Tuesday, April 11th 2023
Intel "Raptor Lake Refresh" to Retain 13th Gen Core Branding
Intel is planning to update its desktop processor product-stack in the second half of 2023 with the Core "Raptor Lake Refresh" series. A VideoCardz report suggests that these chips could remain a part of the 13th Gen Core series, and Intel will not carve the 14th Gen Core out of them. This would be similar to how Intel dealt with delays in the commissioning of its 14 nm node by releasing the "Haswell Refresh" and "Devil's Canyon" processors within the 4th Gen Core family. Intel tried something different with "Coffee Lake Refresh," by branding it inside the 9th Gen Core series, instead of keeping it within the 8th Gen Core. This was done because Intel updated the CPU core-counts of its Core i7 SKUs, and introduced the new Core i9 brand extension for the mainstream-desktop segment.
If 4th Gen Core "Haswell Refresh" is anything to go by, Intel could use updated xx50 processor model numbers for "Raptor Lake Refresh" processors. An example of such a naming scheme would be the Core i9-13950K, which succeeds the i9-13900K (the i9-13900KS is a limited edition / limited-release SKU). At this point we don't know what exactly constitutes this Refresh, other than the high likelihood of clock-speed increases across the board. It's possible that Intel may innovate in the areas of die-thinning, die-binning, and process-level power improvements that open up room for these higher clock-speeds (which is what Intel did with 10th Gen "Comet Lake"). These processors could be built in the existing Socket LGA1700 package, and be compatible with existing Intel 600-series and 700-series chipset motherboards, requiring a UEFI firmware update.
Source:
VideoCardz
If 4th Gen Core "Haswell Refresh" is anything to go by, Intel could use updated xx50 processor model numbers for "Raptor Lake Refresh" processors. An example of such a naming scheme would be the Core i9-13950K, which succeeds the i9-13900K (the i9-13900KS is a limited edition / limited-release SKU). At this point we don't know what exactly constitutes this Refresh, other than the high likelihood of clock-speed increases across the board. It's possible that Intel may innovate in the areas of die-thinning, die-binning, and process-level power improvements that open up room for these higher clock-speeds (which is what Intel did with 10th Gen "Comet Lake"). These processors could be built in the existing Socket LGA1700 package, and be compatible with existing Intel 600-series and 700-series chipset motherboards, requiring a UEFI firmware update.
31 Comments on Intel "Raptor Lake Refresh" to Retain 13th Gen Core Branding
That would be controversial to people that dislike the E cores, but in the grand scheme probably a net gain as a whole. Another option would be forgoing a pair of P cores and adding a layer of cache similar to X3D in place of them. That could actually be really good or both and sticking to 4P cores, but offsetting them with supplementing those with more E cores along with stacked cache. I don't think that's what they've done, but for the following generation that could be a good idea about the same MT performance with better gaming performance across fewer P cores however at good improvement on the efficiency side.
You can expect higher clock rates, perhaps a slightly lower TDP (PL1, PL2) or a combination of both at best.
The headline is different, but the implication is the same, with that news story also concluding that the raptor lake refresh would still be considered 13th gen. Is it me, or has there been a number of double-dipping on news stories here lately?
In 13000 series only 13600/700/900 are Raptor Lake.
They will probably redesign a couple photomasks to weed out some bugs (and that includes weak points which prevent the chip from reaching higher clocks) and that's it. There are continuous improvements in manufacturing process too, of course.
Another possible improvements would be a small bump in ring bus speed, or slightly reduced cache latencies.But E-cores didn't turn out to be more efficient in terms of perf/W, at least the way they're tuned for desktop CPUs. They're more efficient in perf/mm2.
IMHO, Raptor Lake, Alder Lake and Raptor Lake ‘refresh’ are all one processor family and a new way Intel is trying to make it seem they are innovating. As an aside, Meteor Lake is looking like a one step forward, two step backwards transition like going from Comet Lake to Rocket Lake.
As you can see, there is zero improvement mentioned from architecture changes because there are none. So again, Alder Lake and Raptor Lake are the exact same E and P cores. Expect the Raptor Lake ‘refresh’ to retain the exact same core architecture as well. To use your analogy, its really Zen -> Zen+.
Intel is not retaining the same socket for three generations because there is really only one generation. I will give Intel credit here because in the past, they would change sockets if only the Intel Inside sticker changed color.
Raptop Lake R seems to stay on the same chipset 700 series, so is it a new generation? It's confusing. Do they still hope to launch i7 MTL on desktop? If so, this would be genuine Gen 14 on a new socket with 800 chipset, so RPL-R must be named Gen 13.
If two or three desktop MTL SKUs consitute entire desktop Gen 14 and then Arow Lake full Gen15 line-up, we could have the smallest and the shortest desktop generation ever, replaced faster then Rocket Lake.
Just take a look at X3D CPU’s behavior, where concerns about cache imposed lower voltages and clock speed. High efficiency and low temperatures.
Both Intel and AMD just tried to squeeze every last drop of performance out of their products, for marketing reasons, using high voltage and clock speed. We can have much more efficient CPUs manually adjusting power limits and voltages, “losing” just a few percentage of performance (in some specific tasks).
But you know, they need a longer bar on a comparison graph, to expose during presentations…