Intel is set to reveal its plans for the PC arena next week, and we’re hoping to get some interesting information from the chip giant.
The presentation on all things PC will come through a webinar on December 16th at 7.30am PT (10.30am ET, 3.30pm UK), with Intel spilling the beans on their PC platform roadmap, Like Tom’s Hardware (Opens in a new tab) Flag up.
This means that we will see future products that we do not know about yet, or at least no information about them has officially leaked, although the rumor mill may have already relayed details here and there,
Intel has had a hard time lately in terms of falling profits and having to announce big plans to simplify and job losses, due in part to the slump in the PC market this year.
Perhaps unsurprisingly then, the other major topic Intel plans to tell us about is the size of the PC market and its “growth drivers,” and we should see some optimism on the latter front, rather than the doom and gloom of failed PC sales. that we are used to in 2022.
Analysis: Putting the CPU puzzle together, maybe…
Of course, PC sales are a cyclical thing, and we’ve seen PC and laptop sales plummet before – with the industry inevitably recovering. However, the potential depth of the recession and the economic chaos that currently prevails is concerning, and could lead to a longer contraction in PC shipments – we certainly still feel that’s a risk. It should be interesting to hear what Intel has to say in terms of the factors driving growth, sure.
As for what we might hear in terms of future Intel hardware, we already know that Team Blue is on track to meet its goals of ushering in new CPUs at an ‘unprecedented pace’ no less — because the chip giant just told us.
This means that the next generation of Meteor Lake is still on track for 2023, but what we can relate to for more information is Arrow Lake, the generation after Meteor, and possibly beyond. And we may hear more about the focus on efficiency cores, as rumor has it that the big push with those small (low-energy) cores in current Raptor Lake will continue into Meteor Lake.
Maybe we could even see something about the Raptor Lake Refresh CPUs that might be around next year. If Meteor Lake increases the number of efficiency cores, and lowers performance cores to 6 to improve overall energy efficiency, these processors could represent new low- and mid-range models — and perhaps the Raptor Lake update will fit in with the new top-end 2023 (with the full eight cores, of course).
Or Intel could leave the high-end Raptor Lake models (13700K, 13900K, and upcoming 13900K) in place, though that would be met with disappointment if it resolved in this way, no doubt. (Arrow Lake will need to follow its heavyweight Core i9/i7 offerings pretty quickly, if that’s really the plan.)
Whatever the case, hopefully Intel will reveal how the CPU jigsaw puzzle fits together next week, and we’ll hear something about plans for future generations beyond Arrow Lake. (We’re told Lunar Lake will follow next, but we know little about it—or what might happen next, of course.)
We might learn more about what’s in store for Arc GPUs, perhaps, which are off to a pretty shaky start this year, though at least the graphics driver is finally coming together into some sort of decent shape, so there’s hope for the future yet.