Intel is expected to reveal its plans for the PC arena next week, and we’re hoping to get some interesting nuggets of information from the chip giant.
A presentation on all things PC will take place in a webinar on December 16 at 7:30am PT (10:30am EST, 3:30pm UK) where Intel will talk about the plan PC platform development like Tom’s gear (opens in a new tab) Marked with a flag.
This means we’ll see future products that we don’t know about yet, or at least no information has been officially revealed about them, although the rumor mill may have already provided details here and there,
Intel has had a tough time lately in terms of declining profits and having to announce major streamlining plans and job losses, partly because of the PC market’s slump this year.
So perhaps it’s no surprise that the other big topic Intel plans to tell us about is the size of the PC market and the “engines of growth” therein, possibly with some optimism to be seen on the latter front rather than doom and gloom falling sales of personal computers to which we have become accustomed in 2022.
Analysis: Putting together a puzzle with a CPU, perhaps…
Of course, PC sales are cyclical, and we’ve seen major declines in PC and laptop sales before – and the industry is inevitably recovering. That said, the possible depth of the recession and economic chaos that now abounds is worrisome and could usher in an extended decline in PC shipments – we certainly still believe that to be a threat. It would certainly be interesting to hear what Intel has to say about growth drivers.
As for what we might hear about Intel’s future hardware, we already know that Team Blue is on track to launch new processors at an “unprecedented pace” – as the chip giant just told us.
This means the next-gen Meteor Lake is still on track for 2023, but we may get further information on Arrow Lake, the post-Meteor generation, and perhaps what lies beyond. And we may hear more about the focus on performance cores as rumor has it that the heavy focus on these “small” (low power) cores in current-gen Raptor Lake will continue in Meteor Lake.
Maybe we could even see something about the alleged Raptor Lake Refresh CPUs that could come out next year. If Meteor Lake increases the number of performance cores and reduces the number of performance cores to 6 for better overall power efficiency, then these processors could represent the new low to mid-range models – and perhaps the Raptor Lake Refresh will fit as the new top end for 2023 year (with full 8 cores, of course).
Or Intel could just leave the high-end Raptor Lake models (13700K, 13900K, and the upcoming 13900KS) in place, although it will no doubt be met with disappointment if that happens. (Arrow Lake would have to follow heavy Core i9/i7 offerings pretty quickly if that’s indeed the plan.)
Whatever the case, let’s hope Intel reveals how the CPU puzzle fits together next week, and we’ll hear something about plans for future generations beyond Arrow Lake. (We’ve been told Lunar Lake will be next, but we know very little about it – or, of course, what might come next.)
Perhaps we’ll find out a bit more about what lies ahead for Arc GPUs, which started off very shaky this year, although at least the graphics driver is finally getting in decent shape, so there’s hope for the future.