Intel: Lunar Lakes Tapes Out, Meteor Lake on Track for 2023 Ramp

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Meteor Lake to ramp in 2023, Lunar Lake ready for production in 2024.

Intel
(Image credit: Intel)

Intel's major next-generation processor families are on schedule in accordance with the company's previously released roadmaps, says chief executive Pat Gelsinger. 

While Intel's disappointing Q4 FY2022 financial results were primarily a result of the weakening economy, datacenter product delays also plagued the company's bottom line. However, Gelsinger used the earnings call to reaffirm the company's roadmap and show that all the products are on track for release. On the client side, Intel's Meteor Lake is set to ramp in 2023, whereas Lunar Lake has completed its planned tape out. On the datacenter front, Emerald Rapids will start production this year, whereas its successor Granite Rapids is slated for 2024.

Client Side

Meteor Lake is an important milestone for Intel for two reasons: it is the company's first client CPU to rely on a disaggregated multi-tile design, and it is the first to use the Intel 4 process technology (aka 7nm), which is Intel's first node to use extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography. The system-in-package will consist of four tiles: the compute tile (CPU cores), the graphics tile produced by TSMC (presumably using its N3 or N5 node), the SoC tile, and the I/O tile. The tiles are interconnected using Intel's Foveros 3D technology. 

“On Intel 4, we are ready today for manufacturing and we look forward to the MTL (Meteor Lake) ramp in the second half of the year,” said Gelsinger.

For now, it is not completely clear whether Intel plans to release Meteor Lake into the desktop space, or leave it as a mobile-only product, something it did with Ice Lake and Tiger Lake a few years ago. Considering unofficial information about Raptor Lake-S Refresh for desktops, Meteor Lake may well remain a part for laptops and compact desktops, but Intel has yet to confirm this. Meanwhile, Intel will start production of Meteor Lake CPUs this year. 

Intel's next disaggregated (multi-chiplet) design is codenamed Lunar Lake. It is based on a brand new microarchitecture (as we suspected last year) which Intel hopes will regain the performance-per-watt crown. The CPU completed its tape out in late 2022, as planned, so it is on track for "production readiness in 2024."

“With MTL progressing well, it is now appropriate to look forward to Lunar Lake, which is on track for production readiness in 2024, having taped-out its first silicon,” said the head of Intel. “Lunar Lake is optimized for ultra-low power performance, which will enable more of our PC partners to create ultra-thin and light systems for mobile users.”

Datacenter Side

Intel's 4th Generation Xeon Scalable "Sapphire Rapids" for datacenters officially launched on January 10 and will be succeeded by Emerald Rapids processors. The CPU giant once said that Emerald Rapids was set to "compete" (i.e., hit the market) in 2023. However, Intel changed its tune late last year and said that the processor family will be mass-produced in 2023, with a release set for 2024. For now, there are no changes to Emerald Rapids plans. 

Meanwhile, Intel's next-generation Xeon processors based on high-performance Granite Rapids cores and the company's first Xeon CPU powered by energy-efficient Sierra Forest cores are on track for 2024. However, it appears that Gelsinger is referring to production in 2024 rather than when the processors will actually launch. 

“Emerald Rapids is sampling and has completed power-on with top OEM (original equipment manufacturer) and CSP customers, and it remains on track to launch in the second half of 2023,” said Gelsinger. “Granite Rapids, our next performance core addition to the Xeon portfolio is on track to launch in 2024, running multiple operating systems across many different configurations. Further, our first efficient-core product, Sierra Forrest, is also on on-track for 2024.”

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Anton Shilov
Anton Shilov
Contributing Writer

Anton Shilov is a contributing writer at Tom’s Hardware. Over the past couple of decades, he has covered everything from CPUs and GPUs to supercomputers and from modern process technologies and latest fab tools to high-tech industry trends.

16 Comments Comment from the forums
  • pointa2b
    Its going to be really interesting to see how Intel and AMD compete with each other over the long term. Greater leaps will need to take place more often as opposed to the past when AMD was trailing behind while Intel was complacent.
    Reply
  • zecoeco
    Intel is in a critical situation and in need to do something and turn things around. I expect Intel to go all-out and fight in all segments. They've got the money, talent and experience. AMD is up for a really tough time. Next years will be very competitive and AMD needs to step up their game too. Expect impressive gains and more delays (yep).
    Reply
  • Kamen Rider Blade
    zecoeco said:
    Intel is in a critical situation and in need to do something and turn things around. I expect Intel to go all-out and fight in all segments. They've got the money, talent and experience. AMD is up for a really tough time. Next years will be very competitive and AMD needs to step up their game too. Expect impressive gains and more delays (yep).
    You should be really paying attention to their financials, it's not lookin good for them.
    Reply
  • jkflipflop98
    Kamen Rider Blade said:
    You should be really paying attention to their financials, it's not lookin good for them.

    You literally said the same thing he did, except dumber.
    Reply
  • tstager
    zecoeco said:
    Intel is in a critical situation and in need to do something and turn things around. I expect Intel to go all-out and fight in all segments. They've got the money, talent and experience. AMD is up for a really tough time. Next years will be very competitive and AMD needs to step up their game too. Expect impressive gains and more delays (yep).
    They don't have as much money as you think. Several of their products have cost them. Alder lake didn't sell as well as hoped and Raptor Lake is doing even worse. Their margins have really taken a hit. They have also taken losses with Arc. These things add up. They are starting to get desperate for a win. I hope they can pull it off!
    Reply
  • JamesJones44
    tstager said:
    They don't have as much money as you think. Several of their products have cost them. Alder lake didn't sell as well as hoped and Raptor Lake is doing even worse. Their margins have really taken a hit. They have also taken losses with Arc. These things add up. They are starting to get desperate for a win. I hope they can pull it off!

    They have 28 billion in cash https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/INTC/balance-sheet?p=INTC. That also doesn't reflect that they still own over 50% of Mobile Eye that they can sell if they need cash.

    I'm not fan of Intel, but the nescience the average fanboy is throwing out is down right scary.
    Reply
  • jasonf2
    If all you want to do is read the market clickbait Intel is doomed, just like every other company that has a bad quarter. What people don't understand is that Intel is an engineering company inventing tech that doesn't come to market for years that has one hell of a war chest. Dollars put in today do not bear immediate profits. A large part of Intel's current balance sheet "losses" are actually internal reinvestments. Prior to Gelsinger (Which happens to be a former Intel engineer with serious street credit) Intel had been so focused on keeping Wall Street happy that while their balance sheets looked ok they weren't maintaining. The 14nm nightmare more than likely came to pass because someone over at Intel decided that EUV was too expensive. TSMC on the other hand has been using EUV since 2019.

    Even with this all being said Intel's full year revenue was down by 20% yoy to $63.1 billion which was just reported. AMDs 12 month revenue (reported September 30, 2020) was up 53.7% to $22.828 billion. So understand that by shear scale of gross sales AMD is only about 36% of what Intel is. Intel spent $24.5 billion on R&D/MG&A in 2022 which is more than AMDs entire gross revenue. Intel has about $22 billion cash on hand while AMD has about $5.5 billion. The crazy part is that even with all of that R&D/MG&A charge Intel still had positive cash flow and netted $8 billion dollars while AMD only netted $2.273B.

    Now lets look at todays market Cap. Intel today is at ~$116 billion while AMD sits at ~$121 billion. And this folks is what is wrong with the stock market. This is classic Tesla level speculation where the market cap is not even close to a reflection of what the actual business is doing.
    Reply
  • kjfatl
    For the PC consumer, the next few years are going to be very good. At present Intel is about 4 years behind TSMC on the manufacturing side. Next year they will be 2 years behind.. In a few years they may be a year or two ahead of TSMC and Samsung. Don't be surprised if Intel begins manufacturing AMD and/or NVIDIA products in the same way that TSMC is manufacturing products for Intel. Competition is a good thing. The US Chips Bill and the Taiwanese counterpart will only help consumers. If any US company is going to be hurting in the long run it's Global Foundries. Odds are, Global Foundries will find a nice middle or the road pathway to sit in.
    Reply
  • jasonf2
    kjfatl said:
    For the PC consumer, the next few years are going to be very good. At present Intel is about 4 years behind TSMC on the manufacturing side. Next year they will be 2 years behind.. In a few years they may be a year or two ahead of TSMC and Samsung. Don't be surprised if Intel begins manufacturing AMD and/or NVIDIA products in the same way that TSMC is manufacturing products for Intel. Competition is a good thing. The US Chips Bill and the Taiwanese counterpart will only help consumers. If any US company is going to be hurting in the long run it's Global Foundries. Odds are, Global Foundries will find a nice middle or the road pathway to sit in.
    GlobalFoundries is going to do just fine. They are focused on high volume low margin mature process nodes. Unless something dramatically stalls out in node development GF isn't even working in the same space as the other major foundries. Think Texas Instruments not AMD as clients.
    Reply
  • kjfatl
    I thought that might be the case for Global Foundries. I know that TI has makes a lot of parts on lower cost 'mature' processes. They are in the process of building multiple new 12 inch fabs to make ten's of billions of jellybean parts per year. I can see Global Foundries filling the gap between 65nm and 18nm. There are a lot of parts that fit in this sweet spot.
    Reply