Intel’s new CPUs are just over a month away from being officially revealed, as the company has announced the "AI Everywhere" event, scheduled for December 14. The new Intel Core Ultra Meteor Lake and 5th Generation Xeon Emerald Rapids CPUs will take center stage at this event, with the keynote speech taking place at 10am EST (7am PT) on December 14.
There are no prizes for guessing that artificial intelligence will be a big part of these new announcements, and these new processors will be expected to be geared towards AI performance, and pushing AI across new sectors in the market. It will also be the debut for Intel’s freshly renamed CPU series. The "i" is now a part of the past, and Intel’s CPU range will now simply go by the moniker of "Core Ultra". Yes, it’s hardly the biggest shakeup in the world, but it’s notable when the range hasn’t changed name for 15 years.
Unfortunately for desktop fans, it seems we won’t be seeing the Meteor Lake processor making its way to desktop form factors, at least not in the traditional way. Rather than a socketed CPU, desktop Meteor Lake processors will be fused to motherboards in BGA (ball grid array) packages, as part of all-in-one PCs, and tiny NUCs (Next Unit of Computing). It will also be available in the mobile space, similar to how Intel’s 11th Generation Tiger Lake CPUs were rolled out.
The second set of announcements, the 5th Generation Xeon Emerald Rapids processors, are of less interest to casual consumers, but still worth mentioning. These new processors are intended to replace the existing lineup of data center-focused 4th Generation Xeon Sapphire Rapids CPUs, which are roughly the match of the consumer-level Intel Alder Lake chips, and use Golden Cove cores. Emerald Rapids will be a straight upgrade for these, and will wield Raptor Cove cores, bringing their power up to the Raptor Lake-series of processors.
It’s an exciting time of year for processor upgrades, of course, as AMD is also prepping new hardware to take on Intel’s latest CPUs. The Ryzen 8000 and EPYC Turin chips are likely to pop up soon as well, and will be intended to do battle with Intel’s two new ranges.