Early Sample Gives First Look At Next-Gen Redwood Cove & Crestmont Cores

Intel 14th Gen Meteor Lake CPUs have received their first die shot, unveiling the next-gen Redwood Cove & Crestmont cores. (Image Credits: Le Comptoir Du Hardware)

Intel provided a first look at its 14th Gen Meteor Lake CPU and its die shot during the Vision event, as pictured by Le Comptoir du Hardware. The tech outlet managed to get a close-up of one of the most significant portions of the CPU, its compute die which features two next-gen Core IPs.

Intel 14th Gen Meteor Lake Die Shot Reveals Next-Gen Redwood Cove & Crestmont Cores Powering the Compute Tile

The Intel 14th Gen Meteor Lake’s Compute Tile was one of the first sections of the chip to tape out and achieve Power-On. Since then, the entire chip has achieved Power-On and is on schedule for a 2023 release. With that said, Intel gave attendees of the Vision event a first look at two Meteor Lake packages, a standard design, and a high-density package. Both of these packages will be aimed at the mobile segment.

Intel Shows Off 14th Gen Meteor lake ‘Standard’ & ‘High-Density’ Die Packages: CPU Tiles Produced by Intel, GPU Tiles by TSMC

But it looks like Intel also provided a close-up of the die-shot of its next-gen Meteor Lake CPUs. The French tech outlet gives a first look at one of the four tiles that will make the 14th Gen Meteor Lake CPUs and it’s the compute tile. The tile is once again composed of a hybrid design that makes use of two different core IPs, the Redwood (P-Cores) and the Crestmont (E-Cores).

The 14th Gen Intel Meteor Lake die shot has been dissected by @Locuza_

die shot decoder, @Locuza_, provided a much better summary of what we are looking at. It looks like the Intel 14th Gen Meteor Lake CPU features 2 P-Cores and 2 E-Core clusters comprised of 8 E-Cores in total. Each of the P-Cores features 2.5-3.0 MB of L3 cache while each of the E-Core clusters features 2.5-3.0 MB of L3 cache. As for the L2 cache, the Redwood Cove cores seem to carry 2 MB of it versus the 1.25 MB featured on Golden Cove while each Crestmont cluster seems to have 2-4 MB of L2 cache.

This seems to be an early sample of an entry-tier 2+8 (12 core) Intel Meteor Lake CPU. The chip is manufactured on Intel’s 4 (7nm) process node while the GPU tile is said to be manufactured by TSMC and then packaged in a singular unit. It will be interesting to see the new design in action when it comes to life next year at CES 2023. The Intel Meteor Lake lineup will scale all the way from ultra-low TDP 5W to high-performance 125W SKUs.

In addition to these, Intel also provided an early look at its test pattern utilizing RibbonFET (the successor to FinFET) in its next-gen 20A and 18A nodes. Following are the pictures courtesy of Comptoir Hardware:

Intel 14th Gen Meteor Lake CPUs: Intel 4 Process Node, Tiled Arc GPU Design, Hybrid Cores, 2023 Launch

The 14th Gen Meteor Lake CPUs are going to be a gamer changer in the sense that they will adopt a brand new tiled architecture approach. Based on the ‘Intel 4’ process node, the new CPUs will be offering a 20% improvement in performance per watt through EUV technology and are set to tape out by 2H 2022 (manufacturing-ready). The first Meteor Lake CPUs are scheduled to ship out by 1H 2023 and availability is expected later the same year.

Intel Launches 12th Gen Alder Lake-HX CPUs: The Fastest Laptop Chips Yet With Up To 16 Cores, 5 GHz, 16 PCIe Gen 5 Lanes, Full-Range Overclocking

According to Intel, the 14th Gen Meteor Lake CPUs will feature a brand new tiled architecture and what this basically means is that the company has decided to go full-on chiplet. There are 3 main tiles on the Meteor Lake CPUs. There’s the IO Tile, the SOC Tile, & the Compute Tile. The Compute Tile comprises the CPU Tile and GFX Tile. The CPU Tile will be making use of a new hybrid core design, delivering higher-performance throughput at lower power while the graphics tile will be unlike anything we have seen before.

As Raja Koduri states, the Meteor Lake CPUs will be utilizing a tiled Arc graphics powered GPU which will make it an entirely new class of graphics on a chip. It’s neither an iGPU nor a dGPU & currently regarded as tGPU (Tiled GPU / Next-Gen Graphics Engine). The Meteor Lake CPUs will utilize the brand new Xe-HPG graphics architecture, allowing for increased performance at the same level of power efficiency as existing integrated GPUs. This will also enable enhanced support for DirectX 12 Ultimate and XeSS, features that are only supported by the Alchemist lineup as of right now.

Intel Mainstream Desktop CPU Generations Comparison: