Intel Targets AI With Next-Gen CPUs

Intel is bringing AI to consumer PCs by the end of the year through its new Meteor Lake chips.

The company revealed during its second-quarter earnings call that its AI-powered PC chips would be arriving in the third quarter.

From Intel's Q2 earnings report

What is Meteor Lake?

Meteor Lake is the codename for Intel's next-generation processors for consumer desktop PCs. The release would mark the company’s 14^th generation of CPUs, replacing the 13^th Gen Raptor Lake series.

Meteor Lake is a chiplet SoC design, meaning it’s small and designed to be combined with other chiplets – think of it as like several cogs working together to power a clock.

It marks Intel’s first dedicated AI engine integrated directly into an SoC, with the company's Q2 earnings presentation billing Meteor Lake as “bringing AI to the PC at scale.”

The world got a glimpse at Meteor Lake at Microsoft Build 2023. The pair announced a “multiyear” collaboration to “drive the development of AI on personal computing.”

Intel’s upcoming Meteor Lake client PC processor. Credit: Intel

According to leaks posted to social media, Meteor Lake will support the rumored to be upcoming Windows 12, though neither support nor the actual operating system is confirmed.

No solid specs were published, but what is known is that Meteor Lake is being built using Intel 4, which sees the company move to a 7nm process. A paper outlining Intel 4 states that the new process reduces design complications compared to the previously used Intel 7, which confusingly used a 10nm process.

Related:Intel Unveils New Xeon Chips to Power AI Workloads

The other certainty is that its focus is on AI, in that it has a built-in neural processor for machine learning tasks.

Intel’s AI CPU move would move it alongside rivals AMD, with its Ryzen AI engine and Apple’s new M2 Ultra.

Intel sets its sights on AI

The Meteor Lake release confirmation was a small mark among the wider focus of Intel looking at AI. The company is “well-positioned to capitalize” on AI, according to CEO Pat Gelsinger.

Gelsinger said Intel will look to champion "an open ecosystem and silicon solutions that optimize performance, cost and security to democratize AI from cloud to enterprise, edge and client.”

Prior to the Q2 call, Intel consolidated its Accelerated Computing Systems and Graphics Group into its Client Computing Group and Data Center and AI Group. The change was intended to “drive a more effective go-to-market capability and to accelerate the scale of these businesses, while also reducing costs.”

Among its other AI efforts, Intel is working with HPE, Argonne National Laboratory and others to develop generative AI models for scientific research. The chipmaker is also expanding its production efforts, unveiling plans for a new manufacturing facility in Germany’s ‘Silicon Junction.’

Related:Apple WWDC 2023: AR Headset, New Chips, AI Autocorrect

Away from consumer-focused chips, Intel unveiled its next-gen Xeon scalable processors in January, designed to power AI and edge applications and supercomputers.