We've already seen 13th Gen Intel Meteor Lake processors

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• We've already seen 13th Gen Intel Meteor Lake processors

Intel Meteor Lake processors, which are expected to arrive in late 2022 (or maybe 2023), have already appeared in Linux code. These will be Intel's 13th generation chips, and as Phoronix reports, they were spotted in Linux 5.10 patches. Specifically, Meteor Lake support was introduced with the Linux Intel e1000e driver, which is a Gigabit Ethernet driver. This could mean Intel will stick with 1Gb Ethernet when Meteor Lake hits the scene, rather than move to 2.5Gb networking, but at this early stage it would be foolish to jump to judgement. Meteor Lake is still several years and three generations away as we mentioned: before then we'll have Rocket Lake (the next-generation processors that will succeed Comet Lake) and Alder Lake, with the latter about to make big changes to the entire architecture. from Intel (adoption of a big.LITTLE ARM type combination of high and low power cores).

Current roadmap

Intel's plan is to launch Alder Lake in the second half of 2021, hence the hope that Meteor Lake will arrive a year later towards the end of 2022; although this is the road map outlined now, it is not so. There is no guarantee that we will not see a slide. However, perhaps we can cross our fingers that seeing some of the early prep work for Meteor Lake now showing up could indicate that things are progressing as planned so far. It is believed that Meteor Lake will be built on a 7nm process and move to a new architecture with Ocean Cove plus Gracemont cores, using Intel's hybrid technology according to Alder Lake (which will be 10nm and will use Golden Cove plus Gracemont, these being latest low-power cores for efficient operation that could revolutionize things for laptops).