On December 14, Intel unveiled its new Meteor Lake architecture; overall, there were no major revelations. As may be predicted, the company’s first tile-based chip had four tiles: one each for the CPU, GPU, I/O, and SoC. Currently, a picture of what seems to be an engineering sample of Meteor Lake with two CPU tiles has surfaced; this sample was never disclosed as a possibility, leaked, or discussed by Intel.
The image, which was shared on Twitter by @yuuki_ans, displays the dual-tile chip next to the completed version of Meteor Lake. Instead of having two full-sized CPU tiles, this chip—dubbed a “thermal test” chip—has two that fit into the area left by the last CPU tile. It appears as though the manufacturer cut its standard CPU tile in half and packaged both of them. As one of the readers correctly pointed out, it’s akin to what Apple did with its M-series Ultra CPUs, which combine two chips into one logical CPU so that the operating system views them as one.
Tom’s Hardware points out that another option is that it was inspired by AMD’s chiplet design, which employs two of the same dies on its 12- and 16-core CPUs. Upon closer inspection, the two tiles appear to be somewhat different sizes, indicating that they are most likely not the same CPU tile. It appears plausible that this chip was a secondary CPU tile, however it was most likely not two identical chips, as it was designed for thermal testing. Another possibility is that the business was experimenting with splitting the P and E cores from a single tile into two different tiles. This might let it to employ a less costly node, like TSMC 6nm, for its E-core tile. For the Meteor Lake CPU tile, it makes use of Intel 4.
The CPU shown in the image is the as-yet-unreleased Meteor Lake P-series, which typically falls between Intel’s H and U series. The H-series targets slightly higher at 28W TDP, while the U-series is for thin-and-lights users with a 15W TDP. The Raptor Lake mobile P-series shares the same number of cores as the Core Ultra 165/155 H CPU, suggesting that Intel may decide against releasing a P-series because it would be illogical. We are skeptical that a P-series will ever be released because Intel has not yet made any indications that one is on the horizon.