It’s no secret that the Intel Core 13s will be the company’s last one-piece built chips, as starting with the fourteenth generation, dubbed Meteor Lake, they’ll make the leap to what we call disaggregated chips, where the functionality of a single chip separates into several separate chips. We have explained the reasons for this by active and passive, however, we might find that this will lead to the disappearance of desktop processorsAlthough not all, if some models.
The great advantage of the so-called Tiles or Chiplets, depending on the brand they receive from one name or another, is that they allow you to recycle pieces from one design to another, instead of manufacturing a complete chip from scratch. This means that by changing just one part, you can have two different designs for two different markets and reduce manufacturing costs. For example, things like integrated graphics or device management can be moved quickly and easily from laptop to desktop.
Intel will unify its processors for desktops and laptops
The maximum in processor design in recent years is the colloquially called performance per watt. However, many of you will have observed that there is a fixed power streak in most designs found on the market, if we exclude the more advanced ones that exceed 100W and with overclocking capabilities. In general these are:
- 9W and 15W power for ultra-thin computers for office applications.
- 28 W for so-called ultra-flat gaming.
- 35W and 45W for high end laptops.
- 65W for typical desktop computers.
If we exclude the first type, the others generally use the same chip. Obviously under different sockets depending on whether we are talking about laptop and desktop. However, the so-called Intel Core H and Intel Core P are the same, but with different clock speeds and power consumption. The fact is that during the monolithic era of Intel, the design of the two versions of a chip was different, however, with the advent of Meteor Lake as Disgregated Processor we will find that can reuse some components from one design to another without having to make two chips from scratch.
This means they can use the same chipset for both markets. Which translates to “disappearance” of desktop processors. Of course, in a laptop the processor is usually soldered via BGA and in a desktop it is connected to an LGA socket, but the changes could cause the socket to disappear in the low and mid ranges of desktops . That is to say that of the 65 W CPUs, which does not mean that we will not see classic configurations with their interchangeable processor socket.
An involution or a necessary step?
The other day you were told that gaming towers were going to disappear, many of you misunderstood it with the disappearance of the market to create your own gaming tower. Rather, we were referring to the sale of towers already built as standard, the sales of which have been gradually declining in recent years and that is why it is more than likely that these systems will eventually disappear in favor of systems based on portable hardware. gaming, which will be good enough for such functions.
However, placing them in desktop mode does not mean that we see their limited hardware. Having the ability to place higher power supplies and better cooling systems will work in your favor. Merely, we will see variable TDP processorswhich, depending on the industrial design of the computer, will consume more or less energy.
Regardless of processor brand, things like PCI Express interface for NVMe SSDs and dedicated graphics card are no longer chipset dependent. In laptops, one of the big differences is that we have the right interfaces for components and peripherals. If there is a unification, we can still see motherboards with expansion slots and ports, but no differences between chipsets, instead, we would see a universal design, where the difference between the model of desktop and laptop would use the expansion jack and slots in the former.
Intel has already “secretly” experimented with the idea
Indeed, since the different processor chips will go into a common interposer, it is the chip that serves as the basis for the intercommunication of the chips. Intel and AMD may create two different ones, one designed to sit in a socket and the other to look soldered onto a laptop motherboard. In principle, these would be two different products, but in reality the entire production chain would be the same, except for the final part.
Now to finish and faced with high-end processors, in the design you would only have to change the chip that integrates the cores and the caches for another with greater capacity. This is what Intel seems to be doing with Arrow Lake, which will be aimed at high-end enthusiasts, that is to say that of the i7 and i9. While Meteor Lake could be the architecture of i5 and below. In any case, it all comes down to the elimination of duplicates by the largest processor manufacturer in history. All this will lead to the “disappearance” of desktop “processors”, at least in the most modest ranges in terms of performance.
