Intel Next-Gen Arrow Lake, Lunar Lake, Nova Lake CPUs Rumored To Succeed Meteor Lake

Intel’s next-generation CPUs succeeding its Meteor Lake 2023 lineup have allegedly leaked out over at Anandtech Forums. These CPUs include three new families starting with Arrow Lake, Lunar Lake & Nova Lake.

Intel’s Meteor Lake CPUs To Be Succeeded By Next-Gen Arrow Lake, Lunar Lake & Nova Lake CPUs

The Anandtech Forum member claims to have received this information from someone who was carrying the ‘Mooreslawisnotdead’ Alias though we know that’s not to be mistaken as ‘Moores Law is Dead’ whose a popular YouTuber and hardware leaker. No details are provided if the roadmap is true or not and this could all just be some guesswork but there are claims within this leak in regard to performance and configurations that we can expect from Intel’s next-generation CPUs.

Alder Lake (Golden Cove/Gracemont) Q4’21 / Q1’22 – predicted to be competitively weak vs AMD/Apple offerings that time.

Raptor Lake (Raptor Cove / Gracemont) Q3’22 / Q4’22 – 10% CPU perf boost and 8/16 configuration puts intel back on par but expect AMD/Apple to refresh their products as well.

Meteor Lake (Redwood Cove / Crestmont) Q2’23 – Intel’s first true chiplet or tile-based design. Different dies built on TSMC / Intel processes. More of a node shrink with single-digit performance improvements. AMD will again extend the lead with Zen 4+ / 5.

Arrow Lake (Lion Cove / Skymont) Q4’23 – Will feature an updated compute tile with 8/32 config for the high end enthusiast products. Might achieve parity with AMD offerings at the time but loses out to Apple in power efficiency.

Lunar Lake (Lion Cove / Skymont) Q4’24 – This is the product that will use TSMC 3nm as reported by Nikkei. Big performance jump expected and designed to achieve parity or beat AMD and Apple in both performance and power efficiency.

Nova Lake (Panther Cove [tentative]/ Darkmont) 2025 – This will mark the biggest architectural change in CPU architecture since the Core architecture is introduced in 2006. Intel is working to build entirely new architecture from the ground up much like Ryzen with up to 50% CPU performance improvement from the lunar lake. This is also the reason why Glenn Hinton returned.

Intel 12th & 13th Gen Alder Lake & Raptor Lake ‘Intel 7’ CPUs

The only known next-generation parts listed within this rumor are Alder Lake, Raptor Lake, Meteor Lake, and Lunar Lake. The new codenames include Arrow Lake and Nova Lake. It is stated that Intel will try to position Alder Lake with Golden Cove and Gracemont cores against AMD & Apple in the desktop and mobile space later this year but it will really be Raptor Lake that will offer competitive nature against its rivals.

Raptor Lake will be a slight optimization of Alder Lake CPUs with Raptor Cove and Gracemont cores. The rumor suggests a 10% performance boost & updated CPU configs though this much has already been reported in previous leaks.

Intel 14th Gen Meteor Lake ‘Intel 4’ CPUs

The Meteor Lake CPUs were also reported a while back to feature Redwood Cove & Crestmont cores and will be launching around Q2 2023. These will be the first chips to feature Intel 4 nodes, and will also be the first to carry a proper Chiplet / Tile architecture. Intel is also expected to use TSMC for at least one Tile on its Meteor Lake CPU (most likely GPU or IO).

The Meteor Lake CPUs may possibly be the first CPU generation from Intel to say farewell to the ring bus interconnect architecture. There are also rumors that Meteor Lake could be a fully 3D-Stacked design and could utilize an I/O die sourced from an external fab (TSMC sighted again). It is highlighted that Intel will be officially utilizing its Foveros Packaging Technology on the CPU to inter-connect the various dies on the chip (XPU). This also aligns with Intel referring to each tile on 14th Gen chips individually (Compute Tile = CPU Cores).

The Meteor Lake Desktop CPU family is expected to retain support on the LGA 1700 socket which is the same socket used by Alder Lake & Raptor Lake processors. We can expect DDR5 memory and PCIe Gen 5.0 support. The platform will support both DDR5 & DDR4 memory with the mainstream and budget tier options going for DDR4 memory DIMMs while the premium & high-end offerings going for DDR5 DIMMs. The site also lists down both Meteor Lake P and Meteor Lake M CPUs that will be aimed at mobility platforms.

Intel 15th Gen Arrow Lake ‘Intel 4’ CPUs

Now let’s get started with the new Arrow Lake line of chips. This is a name we haven’t heard of before and from the looks of it, this will be the architectural update on the Intel 4 process node. Intel’s Arrow Lake CPUs are said to feature an updated compute tile with Lion Cove & Skymont cores in up to 40 core configurations (8 Big + 32 Small cores). High-End enthusiast products for Arrow Lake are mentioned but it’s referring to the ‘K’ series mainstream parts, not actual HEDT chips. The performance is said to achieve parity with AMD and Apple processors which would mean that these would offer a double-digit gain.

Intel 16th Gen Lunar Lake ‘Intel 3’ CPUs

The 16th Gen Lunar Lake chips may end up being the first CPUs on the Intel 3 process node. The new chips are said to bring a performance that would be able to surpass the competing AMD and Apple processors. Now we have heard of Lunar Lake in leaked documents before and it is stated to be a Meteor Lake successor but since the rumor claims that Arrow Lake will be coming before, we shouldn’t expect the launch of Lunar Lake CPUs till late 2024 or early 2025.

Intel 17th Gen Nova Lake ‘Intel 3’ CPUs

Last up, we have the Nova Lake CPUs which would bring forth brand new architectures known as Panther Cove and Darkmont to the table. The lineup is rumored to be the biggest architectural up lift in Intel’s history, even bigger than the Core architecture itself which was introduced all the way back in 2006. The CPU performance improvement is rumored to be more than 50% over the Lunar Lake chips so we are talking Zen 1 levels of IPC improvements. However, don’t expect these chips to launch till the end of 2025 or even move to 2026 at the earliest.

Intel Mainstream Desktop CPU Generations Comparison:

Intel CPU Family	Processor Process	Processors Cores/Threads (Max)	TDPs	Platform Chipset	Platform	Memory Support	PCIe Support	Launch
Sandy Bridge (2nd Gen)	32nm	4/8	35-95W	6-Series	LGA 1155	DDR3	PCIe Gen 2.0	2011
Ivy Bridge (3rd Gen)	22nm	4/8	35-77W	7-Series	LGA 1155	DDR3	PCIe Gen 3.0	2012
Haswell (4th Gen)	22nm	4/8	35-84W	8-Series	LGA 1150	DDR3	PCIe Gen 3.0	2013-2014
Broadwell (5th Gen)	14nm	4/8	65-65W	9-Series	LGA 1150	DDR3	PCIe Gen 3.0	2015
Skylake (6th Gen)	14nm	4/8	35-91W	100-Series	LGA 1151	DDR4	PCIe Gen 3.0	2015
Kaby Lake (7th Gen)	14nm	4/8	35-91W	200-Series	LGA 1151	DDR4	PCIe Gen 3.0	2017
Coffee Lake (8th Gen)	14nm	6/12	35-95W	300-Series	LGA 1151	DDR4	PCIe Gen 3.0	2017
Coffee Lake (9th Gen)	14nm	8/16	35-95W	300-Series	LGA 1151	DDR4	PCIe Gen 3.0	2018
Comet Lake (10th Gen)	14nm	10/20	35-125W	400-Series	LGA 1200	DDR4	PCIe Gen 3.0	2020
Rocket Lake (11th Gen)	14nm	8/16	35-125W	500-Series	LGA 1200	DDR4	PCIe Gen 4.0	2021
Alder Lake (12th Gen)	Intel 7	16/24	TBA	600 Series	LGA 1700	DDR5	PCIe Gen 5.0	2021
Raptor Lake (13th Gen)	Intel 7	16/24	TBA	700-Series	LGA 1700	DDR5	PCIe Gen 5.0	2022
Meteor Lake (14th Gen)	Intel 4	TBA	TBA	800 Series?	LGA 1700	DDR5	PCIe Gen 5.0?	2023
Arrow Lake (15th Gen)	Intel 4?	40/48	TBA	900-Series?	TBA	DDR5	PCIe Gen 5.0?	2024
Lunar Lake (16th Gen)	Intel 3?	TBA	TBA	1000-Series?	TBA	DDR5	PCIe Gen 5.0?	2025
Nova Lake (17th Gen)	Intel 3?	TBA	TBA	2000-Series?	TBA	DDR5?	PCIe Gen 6.0?	2026

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