Chip giant Intel (INTC 2.43%) has made dramatic changes to its PC chips in recent years. Starting with Alder Lake in late 2021 and continuing with Raptor Lake, the company adopted a heterogenous architecture that mixed powerful cores with smaller efficiency cores. This strategy helped Intel beat back rival AMD, which had been gaining market share for years.
More big changes are coming as Intel prepares to launch its Meteor Lake chips later this year, and collectively, they have the potential to help the company cement its lead in the PC CPU market.
An inflection point
There are three major differences between Intel's upcoming Meteor Lake chips and its current line of products.
First, Meteor Lake will be partly manufactured on Intel's new "Intel 4" process. After many years of manufacturing delays, setbacks, and stumbles, the company is dead set on rolling out five new process nodes in a four-year span. There are two reasons for the aggressiveness. First, Intel must reclaim its manufacturing lead from foundry Taiwan Semiconductor to ensure its PC and server chips have an edge over those from AMD. Second, Intel is building out a foundry business of its own, and it needs to convince potential customers that it can deliver on its promises and successfully manufacture semiconductor chips using the latest technology.
Intel 4 will bring improvements to performance and efficiency, but Meteor Lake has some other tricks up its sleeve. Following AMD's lead, Intel is moving to a tile-based architecture. The company's Meteor Lake CPUs will feature distinct tiles, each of which can be manufactured on different processes. The CPU tile will use Intel 4, while other tiles dedicated to graphics and other functions will be manufactured by Taiwan Semi.
This tile-based architecture allows Intel to mix and match manufacturing technologies, farming out portions of the chip while handling other portions itself. While this strategy certainly ramps up the complexity, it has the potential to reduce development times and costs. Some tiles that don't benefit from the most advanced manufacturing tech can use an older, more mature, and cheaper process instead.
This tile-based architecture will enable the third major change coming in Meteor Lake: a big focus on AI. Meteor Lake chips will have a dedicated AI processor, which Intel calls a VPU. While running something like ChatGPT isn't going to be possible on a PC anytime soon given the enormous memory and compute requirements, plenty of AI tasks could potentially migrate from cloud data centers to client devices. And by including dedicated AI hardware, Intel will free up the CPU and GPU, which could result in a snappier experience.
Plenty of uncertainty
One thing that's not clear is whether Meteor Lake chips will make it to desktop PCs at all. Laptops featuring Meteor Lake were shown off at Computex in May, but rumors are swirling that Intel has nixed plans to launch more powerful Meteor Lake CPUs for desktop PCs. If that's the case, an expected refresh of Intel's Raptor Lake chips will have to hold desktop PC users over.
It would make sense for Intel to focus on laptops. Meteor Lakes brings a lot of changes at the same time, and it's possible the company just isn't ready to launch high-powered chips that include all those changes. The state of the PC market could also be a factor. Global PC shipments plunged around 30% year over year in the first quarter. Raptor Lake is still the top dog outside of gaming, so Intel may be comfortable leaving the status quo largely unchanged.
Meteor Lake's AI processor will require buy-in from software vendors, and it remains to be seen how many applications will make use of Intel's new feature when Meteor Lake devices arrive later this year. Still, even a small number of high-profile applications could be enough to give Meteor Lake a clear edge over the competition.
Intel is taking some risks as it rolls out a new manufacturing process, a new architecture, and a new type of AI processor all at the same time. It could pay off in a big way if the company can make it all work.
