Intel said last week that it will start renaming its forthcoming processors, starting with Meteor Lake. It has chosen to drop the “i” from the titles of its CPUs coming ahead since it will be switching to a tile-based architecture. Instead, it will be Intel Core or Intel Core Ultra, followed by a number like “7” and some digits showing its position in the stack as it does today. Due to its lower core counts than contemporary CPUs, Meteor Lake is rumoured to only be a mobile or midrange PC platform. What would then take the place of the Core i9-13900K on the desktop is the remaining question.
According to a recent rumour, there will be a Raptor Lake update to serve that purpose, and the upgraded flagship processor would have the Core i9-14900K designation while being constructed using components from the 13th Generation. It’ll probably coexist with Meteor Lake chips under the new corporate logo, which will be strange.
The most recent details on Intel’s plans were obtained by Chinese media via a Bilibili video created by the Golden Pig Upgrade group. Videocardz claims that this organisation has previously provided accurate information on Intel’s plans. The Raptor Lake upgrade, which will comprise chips intended at both the desktop (K-series) and high-end mobile (HX), will maintain Intel’s current naming strategy, according to the video, leading to 14th Generation branding while being a refresh of its 13th Generation CPUs. According to reports, these new processors will have greater clock speeds and compatibility for faster DDR5 memory than existing chips, making them a stopgap until a real desktop replacement chip appears with Arrow Lake next year.
As the first of a new generation of tile-based CPUs, Intel will launch Meteor Lake CPUs under its new branding, using “1” as the generation number. As Intel hasn’t yet made any new processors official, we’re merely speculating that this will lead to something like a Core Ultra 7 1005K. Some laptop processors, including a Core Ultra 5 1003H CPU, been leaked. This leads to the peculiar circumstance where there are two Intel architectures with completely distinct branding available on the market.
The updated Raptor Lake chips will adopt the new branding, but the top-tier Core Ultra branding will only be available on Meteor Lake CPUs, the video claims. Some midrange Raptor components could also get the new branding, which would be an Intel Core without the term “Ultra” attached. Though Intel emphasised that the new branding only applies to Meteor Lake, we’re not sure if this is true.
In either case, it will be intriguing to see what Intel comes up with. All the rumours so far appear to support the long-standing rumour that Meteor Lake wouldn’t have a top-tier desktop component. Up until 2024, Intel will continue to use Raptor Lake as the foundation for its high-performance desktop components. When it announced its rebranding, we figured that given it offered the Core Ultra 9, there would also be a desktop component. However, it appears that will now be used to describe a mobile CPU. As Intel is anticipated to release Meteor Lake later this year, we’ll find out soon enough.
