In a new commit published on GitHub, Intel might have confirmed ray tracing support for their Meteor Lake CPUs with Xe-HPG TGPU. The Intel 14th Gen Meteor Lake CPUs are scheduled for release in 2023 and will come with a range of new features, including brand new hybrid cores, integrated graphics using tiled- designs, and a VPU accelerator which we talked about in our last coverage.
Intel Meteor Lake CPUs With TGPU Design Reportedly Comes With Ray Tracing & FP64 Support But Lacks XMX Units
According to a detailed report published by Coelacanth-Dream, it looks like the GPU featured on the Intel Meteor Lake CPUs is detected as a Xe-HPG product within IGC (Intel Graphics Compiler). Considering that, we can assume that it will be using the same architecture as the existing DG2 or Alchemist GPUs but that's not entirely the case.
The Meteor Lake GPU which is also known as tGPU (Tiled-GPU) does not support DPAS (Dot Product Accumulate Systolic) instructions executed through the XMX units because it reportedly is not equipped with those. In a previous report, we covered how Intel's Meteor Lake CPU's graphics unit would lack XMX, resulting in lower feature-level support for technologies such as XeSS but it will instead feature partial FP64 support, something that's been missing in Intel iGPUs for the past few generations.
The more interesting detail is that the TGPU (Xe-MTL) on the Intel Meteor Lake CPUs is reportedly going to come with hardware-level raytracing support. The TGPU is said to offer the same level of ray-tracing support as Alchemist and Ponte Vecchio GPUs since there's no change in the design, at least as far as ray tracing is concerned.
Regarding support for HW ray tracing on Meteor Lake GPUs
IGC/AdaptorCommon/RayTracing/PrologueShaders.cpp, itIGFX_METEORLAKEis believed that they support it because of the addition of .Other than that, in the code part that determines his HW ray tracing support, it seems that Meteor Lake GPU supports it as well as Alchemist / DG2 and Ponte Vechhio because there is no change.
Intel's Meteor Lake CPU tiled-GPU won't be the first integrated graphics chip to offer support for ray-tracing. AMD has been offering it for almost a year now with their Ryzen 6000 "Rembrandt" APUs that feature RDNA 2 iGPUs. This will be Intel's first ray-tracing-enabled integrated graphics but we hope that some partial XeSS or AI-level upsampling support is added. As we have seen with AMD's APUs, technologies such as FSR 2.0 can really help deliver playable FPS in gaming titles and that would be really awesome for mobile gamers.
Intel Meteor Lake Mobility CPU Lineup Expected Features:
- Triple-Hybrid CPU Architecture (P/E/LP-E Cores)
- Brand New Redwood Cove (P-Cores)
- Brand New Crestmont (E-Cores)
- Up To 14 Cores (6+8) For H/P Series & Up To 12 Cores (4+8) For U Series CPUs
- Intel 4 Process Node For CPU, TSMC For tGPU
- Intel 'Xe-MTL' GPU With Up To 192/128 EUs
- Up To LPDDR5X-7467 & DDR5-5200 Support
- Up To 96 GB DDR5 & 64 GB LPDDR5X Capacities
- Intel VPU For AI Inferencing With Atom Cores
- x8 Gen 5 Lanes For Discrete GPU (Only H-Series)
- Triple x4 M.2 Gen 4 SSD Support
- Four Thunderbolt 4 Ports
The Intel 14th Gen Meteor Lake CPUs are expected to launch by the second half of 2023 and will be utilizing the "Intel 4" process node along with a host of 3rd party IPs/process nodes for the rest of the tiles. Expect more information on Meteor Lake CPUs at Hot Chips 34.
Intel Mobility CPU Lineup:
| CPU Family | Panther Lake | Lunar Lake | Arrow Lake | Meteor Lake | Raptor Lake | Alder Lake |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Process Node (CPU Tile) | Intel 18A | TSMC N3B | TSMC N3B | Intel 4 | Intel 7 | Intel 7 |
| Process Node (GPU Tile) | TSMC N3E / Intel 3 | TSMC N3B | TSMC 5nm | TSMC 5nm | Intel 7 | Intel 7 |
| CPU Architecture | Hybrid | Hybrid (Dual-Core) | Hybrid (Triple-Core) | Hybrid (Triple-Core) | Hybrid (Dual-Core) | Hybrid (Dual-Core) |
| P-Core Architecture | Cougar Cove | Lion Cove | Lion Cove | Redwood Cove | Raptor Cove | Golden Cove |
| E-Core Architecture | Darkmont | N/A | Skymont | Crestmont | Gracemont | Gracemont |
| LP E-Core Architecture (SOC) | Darkmont | Skymont | Crestmont | Crestmont | N/A | N/A |
| Top Configuration (Compute Tile) | 4+8 (H-Series) | 4+4 (MX Series) | 6+8 (H-Series) 2+8 (U-Series) | 6+8 (H-Series) 2+8 (U-Series) | 6+8 (H-Series) 8+16 (HX-Series) | 6+8 (H-Series) 8+8 (HX-Series) |
| Max Cores / Threads | 16/16 | 8/8 | 14/14 | 14/20 | 14/20 | 14/20 |
| AI NPU | NPU5 (50 TOPS) | NPU4 (48 TOPS) | NPU3.5 (13 TOPS) | NPU3 (11 TOPS) | NPU2 (7 TOPS) | NPU2 (7 TOPS) |
| Planned Lineup | Core Ultra 300 | Core Ultra 200V | Core Ultra 200 | Core Ultra 100 | 14th/13th Gen | 12th Gen |
| GPU Architecture | Xe3-LPG (Battlemage) | Xe2-LPG (Battlemage) | Xe-LPG+ (Alchemist) | Xe-LPG (Alchemist) | Iris Xe (Gen 12) | Iris Xe (Gen 12) |
| Xe Cores (Max) | 12 Xe3 Cores | 8 Xe2 Cores | 8 Xe Cores | 8 Xe Cores | 96 EUs (768 Cores) | 96 EUs (768 Cores) |
| Memory Support | LPDDR5X-9600 | LPDDR5X-8533 | DDR5-5600 LPDDR5-7500 LPDDR5X-8533 | DDR5-5600 LPDDR5-7400 LPDDR5X - 7400+ | DDR5-5200 LPDDR5-5200 LPDDR5-6400 | DDR5-4800 LPDDR5-5200 LPDDR5X-4267 |
| Memory Capacity (Max) | 128 GB | 32 GB | 128 GB | 96 GB | 64 GB | 64 GB |
| Thunderbolt Support | TB5 | TB5 | TB5 | TB4 | TB4 | TB4 |
| WiFi Capability | WiFi 7 | WiFi 7 | WiFi 7 | WiFi 6E | WiFi 6E | WiFi 6E |
| TDP | 17-45W | 17-30W | TBD | 7W-45W | 15-55W | 15-55W |
| Launch | 2H 2025 | 2H 2024 | 2H 2024 | 2H 2023 | 1H 2023 | 1H 2022 |
News Source: HardwareTimes
About the author: A Software Engineer by training and a PC enthusiast by passion, Hassan Mujtaba serves as Wccftech's Senior Editor for hardware section. With years of experience in the industry, he specializes in deep-dive technical analysis of next-generation CPU and GPU architectures, motherboards, and cooling solutions. His work involves not only breaking news on upcoming technologies but also extensive hands-on reviews and benchmarking.
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