Intel formalizes its Core Ultra processors with Meteor Lake architecture for laptops

Since the appearance of Ryzen and more recently Apple M processors on laptops, Intel has faced fierce competition from AMD and Apple. The father of the Pentium has lost its technological edge over the years with stagnant engraving finesse and too timid architectural developments, despite the introduction of hybrid architecture with the 12th generation Cores from Alder Lake. .

To get back into the race, Intel must offer more efficient processors, that is to say, more economical and more efficient.

The Core Ultras feature a new Meteor Lake architecture similar to what is used in smartphone chips. The processor is made up of four tiles called “Tile” assembled using Foveros in-house technology, all engraved with the Intel 4 engraving process, at least in part.

6 P cores, 8 E cores and 2 E-LP cores

We thus find six Redwood Cove cores with hyper-threading as efficient cores, and eight Cresmont cores on the efficient core side. They make up the Compute tile engraved in Intel 4. This EUV engraving process allows, according to Intel, to double the density of transistors and improve energy efficiency by 20% compared to the Intel 7.

These P and E cores are only activated when the two E-LP cores present in the SOC tile can no longer handle the quantity of calculations to be performed. It is the Intel Thread Director which manages the allocation of calculations, its operation having been revised. Thus, the E-LP cores carry out current calculations; once submerged, they hand over to the E-cores then to the P-cores.

Cresmont cores benefited from an increase in the number of instructions per cycle and improved branch prediction compared to previous generation Gracemont cores. The Redwood Cove cores gain in efficiency and bandwidth. Everything is managed, as we have seen, via a new mechanism from the Intel Thread Director.

Added to this are two E-LP (Low Power) cores which will take care of less heavy tasks such as video playback. With E-LP cores, Intel announces consumption down 25% compared to 13th generation Core processors.

The big novelty of the Meteor Lake architecture comes from the brand new graphics part, which uses the Xe LPG cores from Intel Arc desktop graphics cards. The latter replaces the Iris Xe released in 2020 on the 11th generation Core, and which is now showing the weight of the years.

Thus, up to eight Xe LPG cores can equip Core Ultra processors. This new graphics part is announced by Intel as twice as efficient as the Iris Xe; above all, it would be twice as efficient. Also notable is compatibility with DirectX 12 Ultra, support for AV1 hardware encoding and decoding, the ability to support up to four displays and support for in-house scaling technology, XeSS .

On the performance side, Intel announces figures 10% higher than AMD’s Ryzen 7 7840U equipped with 12 RDNA 3 cores, also from Radeon RX 7000 desktop graphics cards.

Focus on AI

Meteor Lake is looking to the future by embedding an NPU. This neural network acceleration chip takes place in the SOC tile and is made up of two calculation units for a processing capacity of 11 TOPS. Intel – as AMD did last week – takes the opportunity to point out that the CPU and GPU combined with the NPU bring this computing capacity to 34 TOPS compared to 39 TOPS for the Ryzen 8040 from AMD.

If the interest in NPUs is currently limited for the general public to support for Windows Studio Effects in the webcam under Windows 11, in order to blur the background or achieve automatic framing, new applications should arrive soon . Intel announces 39 AI partners for this launch, a figure which should increase to 100 during the year 2024.

Four -H models and four -U models

Eight processor models will initially be available. The most efficient, the -H series processors, have a power envelope of 28 W and are distinguished by the presence of the Intel Arc graphics part with eight or seven Xe LPG cores depending on the model.

Please note, only configurations with at least 16 GB of RAM and Dual Channel activated will be able to claim the Intel Arc designation, the most efficient. Laptops that do not meet these two requirements will only be equipped with an Intel Graphics graphics part.

Common to all processors, they all have eight efficient cores and two E-LP cores. The segmentation is only carried out on the number of cores P, the number of graphics cores and the operating frequencies.

The Core Ultra -U series features a 15-watt power envelope with just two P-cores and four Xe-LPG graphics cores. Intended to equip ultra-thin laptop PCs, they require great autonomy.

Finally, three other processors are expected for 2024. The Core 9 Ultra 185H, first of all, which is distinguished by a thermal envelope of 45 W, and frequencies 100 MHz higher than the Core Ultra 7 165H; the Core Ultra 5 163U and 164U have a power envelope of 9 watts. They should be found in Windows tablets or laptops with foldable screens, such as the Asus ZenBook 17 Fold or the HP Specter 17 Fold.

The first PCs equipped with Intel Core Ultra should be available now from €999. We can notably cite the Asus ZenBook 14 Oled, which we will offer you the test of tomorrow.