The year 2021 was a mixed one for the computer hardware industry. Intel launched its 12th Gen Alder Lake processors, Apple launched its M1 Max and Pro chips while AMD and NVIDIA mostly focused on the mid and lower-end segments. The coming year is going to be full of surprises and a ton of competition. Nearly every major chipmaker is slated to reveal its next generation of products in 2022. This includes Intel, AMD, NVIDIA, as well as Apple. In this particular post, we’ll have a detailed look at Intel and AMD’s roadmaps in the CPU segment, and put them side by side:
Intel’s plans are relatively straightforward in the client segment: The American chip giant already launched the Alder Lake-S lineup earlier this year. The mobile family along with the budget desktop offerings will be launched in the first half of 2022. All these SKUs will be fabbed on the 10nm ESF node, now renamed to Intel 7.
Alder Lake is going to be followed by the Raptor Lake-S refresh in the send half of 2022. This will be the prelude to Meteor Lake/Arrow Lake, the chipmaker’s first chiplet/tiled design for consumers. We may see a new core architecture in the form of Raptor Cove, but the process node will be retained and as such, IPC gains will be minimal. The small core “Gracemont” will be retained as well, but the core count will be doubled to 16, pushing the overall count to 24. Raptor Lake will be backward compatible with Alder Lake. There’s a possibility that this lineup will be skipped in the mobile segment (like Rocket Lake).
Meteor Lake-P is slated for launch in early 2023. It’ll leverage the 4nm node and a series of advanced packaging technologies including separate tiles for compute and integrated graphics, and 2nd Gen Foveros to put it all together: Greater focus on multi-threaded performance with increased core counts and powerful iGPUs. From recent rumors, it’s being speculated that it’ll be limited to the mobile segments, while Arrow Lake will satisfy enthusiasts in the DIY segment. The big cores will be upgraded to Redwood Cove while the small cores will be replaced by Crestmont cores.
Arrow Lake-S is going to arrive sometime in the second half of 2023. It’ll feature the Intel 4 process node, and combine Lion Cove cores with Skymont. Industry rumors have indicated that the overall core count will be increased to 40, with 32 Skymont cores and 8 Lion Cove cores. Arrow Lake will likely adopt a new socket.
Finally, Lunar Lake along with the 3nm node will debut in early 2024. Not much is known about it, and the codename/specs may change through 2022-23.
AMD has a more interesting roadmap. As Robert Hallock confirmed a few days back, we’ll see Zen 3D (and Warhol for the lower-end?) with 3D V-Cache in the first half of 2022. The microarchitecture and core counts of the Ryzen 5000 lineup will be retained, but the increased L3 cache should bring in some healthy gains for gamers. The 6nm node will be adopted for the Rembrandt mobile lineup (Zen 3+ and RDNA 2).
In late 2022, we’ll get to see the much-coveted Zen 4 based client range, codenamed Raphael bringing TSMC’s 5nm EUV to the PC space along with an RDNA 2 graphics chipset and DDR5/PCIe 5 standards. You can expect a healthy IPC gain, increased core counts, and significant performance gains on both the single-threaded and multi-threaded fronts. AMD is expected to bring the Zen 4 core to the mobile platform in the first quarter of 2023 (likely around CES 2023) along with the 5nm node in the form of Phoenix.
In early 2023, AMD should launch a V-Cache version of Zen 4 with a more mature variant of the 5nm node, and increased L3 cache. Following this, we’ll see the Zen 5-based Granite Ridge lineup “Ryzen 8000/9000” with the Zen 5 core and the 3nm node in the second half of 2023.
