For months, industry leaks have seemed to confirm that Intel’s Meteor Lake processors won’t be coming to desktop computers. Now, though, Intel has turned that narrative on its head, with the latest info confirming they’ll be launched on PCs after all.
The new information comes from a PCWorld interview with Michelle Johnston Holthaus, Intel’s executive vice president and general manager of the Client Computing Group. PCWorld spoke to Johnston Holthaus at the Intel Innovation 2023 event and managed to wring some previously unknown tidbits out of the VP.
In the interview, PCWorld noted that Meteor Lake has only been framed as a mobile chip, with no official mention of a desktop version. The interviewer then asked whether a desktop version would be forthcoming.
In response, Johnston Holthaus was unequivocal: “Desktop will come in 2024.” It’s good news for desktop PC users who might have felt a little out in the cold by the lack of information in this area.
One processor family
Previous leaks have suggested not that desktop versions of Meteor Lake chips would be coming after their mobile equivalents, but that these chips might not arrive at all. For instance, a seemingly official leaked slide scrubbed all mention of Meteor Lake from Intel’s 2023 roadmap, and it was largely assumed that this meant Meteor Lake wasn’t coming to desktops at all. Instead, it could simply be that Intel pushed back the launch to the following year.
However, other leaks suggested that Intel would refresh Raptor Lake for desktop rather than launch Meteor Lake on anything but laptop computers. That now seems to be wide of the mark.
None of this confirms when exactly in 2024 Meteor Lake desktop chips will make an appearance, so we’ll have to wait for more information on that. But what’s for sure is that the interview’s surprising admission has undermined previous leaks and suggests either that the rumors were mistaken or that Intel had a last-minute change of heart.
There was one other interesting morsel for PC users interested in Meteor Lake. In the PCWorld interview, Johnston Holthaus was asked whether Intel would be “returning to an era where there was going to be a processor family for mobile and a separate processor family for desktop.”
“That is not the case,” Johnston Holthaus stated, before continuing: “I want one processor family top to bottom for both segments. Doesn’t everybody?”
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