At Computex, Intel Demos ‘Meteor Lake’ Processor: AI Takes Center Stage

pcmag.com:

TAIPEI—In 2022, Intel tipped its concept of a VPU, a new silicon component for its coming “Meteor Lake” processors. At an invite-only event in Taipei, the CPU giant demonstrated the first operating Meteor Lake processor, sharing a few more details about these next-gen chips, and talking up their abilities in the hottest area going today: AI. The VPU will be central to that.

John Rayfield, Intel’s vice president and general manager of client AI, met with a select group of journalists the weekend before Computex to run a few demos with the first VPU-equipped Meteor Lake chip to break cover. The exact Meteor Lake chip model, and its detailed speeds and feeds, were not shared. What was made clear, however, is that Meteor Lake will originate in the mobile market. That's because the new VPU module is all about power efficiency and putting demanding AI-related tasks onto this new processing component. 

Intel's next generation of processors has been dubbed with this latest “Lake” code name, and Intel laid out a few of its principles around it in the demo. The preceding generations, Alder Lake (12th Gen Core) and Raptor Lake (13th Gen Core), emphasized performance through their hybrid design, with new Performance cores (P-cores) and Efficient cores (E-core) on the die. These generations saw increases in IPC, frequency, and performance per watt.

In the course of development, Intel did lots of work with Microsoft on making sure its processors would shift tasks to the proper cores, which manifested itself within Windows 11 and in Intel's Thread Director tool. Taking things further, Meteor Lake will emphasize, from the outset, power efficiency via a combination of new process technology and the addition of the VPU in Meteor Lake’s