Intel Meteor Lake will be laptop-focused, not for desktops
Intel is apparently going to focus on making the upcoming 14th Gen “Meteor Lake” architecture a laptop-first architecture, which is something that we have seen quite a number of times in the past during Intel’s painfully drawn-out transition from 14nm to 10nm. Meteor Lake is expected to debut the new Intel 4 process along with cutting-edge Foveros Omni packaging. This time, we’re going to see more of the same, with Intel refreshing Raptor Lake for desktops, and laptops getting the fancy new Meteor Lake.
Meteor Lake is bringing new process node and packaging to laptops
While we would want to enjoy all the perks of Intel 4 and Foveros Omni on desktop, it might not be all that practical as well. Newer process nodes are generally not well-optimized yet — just look at Apple’s A17 Pro on TSMC 3nm — and thus Intel might not be able to squeeze the higher performance levels we expect from Meteor Lake. The efficiency improvements are also somewhat moot, as while it is nice to have lower power consumption, I think most desktop users are more focused on performance, rather than the pennies they save by going with a more efficient CPU.
The tile-based design of Meteor Lake should also bring improved graphics performance, with Intel going to TSMC to manufacture the GPU tile and I/O tile. Integrated graphics performance is yet another thing that doesn’t really mean much in the desktop space. Overall, I can somewhat see the reason why Meteor Lake is going to focus on laptops, as Intel has a much bigger threat in the mobile space, with AMD’s impressive APUs and Apple’s M-series chips that are biting huge chunks out of their market share.
With all that said, you might still see Meteor Lake-based desktop PCs. Just not socketed ones. NUCs, AIO PCs and the like can still feature a soldered Meteor Lake part. Meteor Lake is slated to launch on 14th December. Hopefully, if without any further delays, the first Meteor Lake-based products should be arriving in the coming months, before 2024 comes around.
