MANY MORE LAKES

Intel is never just looking one generation ahead. Here’s a quick rundown of all the other lakes you’re likely to see in the next couple of years.

Tiger Lake-H

The four-core models launched in 2020, but eight-core TGL-H should arrive very soon, perhaps by the time you read this. Why didn’t Intel just skip Rocket Lake and give us Tiger Lake on the desktop? We’re not sure, but we look forward to testing the high-end mobile solution soon.

Raptor Lake

This will be the follow-up to Alder Lake, refining and optimising the architecture. Due in late 2022, the feature set and socket should be similar to ADL, so it will continue to run in LGA1700 boards.

Meteor Lake

This will be Intel’s first 7nm CPU offering, except there’s even more to it than that. Intel will outsource the production of some Meteor Lake CPUs to TSMC. It will also use Foveros 3D die-on-die stacking, which may partly explain the outsourcing. Intel plans to also manufacture some of these CPUs in-house using its “we’ve fixed the problems” 7nm process. The socket for Meteor Lake has not yet been revealed, though it will likely end up similar to LGA1700 (maybe with a few pin differences to break compatibility, similar to LGA115x), and we expect this will continue the hybrid design approach.

Lunar Lake

Right now, all we have is a code name that accidentally slipped into some patch notes for Linux. Much as Raptor is to Alder, the assumption is Lunar Lake will be the optimized version of Meteor Lake, perhaps with more chip stacking and other enhancements. Could we see some parts made with TSMC 5nm? Never say never!