Intel Arrow, Lunar and Nova Lake codenames appear in a leak as Meteor Lake successors

Intel’s future is hybrid

A list of Intel’s upcoming desktop series has allegedly been posted on Reddit, which eventually (and also allegedly) got deleted.

The list has been copied by Anandtech forum member “Curmudgeon666“, who as of now is the only source of this information. There is no way of confirming the authenticity of the original list as all the data is related to unreleased products, some never mentioned before in any leak. The original poster was allegedly using a nickname of a popular tech YouTuber “Moore’s Law is Dead“, who confirmed to VideoCardz that he did not make the post, nor posted anything such on Reddit. However, at least some of this information appears to align with what the YouTuber had already shared on his channel, possibly because it is simply a rehashed information.

Intel Alder Lake & Meteor Lake, Source: Intel

Despite the nature of this leak, we thought it might be worth sharing, just in case, it is actually providing new information. After all, Intel is not likely to confirm any of these post-Meteor Lake codenames any time soon, simply because they refer to products now expected in late 2023 at least.

Arrow Lake and Lunar Lake are supposedly both using Lion Cove high-performance “big” cores and Skymont high-efficiency “small” cores. According to the leak, Arrow Lake would, once again, double the count of small cores compared to Raptor Lake, which is already rumored to offer doubled core count over Alder Lake. This means that Arrow Lake would feature 8 big cores and 32 small cores and 40 cores in total.

Intel Lunar Lake, which has already appeared in the leaks, would be using TSMC 3nm node, but it is not mentioned if this refers to the compute tile exclusively or the whole chip. After all, Meteor Lake will be the first proper chiplet design from Intel, which will supposedly be at the core of Intel’s future architectures.

The last new codenamed to be mentioned is Nova Lake, which would feature ‘entirely new architecture’. It would be built with Panther Cove big cores and Darkmont small cores. The core count is not mentioned, but the leak claims up to 50% higher CPU performance compared to Lunar Lake. The series would debut in 2025.

• Alder Lake (Golden Cove/Gracemont) Q4’21 / Q1’22
  predicted to be competitively weak vs AMD/Apple offerings that time.
• Raptor Lake (Raptor Cove / Gracemont) Q3’22 / Q4’22
  10% CPU perf boost and 8/16 configuration puts intel back on par but expect AMD/Apple to refresh their products as well.
• Meteor Lake (Redwood Cove / Crestmont) Q2’23
  Intel’s first true chiplet or tile based design. Different dies built on TSMC / Intel processes. More of a node shrink with single digit performance improvements. AMD will again extend lead with Zen 4+ / 5.
• Arrow Lake (Lion Cove / Skymont) Q4’23
  Will feature an updated compute tile with 8/32 config for the high end enthusiast products. Might achieve parity with AMD offerings at the time but loses out to Apple in power efficiency.
• Lunar Lake (Lion Cove / Skymont) Q4’24
  This is the product that will use TSMC 3nm as reported by Nikkei. Big performance jump expected and designed to achieve parity or beat AMD and Apple in both performance and power efficiency.
• Nova Lake (Panther Cove [tentative]/ Darkmont) 2025
  This will mark the biggest architectural change in cpu architecture since the Core architecture is introduced in 2006. Intel is working to build an entirely new architecture from the ground up much like Ryzen with up to 50% cpu performance improvement from lunar lake. This is also the reason why Glenn Hinton returned.

Rumored Intel Core-S series codenames, Source: Reddit via Curmudgeon666

Intel is now expected to unveil its hybrid desktop and mobile architecture known as Alder Lake in October this year with full deployment expected in the first quarter of 2022. The series is to be succeeded by Raptor Lake which will offer more high-efficiency cores. Both are to utilize Intel 7 fabrication node, which has previously been referred to as 10nm Enhanced SuperFin.

Source: Curmudgeon666 (AnandTech Forums) via @witeken, @InstaLatX64