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In context: Intel has confirmed that it will bring its Meteor Lake CPUs to desktops in 2024. The confirmation ends frenzied speculation that Meteor Lake might remain exclusive to laptops due to the planned release of the Raptor Lake Refresh later this year. Various leaks also suggested that Intel had canceled its plans to launch Meteor Lake CPUs for the desktop, and will instead focus on the Arrow Lake lineup. However, as it turns out, all of those leaks were inaccurate.
The confirmation about Intel’s Meteor Lake plans comes from the Executive Vice President and general manager of the company’s Client Computing Group, Michelle Johnston Holthaus. In an interview with PC World on the sidelines of the Intel Innovation 2023 event, Holthaus said that “(Meteor Lake) desktop will come in 2024.” Explaining the rationale behind Intel’s decision, she said that the company wanted one processor family for both laptops and desktops, as that’s what most people want.
The confirmation is good for gamers, desktop users, and DIY PC builders who might have felt a little disappointed by the news that the first-generation Core Ultra processors will not be available for desktops. The most recent source of the speculations was a document, said to be a leaked official slide that seemed to show plans for Meteor Lake laptop chips, but did not include any mention of desktops or workstations. However, it now looks like that could have been due to Intel pushing back the Meteor Lake desktop launch for next year.
Staying with Meteor Lake news, Intel is reportedly preparing at least two configurations of Xe-LPG iGPU chiplets based on the Alchemist series for the Meteor Lake lineup. The report comes from HardwareLuxx editor Andreas Schilling, who says one of the iGPU chiplets will use 8 Xe cores, while the other will use 4. The strategy is expected to give Intel the flexibility to choose different integrated graphics solutions for different SKUs.
Intel is leaking with its own swag. We know there will be different configurations of the compute, I/O and graphics tiles with Meteor Lake. The GPU will use 8 or 4 Xe cores it seams. pic.twitter.com/522Ih06J4H
– Andreas Schilling ðºð¦ (@aschilling) September 19, 2023
Meteor Lake will represent the biggest architectural shift for Intel in recent memory, and will also bring the first major rebranding of the company’s CPU lineup in 15 years. Earlier this year, the company confirmed that the Meteor Lake lineup will ditch the long-standing ‘Core i’ nomenclature in favor of ‘Core Ultra’ for high-end chips, while the more mainstream parts will move from the ‘i3/i5/i7/i9’ branding to a simpler ‘Core 3/5/7/9’ naming convention.
