Intel plans to regain process leadership in the next 2-3 years. The chipmaker will release four cutting-edge process nodes within four years: Intel 4, Intel 3, 20A, and 18A. These nodes will power the 14th Gen Meteor Lake-P, 6th Gen Xeon Granite Rapids-SP/AP, 15th Gen Arrow Lake, and 16th Gen Lunar Lake families, respectively. Unfortunately, things aren’t set in stone for Intel, and plans might change at the last moment.
According to Raichu, the 15th Gen Arrow Lake-U mobile processors will be a multi-architectural stack including Meteor and Arrow Lake. The non-Ultra Core chips will be a Meteor Lake-P refresh fabbed on the Intel 4 process, while the Ultra parts will leverage either the 20A node or TSMC’s 3nm process (depending on availability, capacity, and yields).
The 20A process is allegedly ramping up slower than expected and may be delayed by a few quarters. We can expect a late 2024 or even an early 2025 release.
Shifting gears to the 15th Gen desktop lineup, the 40-core flagship we reported earlier may never come to fruition. Although the chip exists on paper, it’s unclear when it’ll hit the market (if ever). The 8P + 32E CPU will leverage the Lion Cove and Skymont (speculation) core architectures.
It will be a chiplet design, although the compute die may even end up being bigger than existing CPUs which is likely the reason behind the uncertain launch schedule. Larger die sizes mean worse yields and smaller margins, a growing problem with Intel’s high-end desktop and workstation chips.
The tipster believes that the 40-core CPU (8P + 32E) will likely be released a year after the mainstream stack as a special edition or part of a refresh.
