Yesterday, Intel posted its most disastrous quarter in recent times with all major segments reporting losses but the company also reaffirmed that these results won’t affect its internal execution and roadmap plans for next-gen client and server CPUs.
Intel Meteor Lake & Lunar Lake CPUs Aim 2H 2023 & 2024 Ramp For Client, Emerald Rapids & Granite Rapids Aim 2023 & 2024 Launch, Respectively
Intel has a lot of work to do to get back into the game and that’s where all the new and upcoming products come in. According to Intel, the company is prepared to begin production of its Meteor Lake CPUs based on the Intel 4 process node today while a full-on ramp is expected in the second half of 2023. Intel states that both Intel 4 and Intel 3 process nodes are looking good and on track to become their first EUV-powered designs for the CCG and DCG.
Rebuilding the culture has begun to show benefits in manufacturing and design. Our progress against our TD (Technology Development Group) roadmap continued to improve throughout CY22, and every quarter our confidence grows. We are at or ahead of our goal of five nodes in four years. Intel 7 is now in high-volume manufacturing for both client and server. 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.
Intel 3 continues to show great health and is on track. Intel 4 and 3 are our first nodes deploying EUV (extreme ultraviolet lithography) and will represent a major step forward in terms of transistor performance per watt and density. On Intel 20A and Intel 18A, the first nodes to benefit from RibbonFet and PowerVia, internal test chips, and those of a major potential foundry customer, have taped-out with silicon running in the fab. We continue to be on track to regain transistor performance and power performance leadership by 2025.
Intel Aiming To Ship 1 Million Sapphire Rapids Xeon CPUs By Mid-2023
Starting with the first product release of 2023, we have Intel’s Sapphire Rapids Xeon CPUs which were launched on the 10th of January and it looks like Intel has landed some major customer & partner wins that included Dell Technologies, Google Cloud, HPE, Lenovo, Microsoft Azure, NVIDIA and Amazon amongst several others. Chipzilla expects Sapphire Rapids to ship 1 Million units by the mid of 2023 and that would also mark a positive trend for DRAM makers as we recently told.
On the product front, the PRQ (product release qualification) of SPR (Sapphire Rapids) in Q3 and the formal introduction of our 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable CPU and Xeon CPU Max series, better known to many of you as SPR and SPR HBM (Sapphire Rapids with high bandwidth memory), respectively, on Jan 10 was a great milestone.
It was particularly satisfying to host a customer-centered event including testimonials from Dell, Google Cloud, HPE, Lenovo, Microsoft Azure, and NVIDIA, among others. We are thrilled to be ramping production to meet a strong backlog of demand and we are on track to ship 1 million units by mid-year. In addition, as part of AXG’s move into DCAI, it is noteworthy that our Intel Flex Series, optimized for and showing clear leadership in media stream density and visual quality, is now shipping initial deployments with large CSPs (communication service providers) and MNCs (multinational corporations), enabling large-scale cloud gaming and media delivery deployments.
Intel Xeon Emerald Rapids Launch In 2H 2023, Granite Rapids On Track For 2024
Talking about future Xeon chips, Intel reaffirmed that its Emerald Rapids CPUs are sampling and they have completed the first power-on with top customers. The Emerald Rapids CPUs will be a refresh of sorts of the Sapphire Rapids lineup, acting as an intermediary between that and the Granite Rapids family. The CPUs are expected to launch in 2H 2023. The Granite Rapids CPUs are expected to launch in 2024 and are already running multiple operating systems & various configs at Intel’s labs. The Sierra Forest CPUs featuring an all-E-Core design are also on track for a 2024 launch.
Our DCAI roadmap only improves from here. 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. 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. Lastly, it is appropriate to continue to highlight PSG for its stand-out performance, delivering record Q4 revenue, up 42% year-over-year. We are planning to have a more fulsome look at our progress in DCAI at our next investor webinar later in Q1 – stay tuned for the invitation.
Intel Meteor Lake CPUs In 2H 2023, Lunar Lake In 2H 2024 For Client Core Family
Back to the client side of things, Intel’s CCG will be working on two major products for 2023 and 2024. These include Meteor Lake which ramps up in 2H 2023 and Lunar Lake which ramps up in 2H 2024. Both CPU lineups are mobile first with Lunar Lake clearly labeled as being “optimized for ultra-low power performance”. Do note that there’s no mention of Arrow Lake but that’s also going to launch sometime in 2024 with Lunar Lake more realistically being a 2025 product.
Meteor Lake, our first disaggregated CPU built on Intel 4, remains on track for the second half of the year. And with MTL progressing well, it’s now appropriate to look forward to Lunar Lake, which is on track for production readiness in 2024, having taped-out its first silicon. 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.
In addition, as we outlined on our webinar, we are excited by the strength of the Evo brand, the introduction of Unison for leadership multidevice experiences as we ramp the more than 60 design wins, and the uniqueness of vPro in the enterprise market, helping our customers drive an almost 200% return on investment by deploying vPro platforms to their end users. Lastly as consumer graphics re-integrates into CCG, enthusiasm for our latest Alchemist-based discrete graphics products continues to build and we expect volume ramp through the year.
The quoted information comes from Intel’s EVP & GM of CCG (Client Computing Group), Michelle Johnston Holthaus, who has stated that the Lunar Lake family will feature a fresh new architecture and a brand new design built from the ground up. The architecture will mainly focus on bringing some big performance per watt improvements in the mobile space & more information is expected to be unveiled at the Financial Day on the 26th of January when Chipzilla will disclose its Q4 results.
Last year, during a press-only HotChips presentation, Intel revealed that the Lunar Lake family is originally aimed at the 15W low-power mobile CPU segment. The CPU will utilize a sub-20A node as its process technology alongside an external foundry node for various other IPs since this will be a multi-tiled chip design. You can expect all the latest and greatest innovations from Intel such as Foveros packaging (25um pitch). Now saying that these chips are optimized for mobile doesn’t necessarily mean that they won’t launch on the desktop platform but with reports coming out that Intel might shift its Meteor Lake chips away from desktops and do an intermediate refresh of sorts on the platform, it may also not be too farfetched to believe so.
Rest assured, we remain committed to creating value for our owners and to delivering the long-term strategic roadmap we laid out at the beginning of this journey, and we are confident in our ability to do so. We will: (1) Deliver on five nodes in four years, achieving process performance parity in 2024 and unquestioned leadership by 2025 with Intel 18A; (2) execute on an aggressive SPR ramp, introduce EMR (Emerald Rapids) in the second half of 2023 and GNR (Granite Rapids) and SRF (Sierra Forest) in 2024; (3) ramp MTL in the second half of 2023 and PRQ LNL (Lunar Lake) in 2024; and (4) expand our IFS customer base to include large design wins on Intel 16, Intel3 and 18A this year.
Pat Gelsinger also clarified that they are either on or ahead of schedule for their Angstorm era nodes that include 20A and 18A. They already have the first silicon in fab and will be going into the full production phase in a few years.
Intel Mainstream CPU Generations Comparison:
Intel CPU FamilyProcessor ProcessProcessor ArchitectureProcessors Cores/Threads (Max)TDPsPlatform ChipsetPlatformMemory SupportPCIe SupportLaunch
Sandy Bridge (2nd Gen)32nmSandy Bridge4/835-95W6-SeriesLGA 1155DDR3PCIe Gen 2.02011
Ivy Bridge (3rd Gen)22nmIvy Bridge4/835-77W7-SeriesLGA 1155DDR3PCIe Gen 3.02012
Haswell (4th Gen)22nmHaswell4/835-84W8-SeriesLGA 1150DDR3PCIe Gen 3.02013-2014
Broadwell (5th Gen)14nmBroadwell4/865-65W9-SeriesLGA 1150DDR3PCIe Gen 3.02015
Skylake (6th Gen)14nmSkylake4/835-91W100-SeriesLGA 1151DDR4PCIe Gen 3.02015
Kaby Lake (7th Gen)14nmSkylake4/835-91W200-SeriesLGA 1151DDR4PCIe Gen 3.02017
Coffee Lake (8th Gen)14nmSkylake6/1235-95W300-SeriesLGA 1151DDR4PCIe Gen 3.02017
Coffee Lake (9th Gen)14nmSkylake8/1635-95W300-SeriesLGA 1151DDR4PCIe Gen 3.02018
Comet Lake (10th Gen)14nmSkylake10/2035-125W400-SeriesLGA 1200DDR4PCIe Gen 3.02020
Rocket Lake (11th Gen)14nmCypress Cove8/1635-125W500-SeriesLGA 1200DDR4PCIe Gen 4.02021
Alder Lake (12th Gen)Intel 7Golden Cove (P-Core)
Gracemont (E-Core)16/2435-125W600 SeriesLGA 1700/1800DDR5 / DDR4PCIe Gen 5.02021
Raptor Lake (13th Gen)Intel 7Raptor Cove (P-Core)
Gracemont (E-Core)24/3235-125W700-SeriesLGA 1700/1800DDR5 / DDR4PCIe Gen 5.02022
Raptor Lake Refresh (TBA)Intel 7Raptor Cove (P-Core)
Gracemont (E-Core)24/3235-125W700-SeriesLGA 1700/1800DDR5 / DDR4PCIe Gen 5.02023
Meteor Lake (TBA)Intel 4Redwood Cove (P-Core)
Crestmont (E-Core)22/2835-125W800 Series?LGA 1851DDR5PCIe Gen 5.02024 (Cancelled)
Arrow Lake (TBA)Intel 20ALion Cove (P-Core)
Skymont (E-Core)24/32TBA900-Series?LGA 1851DDR5PCIe Gen 5.02024
Arrow Lake Refresh (TBA)Intel 20ALion Cove (P-Core)
Skymont (E-Core)TBATBATBALGA 1851?DDR5PCIe Gen 5.02025
Lunar Lake (TBA)Intel 18ATBDTBATBATBATBADDR5PCIe Gen 5.0?2025
Panther Lake (TBA)TBATBDTBDTBD1000-Series?LGA 1851?DDR5PCIe Gen 6.0?2026
Nova Lake (TBA)Intel 18ATBDTBATBA2000-Series?TBADDR5?PCIe Gen 6.0?2026
The post Intel Confirms Meteor Lake CPU Ramp In 2H 2023, Lunar Lake In 2024 For Client, Emerald Rapids In 2H 2023 & Granite Rapids In 2024 For Server by Hassan Mujtaba appeared first on Wccftech.
