Intel Projected to Pump Out 365,000 Meteor Lake CPUs a Month

Aug 31, 2023

Intel is pretty busy these days preparing for the impending launch of its Meteor Lake mobile architecture. It will be the company's first tile-based CPU using a brand-new manufacturing node it calls Intel 4, formerly known as 7nm. According to a new report from Japan, the company will be able to crank out about 365,000 CPUs a month, which is reportedly suitable for the laptop market, but not enough for desktop customers. This could be one of the reasons Intel decided to make this platform mobile-only, though we'll likely never know the real reason it has allegedly killed Meteor Lake on the desktop.

The new details about Intel's efforts with regards to Meteor Lake production come from a Japanese site named ASCII, which spoke with several Intel executives about the company's most cutting-edge process. According to an analysis of an Intel 4 wafer from the company's failure analysis lab, the size of the dies dictate about 730 dies can be cut from a wafer. Given Intel 4's nascent status, it's assumed yields are around 50% at this time, leaving us with 365 good dies from a wafer. It's then further assumed Intel is able to produce about 1,000 wafers a month, giving us our final number of 365,000 working chips a month.

The update from ASCII also gives us one of the closest looks yet at a Meteor Lake CPU, making it easy to see the various tiles and their relative sizes. According to the site, the base tile that lies below the other tiles is roughly 23.1 x 11.5mm. The CPU tile is about the same size as the middle SoC tile, both of which are much larger than the GPU and I/O tiles. The CPU tile reportedly measures 8.9 x 8.3 mm, and its small size will allow Intel to hit much higher yields than with a huge monolithic die such as Raptor Lake's. The CPU tile is manufactured by Intel on its Intel 4 process, whereas the other tiles (GPU, SoC, I/O) will be manufactured on TSMC's 5 and 6nm processes, according to Wccftech.

Other interesting bits from the report include Intel is currently cranking out 40,000 wafers a month in Oregon from all its current processes. The company is also looking to produce Intel 4 chips at facilities beyond this one site, and is currently testing these chips at its fab 34 in Ireland. Given the cutting-edge nature of the process, which includes it using both extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) and Intel's Foveros chip-stacking technology for the first time, not all of its fabs are equipped to handle this type of manufacturing.

It's unknown when Intel will officially launch Meteor Lake, but it's rumored to be coming in October or closer to the holidays. All we know so far is that Intel has adopted an all-new naming scheme for the chips, and given the radical changes within, it's starting its branding count over at "1" for the first generation of CPUs. It will reportedly be made only for laptops, with the desktop versions scuttled in favor of a Raptor Lake refresh.