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Dianne Douglas
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Intel says that the next phase in its roadmap, the Intel 3 of its roadmap, will begin manufacturing in the second half of 2023, so we should see the first products to ship with it at the beginning of 2024. At its investors conference in February 2022, Intel confirmed that the first 13th-generation CPUs are expected in the second half of 2022. No date nor product name has been announced yet for the 3 chips from Intel, but supposedly will not become available until 2024.
Assuming that Intel does release Raptor Lake chips for notebooks, too, these will be designed to integrate with a device rather than being purchased as stand-alone components. Intel confirmed the Intel Raptor Lake 13th Generation Raptor Lake CPUs will be dropped in to LGA 1700 sockets, meaning that they are backwards compatible with existing 600 series chipsets, while older coolers are forwards compatible with new Raptor Lake motherboards.
The Raptor Lake CPUs will also utilize the Intel 7 fabrication process, serving as a tock to Intels traditional "tick-tock" release cadence. Instead of an entirely new node, the Intel 3 will have improvements in Intels 7nm fabrication process. Intel 4 is known to have 7nm, which debuted in the 2023 release of its Meteor Lake processors. While Intel 7 implies a 7nm process, Intel is sticking to 10nm until 2021.
If Intel sticks to Intels pitching cadence, Intel 18a is just another tock on the clock of the cycle, built around a new RibbonFET design, as well as the PowerVia, in the 5nm fabrication process. In addition to a new manufacturing process, Intel 20A will leverage two new architectural technologies. Intel 20A will introduce PowerVia, new technology which allows for the wafers to receive power from the rear of the chip, rather than needing the power be routed round the front. In future, competitor Qualcomm will be using Intels fabrication facilities to manufacture some of their chips using Intel 20A.
Packaging will play a part in the PCs of the future, including Arrow Lake in 2024, which will include Intels 20A-based early dies. Meteor Lake and Arrow Lake in 2024 will make use of the new graphics chip architecture, which Intel promises to be a huge leap forward, which is significant given graphics chips do so much these days beyond drawing pixels onto a screen - for instance, artificial intelligence and video image processing. We are getting a look at the future, with Intel revealing their 14th-generation CPUs for desktops and mobiles, codenamed Meteor Lake. Intels 13th-generation Raptor Lake CPUs are coming to take on AMDs Zen 4 Ryzen 7000 CPUs this year, setting the stage for an intense battle for the desktop PCs crown of dominance - specifically, the crown of best CPU for gaming, as the Intel-AMD rivalry moves to the next phase.
Intel will be rolling out Core i9, i7, i5 and i3 models for Raptor Lake, with the Pentium and Celeron serving in repurposed versions of previous-gen Intels Alder Lake chips . Even the next years Rocket Lake chips for desktops will still be built on a 14nm process Intel is giving Intel new options, including the option of using other manufacturers, such as Apples chip maker, TSMC, to make their chips. Future products from Intel will no longer use the node-based, nanometer-based nomenclature both it and the rest of the chipmaking industry has used for years.
At first blush, it sounds like an awfully cheap marketing tactic designed to make these new 3rd Generation 10nm chips seem more competitive against products from AMD, who is already using the TSMC 7nm node, or Apples Apple-made 5nm M1 chips from TSMCs 7nm node. How this works in practice is that these new third-generation 10nm chips will be called Intel 7 rather than getting some sort of 10nm-based naming treatment .
It is also worth noting that rumors suggest that Apple is working on the M3 chips, so maybe Intels efforts come a little late, depending on whether/when Apple releases its next-gen chips. The rumored improvements and tuning may well turn Intel into a force to be reckoned with, and it does not seem we will have to wait too long for the former to come along.
It is unclear exactly what those would involve -- perhaps Intel does not even know yet. The first products powered by Intels 7-series are expected to appear this year, and already-previewed Alder Lake chips are coming at the end of 2021 for consumer products, with an imminent SAPRapids chip coming in 2022 for data centers. In the second half of 2024, Intel is expecting to launch customer-focused CPUs in a new 18A process, Dr. Anne Kelleher told investors.
Behind the scenes, Intel confirmed Meteor Lake designs early in 2021, suggesting that Meteor Lake CPUs are on track to ship in 2023. Intel built the first prototypes for Meteor Lake during the last quarter of 2021 using Intels 4 process, and they were launched into PCs, said Anne Kelleher, the executive vice president leading Intels Technology Development Division. Intels closest competition for an Arm CPU is Tiger Lake, which is slated to ship in new thinner, lighter laptops this fall, but is still made on a 10nm process.