What just happened? At Innovation 2023, Intel announced plans to launch its Meteor Lake processor lineup on December 14 and revealed several key details about the upcoming series. Apart from all the Meteor Lake announcements, the event also saw the company teasing future generations of products, including Arrow Lake, Lunar Lake, and Panther Lake.
Starting off with Arrow Lake, it’s expected to launch in the second half of 2024 with improved performance and power efficiency compared to Meteor Lake. It utilizes the 20A process node, which will be the first to include PowerVia, Intel’s backside power delivery technology, and the new gate-all-around transistor design called RibbonFET. Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger also took the opportunity to show off a 20A wafer with the first Arrow Lake test chips.
Earlier leaks had revealed that Arrow Lake would only be compatible with DDR5 RAM, with no support for DDR4 memory. It is also said to require the next-gen LGA 1851 socket on Intel’s 800-series motherboards, which could include the Z890, B860 and H810 chipsets. That said, these are all early leaks and yet to be officially confirmed by Intel, so it’s best to take them with a pinch of salt for now.
Gelsinger also showed off a demo laptop powered by an unidentified 15th-gen Core ‘Lunar Lake’ CPU. The laptop with the new chip powered on effortlessly during the demo, and even booted into the operating system, suggesting that the product is in an advanced state of development. Another notable thing about the new lineup is that the integrated graphics in these chips will use the next-gen Xe2 ‘Battlemage’ architecture instead of Alchemist, thereby offering improved performance and efficiency.
The Lunar Lake lineup will be aimed at the 15W low-power mobile segment and is expected to be launched in 2024-25. According to Tom’s Hardware, these chips will utilize Intel’s 18A process node (1.8nm-class) and should include the latest packaging technology like Foveros. Lunar Lake CPUs are expected to come with a hybrid core configuration that could include Lion Cove performance cores and Skymont efficient cores, although the exact details about these architectures are unavailable as of now.
Finally, there’s Panther Lake, which will ship in 2025 for both desktops and laptops. According to rumors, they could feature Cougar Cove performance cores and use the Xe3 ‘Celestial’ GPU architecture, which could combine to offer improved CPU and graphics performance. Reports suggest that Panther Lake could go into fabrication early next year, so Intel will have enough time to sort out the gremlins before mass production starts in time for a 2025 launch.