technology. The number of cores is currently unknown, but it will use a similar design to Alder Lake, combining high-performance and efficient cores.
Meteor Lake’s high-performance cores will be called Ocean Cove, while the efficiency cores will be the current Gracemont cores. Thanks to the Foveros technology, the processors will have a memory controller, a PCIe controller, and a Thunderbolt controller in the same package.