Intel Meteor Lake-S CPU Tool Surfaces for Desktop PC Chips

LGA1851-MTL-S Interposer
(Image credit: Intel)

Although rumors have claimed otherwise, Intel’s 14th Generation Meteor Lake processors may debut in the desktop space after all. If the LGA1851 Meteor Lake-S interposer indicates anything, Intel appears to be testing a desktop variant of Meteor Lake. Maybe the tool serves other internal purposes, so we shouldn’t get our hopes up.

Even before the LGA1700 socket debuted, there were already talks of an LGA18xx socket. The LGA1700 houses 12th Generation Alder Lake and 13th Generation Raptor Lake processors. Therefore, Raptor Lake’s successor, whether it is Meteor Lake or not, will likely debut on a new socket. It’s well-known that Intel’s commitment to a socket isn’t as determined as AMD’s. For instance, AMD has pledged to support the latest AM5 socket through 2025 and beyond. If we look at previous Intel sockets, such as the LGA1200 socket, it only accommodated two generations of processors.

Intel has made many strides with Meteor Lake lately. The chipmaker recently deployed some Linux patches, alluding to an L4 cache with the upcoming Meteor Lake chips. An Intel patent also emerged confirming the Meteor Lake's L4 cache, for which Intel uses the "Adamantine" moniker for the L4 cache. Mobile Meteor Lake is slated to launch this year, and if the desktop variant is on Intel's plans, it probably won't arrive until 2024, assuming there is some credence to the Raptor Lake Refresh.

Zhiye Liu
News Editor and Memory Reviewer

Zhiye Liu is a news editor and memory reviewer at Tom’s Hardware. Although he loves everything that’s hardware, he has a soft spot for CPUs, GPUs, and RAM.

  • rluker5
    I've got a 4980hq on something like that to adapt the bga chip to lga 1150.
    It is far from official but does the job well enough.
    That thing could just be an adapter for internal testing.
    Reply