Intel’s 7nm consumer CPU is called Meteor Lake and gets a stacked design

Intel has given the first details about its consumer 7nm processors that will be released in 2023. It concerns the Meteor Lake generation and it will have a chiplet design. Intel also applies its Foveros chip stacking technique.

Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger says the manufacturer will have the compute tile tape-in ​​ready for Meteor Lake in the second quarter of this year. By compute tile he refers to the chiplet that will contain CPU cores. This shows that Intel will build the Meteor Lake generation from several parts, just like AMD is now doing with its Ryzen processors, which have 7nm chiplets with CPU cores and an I/O die.

It is not yet known which configuration the Meteor Lake processors will have and which components the processors will be built from, but Intel will use its Foveros technology. That’s the name Intel gives to stacking chips. Intel already applies this technique in its Lakefield processors for energy-efficient devices; they have dram on cpu cores.

The tape-in ​​is part of the processor design process. This allows the design of the chip component chip to be verified. This is followed by the tape-out, the verification of the entire chip design. According to AnandTech, it is expected that there will be another four to six months. This is followed by the first test production, the actual mass production will take even longer.

Intel has previously indicated that its first 7nm consumer processors will be released in 2023. For that, 10nm processors of the Alder Lake generation appear, for both laptops and desktops. Intel will release it later this year.

It is the first time that Intel provides details about Meteor Lake and mentions that name. References to that name already appeared last year. Gelsinger gave the details during the Intel Unleashed presentation, in which the new CEO spoke about Intel’s future plans.