Big leak to Arrow Lake processors: Intel will leave its factories, 3nm TSMC process and extreme GPU

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The leak revealed Arrow Lake processors and brought to light quite crucial information about Intel’s plans.

A very interesting internal document of Intel leaked to the Internet, which revealed further details of the upcoming Intel Arrow Lake processors, which will come in 2024 and Intel only officially confirmed them a few days ago (It should be a 14th or 15th generation Core processor). The new leak shows that Arrow Lake will have a very ambitious high-performance chiplet GPU, but it also revealed one of Intel’s infamous secrets.

This information leaked from the AdoredTV leader, who recently came up with the information that Arrow Lake may have very powerful integrated GPUs – respectively, tGPU or Tiled GPU, which will be on its own chiplet. It was to contain 320 EU, or 2560 shaders. This is the number of computing units it has Radeon RX 6700 XT. AdoredTV has now substantiated this previous claim with the document from which it obtained the information. This is a slide showing the production plan of these Arrow Lake processors, which also reveals a lot about their parameters.

The object of this document is more precisely the “Halo” version of Arrow Lake for notebooks “ARL-P” (Arrow Lake-P), which is intended for the most prestigious types of ultrabooks and notebooks, which according to Intel should compete with MacBook Pro, for example, be 14 inch models. These high-end Arrow Lake mobile processors are supposed to have six large P-Core cores and eight efficient E-Cores, so it looks like Intel isn’t going to increase in the number of CPU cores. He already has a 6 + 8 configuration Alder Lake-P (ADL-P), which is apparently the same segment as ARL-P. At Alder Lake, the P series now has a 28W TDP, it is likely that the ARL-P could be the same.

Very powerful chip GPU

However, what the Arrow Lake Care will get out of is the powerful GPU. According to the document, the processor will consist of many chipsets (just like the Meteor Lake generation before it). On one chiplet, which is called CPU-68 (according to the number of cores), there will be CPU cores, we also have SoC-M / P, which is probably an integrated chipset, IOE-P, which probably contains physical / analog connectivity, and finally tGPU chiplet , marked GT3. This is the traditional designation for Intel’s integrated graphics, and the GT3 should mean an above-average performance configuration.

At the time of writing, it was planned that Arrow Lake would have 320 EU, which would mean the 2,560 shaders. According to the document, the chip with them should have an area of ​​about 80 mm2, but this may not be the final specification. The document states that it has not yet been decided and the number of units could increase, but with the fact that an area larger than 80 mm² would force a change in the number of wafers ordered from TSMC. Cheaper versions, however, will probably have less powerful GPUs, Intel could have a separate smaller graphics chiplet in addition to the “GT3”.

It is even possible that the processor could contain dedicated memory for the GPU, because there is also something marked “ADM” between the components. Not to mention the final assembly and encapsulation of the other four chipsets, it could possibly be a case with HBM2 / 3 memory that would give the integrated graphics the memory throughput needed for high gaming performance. Or it could also be an artificial intelligence accelerator that Intel has also talked about recently – who knows.

Arrow Lake will therefore have a graphics part manufactured by TSMC, partly because Intel is now developing its own separate GPUs to suit its processes, and it is advisable to unify the development. But that’s probably not the whole reason, this may prove that Intel will not be able to compete with the quality of the TSMC manufacturing process between 2023 and 2024 (it looks like the GPU should use the 3nm N3 process) and the graphics division will therefore prefer an external vendor.

Not only GPUs, but also CPUs manufactured by TSMC?

But Slide reveals even more paganism for Intel. It has been speculated for some time that Intel will move production of its processors – the central product that it should theoretically want to keep in its own factories – to TSMC, recognizing its technological superiority. For a while, it seemed that the spiciness of such a step would be a little dulled by the fact that only integrated graphics would be produced at TSMC.

However, according to this document, this will not be the case, according to him, the CPU chiplet with processor cores is also produced at TSMC, ie the most high-tech part. technology. In fact, Intel’s not-so-prestigious IO / SoC parts will remain. The whole document also contains mentions of how production at TSMC will affect the launch dates, what the external cooperation brings in terms of possible delays and so on.

Arrow Lake will also have a desktop version

The document mentions that Arrow Lake should also have a desktop version, Arrow Lake-S, so it will not be just a mobile product. 3nm silicon from TSMC could also be sold on desktop and gaming PCs under the blue logo.

It is not yet clear which desktop Arrow Lake will come into, but it should probably be compatible with 4nm Meteor Lake. Why? According to the document, the IO and SoC chipsets in the Arrow Lake processor will take over from the previous generation of Meteor Lake. But the question is whether Meteor Lake will still work in the LGA 1700 socket and today’s Z690 / B660 boards, we don’t know yet, so it’s hard to guess about Arrow Lake compatibility.

According to this information, Arrow Lake in the desktop and laptop version will actually be a derivative of the previous generation, when Intel will take I / O components from the Meteor Lake processor, but will replace the CPU and tGPU chiplet with new 3nm silicones. So it will be a bit like AMD turned the Ryzen 3000 into a new Ryzen 5000 by adding new CPU chiplets to the old IO chiplet.

Intel says that Arrow Lake-P mobile “Halo” processors will take precedence over desktop ones in production, so the desktop version will probably come out later. The mobile version should have the first EC samples at the end of this year, qualification samples sometime in the third quarter of 2023 and the release could probably be at the very end of 2023 or (probably more) in the first half of 2024. The desktop version can logically be up to a matter of, for example, mid-2024 or even later. However, if we interpret all those Intel abbreviations correctly, the company has not changed its plans and / or there will be no delays.

Plans could theoretically change…

The document is probably quite old, probably from the 13th week of 2021. So there is a chance that Intel’s plans have changed. The company, for example, on the slides at Arrow Lake processors now last week had the information about 2nm Intel 20A process, but it did not directly indicate what should be produced by it. There is probably a chance that in the meantime the Intel 20A process has started to develop more promisingly and Intel has moved Arrow Lake processors or part of them to it. It can also be a trick, it cannot be ruled out that only the ADM component will be needed for 20A, if it is a separate chiplet. If it was a graphics cache (SRAM) chip for graphics, then it could be produced on a very immature process, but Intel could say that it has successfully deployed its 20A process in the product. But even if Intel canceled its plan to produce a CPU chiplet at TSMC, then it would still be interesting that at one time TSMC was Plan A and its own factory Plan B…

In any case, this is very interesting information. Of course, it is necessary to take them with some reserve, as it is an unofficial leak. But the document itself looks very believable. We very much doubt that it would be a “fake” (unless it was a fake directly from Intel used, for example, to track down some inventors, but this is probably not very likely).

Resources: VideoCardz, AdoredTV