Intel Arrow Lake CPUs are on track – and that’s crucial because of AMD’s major Ryzen 8000 threat
Intel’s upcoming processor ranges are all on track for launch — or even ahead of their planned schedule — the chip giant has assured us.
That’s according to what we were told in Intel’s earnings call for Q2 2023 results, as WCftech spotted.
Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger tells us, “I’m pleased to report that all of our programs are on or ahead of schedule. We remain on track for 5 nodes in 5 years and to regain transistor and power performance by 2025.”
Intel’s next-gen chips, Meteor Lake (and we’ll also have Raptor Lake Refresh on the desktop) are on track for a second half 2023 launch.
Gelsinger also said that Arrow Lake, the processors that will follow those next-generation products, are entering early stages of production (“making the first steps in the fab,” so the first samples are being made as we type).
So Arrow Lake is on track for a 2024 launch, but exactly when the CPU offerings will arrive next year is pretty crucial (we’ll get to why in a moment).
The other part of Intel’s processor plans for this year and next, Lunar Lake, is also mentioned as being on track for 2024. These will be power-efficient chips aimed at laptops, and from what we can tell, they’ll be equivalent to something like Ice Lake (as discussed in a recent video from YouTube leaker Moore’s Law is Dead).
Analysis: Arrow Lake timing is key for Intel
It’s good for Intel that Arrow Lake is on track, because Team Blue really can’t afford a slippage with this one – especially not in the desktop arena. Earlier vine chatter raised the idea that Intel may have been delayed with these 15th generation chips, but apparently that’s not the case.
Why is Arrow Lake so important on desktops? Especially since this year’s Raptor Lake Refresh (most likely in October) is a fairly modest improvement – it’s a simple refresh after all, with clock speeds mostly bumping up a bit (the 14700K might get some extra efficiency cores too).
And AMD’s Ryzen 8000 (Zen 5) processors are rumored to be ready in Q3 of 2024, maybe even as early as mid-year. So if Arrow Lake doesn’t come out until very late next year, Raptor Lake Refresh will look pretty shaky against Zen 5 desktop CPUs that speculation claims will be a pretty big step forward.
Admittedly, Arrow Lake also looks like a big jump for Intel – an even bigger jump than Ryzen 7000 to 8000, if the rumor mill is right – so both ranges could very well do well in our ranking of the best processors. However, if Ryzen 8000 comes out a lot of rather than Intel’s 15th gen, Team Blue could be looking at the erosion of some of the hard-won gains it’s made on desktop turf since the introduction of Alder Lake (and hybrid technology).