Intel Rebranding its Chips With Meteor Lake: Core Ultra 5 Spotted

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Goodbye Core i, hello, Core Ultra?

Meteor Lake
(Image credit: Intel)

Intel's Meteor Lake processors are seemingly on track to launch sometime in the second half of 2023, so it is not surprising to see benchmark results leak one way or another. However, more surprising than the benchmarks, the company has also admitted that it will re-brand its venerable Core lineup with the arrival of Meteor Lake.

We reached out to Intel for a comment, and while the company didn't confirm specifics, it did indicate that there is going to be a shakeup in its branding. "We are making brand changes as we are at an inflection point in our client roadmap in preparation for the upcoming launch of our Meteor Lake processors," an Intel spokesperson told Tom's Hardware. "We will provide more details regarding these exciting changes in the coming weeks."

This time around, Intel's upcoming CPU ended up in the Ashes of Singularity database (via @BenchLeaks), and while the test results hardly bring any valuable performance information, they reveal some details about the specifications and branding of these processors.

The alleged Meteor Lake processor tested in AOTS is branded as the Core Ultra 5 1003H, which indicates that the company is prepping to drop its i3, i5, i7, and i9 classification for at least some of its upcoming mobile Meteor Lake CPUs. At this point, it's unclear what 'Ultra' and '5' mean in this combination and what other categories will be in the lineup, but Pro and Max classes obviously come to mind.

Meanwhile, it's tough to guess the actual configuration of Intel's Core Ultra 5 1003H processor, which allegedly has 18 physical and 18 logical cores.

Interestingly, SiSoftware's Sandra database also lists a 2.10 GHz Meteor Lake processor with an integrated GPU featuring 128CUs, which likely corresponds to 1024 stream processors. To date, this is the most powerful integrated GPU.

As for the AOTS test results themselves, the Core Ultra 5 1003H CPU hit 1300 points in DirectX 11 mode and 1920x1080 resolution, which is in line with Intel's Core i7-12700 with UHD Graphics 770.

Keeping in mind that Intel's Meteor Lake processor featuring a multi-tile design is at least a few months away, take the information from unofficial sources with a grain of salt. Intel has confirmed it is changing the branding but hasn't given us details yet. Someone could conceivably rename an existing Intel processor into Core Ultra 5 1003H and then upload its test results to the AOTS database. So the naming scheme could be fabricated, but Intel has confirmed to us that at least some level of brand change is incoming, likely arriving alongside its Meteor Lake chips. Whether or not this will permeate throughout the mobile and desktop stack remains to be seen. 

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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.

62 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Kamen Rider Blade
    Yeah, replacing the "i#" with "Ultra #" doesn't feel right, especially after the decades of "i#" scheme.
    Reply
  • hotaru.hino
    Why couldn't they add the fluffy bits after the number? Core 5 Ultra rolls off the tongue for me better than Core Ultra 5

    Heck that sounds like some Ultraman series.
    Reply
  • -Fran-
    You can see the change in management direction at the top of the marketing dept. Such a craptastic name they came up with... Geez... And here I thought AMD's naming for GPU and CPU families was bad...

    Regards.
    Reply
  • Meanwhile, it is hardly a good business to guess about the actual configuration of Intel's Core Ultra 5 1003H processor that allegedly has 18 physical and 18 logical cores.
    That could either mean a possibility of 6 Performance cores combined with 6 Efficient cores (12 cores & 18 threads), or an inclusion of Meteor Lake’s SoC Tile with 2 additional Efficient cores.

    In the latter case the the CPU config would be like 4 Performance, 8 Efficient, and 2 SoC cores (14 cores & 18 threads).     Guesstimate !
    Edit: BTW, what a horrible naming scheme Intel has chosen. Confusing and absurd.

    It appears that the "Ultra" moniker is just one branding that Intel is going to use to differentiate between various SKUs and segments. We can also think of Core Extreme, Core Max, Core Pro, and more but we'll see what Intel comes up with as its final choice.

    Some SKUs may not even feature such identifiers though.

    1653040406538633217View: https://twitter.com/SquashBionic/status/1653040406538633217
    Reply
  • TerryLaze
    Does AOTS only show the free RAM or does it really have 3Gb?
    Metal Messiah. said:
    That could either mean a possibility of 6 Performance cores combined with 6 Efficient cores (12 cores & 18 threads), or an inclusion of Meteor Lake’s SoC Tile with 2 additional Efficient cores.

    In the latter case the the CPU config would be like 4 Performance, 8 Efficient, and 2 SoC cores (14 cores & 18 threads).     Guesstimate !
    No HTT shows up as logical cores, a 6 core with htt is 6 physical 12 logical threads.
    Maybe the ultra series will be e-cores only?! Or 16 e-cores and 2 p-cores without htt?
    Reply
  • salgado18
    TerryLaze said:
    Does AOTS only show the free RAM or does it really have 3Gb?

    No HTT shows up as logical cores, a 6 core with htt is 6 physical 12 logical threads.
    Maybe the ultra series will be e-cores only?! Or 16 e-cores and 2 p-cores without htt?
    Considering an all-e-cores chip would be awful, I guess the software read wrong (by mistake or on purpose by Intel), and is has less physical cores.
    Reply
  • Yes, even I don't think Meteor Lake will sport only E-cores on the chip. There has to be P cores as well.

    Because as per Intel, the 14th Gen Meteor Lake CPUs will feature a brand new tiled architecture, and what this basically means is that the company has decided to go full-on chiplet.

    As we already know that there are 4 main tiles on the Meteor Lake CPUs, even on MOBILE SKUs.

    There's the IO Tile, the SOC Tile, the GFX Tile/iGPU & the Compute Tile. The Compute Tile comprises the CPU Tile and GFX Tile. So the CPU Tile is expected to feature "Redwood Cove" P-Cores and "Crestmont" E-Cores in a hybrid design.

    Now ratio of P and E cores is not known yet, it could either be less P cores, and more E-cores, or vice versa. Or maybe some chips will sport a triple hybrid arch ?    Triple-Hybrid CPU Architecture (P/E/LP-E Cores). LP-E most likely is Low Power E cores. Or these could be the Atom cores that are deployed within the VPU (Visual Processing Unit) on Meteor Lake chips.But according to @OneRaichu, there are only two LP-E cores on the Meteor Lake chips and those are present on the SOC Tile which means that these are the ones being used by the VPU.
    BTW, AOTS bench shows the full available RAM I think, and not just the free memory. Though, this is the worst benchmark one can trust for any metrics.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    the company has also admitted that it will re-brand its venerable Core lineup with the arrival of Meteor Lake.
    "admitted" makes it sound like they did something wrong. I wish they'd drop the "Core" part, too. It's unnecessary and sometimes confusing when you're also trying to explain how many cores a CPU has.

    With the mention of Pro and Max, the author is clearly suggesting Intel might have a case of Apple-envy. Could be.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    hotaru.hino said:
    Why couldn't they add the fluffy bits after the number? Core 5 Ultra rolls off the tongue for me better than Core Ultra 5
    What about just "Intel Ultra 5"?
    Reply
  • bit_user
    salgado18 said:
    Considering an all-e-cores chip would be awful, I guess the software read wrong (by mistake or on purpose by Intel), and is has less physical cores.
    They will definitely make an E-only CPU for Chomebooks and entry-level. Currently, those are being lumped under into the N-series. I would also expect them to continue being a monolithic die... but who knows?

    https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/series/231819/intel-processor-n-series.html
    The number of cores is way off the mark, for N-series. In Alder Lake-N, the max configuration was upped from 4 cores to 8 cores. So, that's where I'm guessing they'll stay.
    Reply