One of Meteor Lake’s crystals was shown under a microscope – small Crestmont cores came into the photo

Journalists from Le Comptoir du Hardware attended the Intel Vision 2022 conference, where they had the opportunity to photograph the layout of one of the 14th Gen Intel Core processor chips, codenamed Meteor Lake. A part with energy-efficient Crestmont E cores fell into the lens of an electron microscope.

Image source: Le Comptoir du Hardware

Today the first photos of Meteor Lake mobile processors were released. You will use several chiplets at once, based on different technological processes. Similar to the current Alder Lake, Meteor Lake chips will use a hybrid architecture of large and small cores. At the same time, the 14th generation Core mobile processors will come in two forms: some will have a standard package, the second will be much more compact. The first is used in regular and gaming laptops or mini PCs. The latter will probably find application in ultra-thin laptops.

A photo of the crystal, provided to a French technology publication, most likely shows the chiplet of Meteor Lake’s second, compact variant. According to rumors, these processors should offer two powerful Redwood Cove cores and up to eight energy-efficient Crestmont cores. The photo did not contain blocks of integrated graphics and interfaces. They are part of other Meteor Lake chiplets that will eventually be packaged on the same substrate using second generation Intel’s Foveros packaging technology.

The chiplet in the frame demonstrates the Crestmont cores based on Intel 4 (7nm) process technology. According to Intel, the new node will deliver a performance increase of over 20% per watt over Intel 7 (10nm) process technology. Explanations about the picture were published by one of the Twitter users. The photo shows the location of the L1/L2/L3 cache blocks and one of Crestmont’s small core clusters.

Image Source: Twitter / @Locuza_

Meteor Lake processors will be scalable desktop processors with a nominal TDP of 125W. In other words, the series will feature a wide variety of models. The chips of the new series are expected in the second half of 2023.