Intel Meteor Lake CPUs use a lot more TSMC silicon than we expected

pcinvasion.com:

Intel released a preview of what’s to come this week at the Hot Chips 34 tech conference, and there’s a good bit to get hyped over, in addition to some potentially troublesome signs. We can look forward to hearing all about Intel’s fancy tile-based next-gen CPU processors, with presentations on Meteor Lake, Lunar Lake, and Arrow Lake. What’s questionable is the amount of Intel 4 silicon that will actually go into these chips.

Intel put out an official press release but shared additional details early with Tom’s Hardware. According to the information, Meteor Lake is still on track for a 2023 release and will be Intel’s most advanced CPU design yet.

Meteor Lake CPUs will be composed of a CPU, GPU, IO, and SOC tile combined via Intel’s Foveros packaging tech to create a disaggregated chip. The idea behind this is to mix and match different densities of silicon based on what parts need the best performance. Using multiple tiles, or individual dies, to operate in a unified way will allow Intel to control costs while still stepping performance where it counts, like the CPU cores. This is because the more advanced, denser nodes cost significantly more to produce.

(Image credit: Intel).

In theory, it’s a smart approach that will also let Intel do new things with smaller chips joined together while mitigating the complications and higher defect rates that come with producing large monolithic chips in the traditional fashion. Provided the new tech works as intended in the public computing ecosystem, it’s a strategy that should pay off. The capabilities of Meteor Lake are not the matter of question here, though.

Regardless of how Meteor Lake and subsequent architectures function, Intel’s marketing on how the chips will be