It is no secret that the Intel Core 13 will be the last chips built in one piece of the company, given that, from the fourteenth generation, named Meteor Lake, they will make the leap to what we call disaggregated chips, where the functionality of a single chip separates into several distinct ones. We have explained the reasons for this by active and passive, however, we could find that this will lead to the disappearance of desktop processors , although not all, if some models.
The great advantage of the so-called Tiles or Chiplets, depending on a brand they receive one name or another, is that they allow you to recycle parts from one design to another, instead of making a complete chip from scratch. This means that by changing a single part you can have two different designs for two different markets and reduce manufacturing costs. For example, things like integrated graphics or peripheral management can be moved from laptop to desktop layout quickly and easily.
Intel will unify its desktop and laptop processors
The maximum in the design of processors during the last years is the colloquially called performance per watt. However, many of you will have observed that there are a series of fixed powers in most of the designs found on the market, if we rule out the most advanced ones that exceed 100 W and with overclocking capabilities. In general these are:
- 9 W and 15 W power for ultra-thin computers for office applications.
- 28 W for the so-called ultra-thin gaming.
- 35 W and 45 W for high-end laptops.
- 65 W for typical desktop PCs.
If we rule out the first type, the rest usually actually 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, only with different clock speeds and consumption. The fact is that, during the monolithic era of Intel, the design of both versions of a chip was different, however, with the arrival of Meteor Lake as a separate CPU we will find that they will be able to reuse certain components from one design to another without having to make two chips from scratch.
This means that they will be able to use the same chipset for both markets . Which translates into the “disappearance” of desktop processors . Of course, in a laptop the processor is usually soldered through BGA and on a desktop it is connected to an LGA socket, but the changes could lead to the disappearance of the socket in the low and medium ranges of desktops. That is to say, that of the 65 W CPUs, which does not mean that we are not going to see conventional configurations with their interchangeable processor socket.
An involution or a necessary step?
The other day we told you that gaming towers are 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, which have been gradually declining in sales in recent years and that is why it is more than likely that these systems will end up disappearing in favor of systems based on laptop hardware. gaming, which will be good enough for such functions.
However, the fact of placing them in desktop mode does not mean that we see their limited hardware. The fact of having the ability to place higher power sources and better cooling systems will work in your favor. Simply, we will see variable TDP processors , which depending on the industrial design of the computer will use more or less power.
Regardless of processor brand, things like the 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 may still see motherboards with expansion ports and ports, but not differences between chipsets, instead we would see a universal design, where the difference between the desktop model and the laptop would be the use of the socket and slots expansion in the first.
Intel has already “secretly” experimented with the idea
Actually, since the different processor chips will go in a common interposer, the chip that serves as the basis for intercommunicating the chips. Intel and AMD can create two different ones, one designed to be placed in a socket and the other to look soldered on a laptop motherboard. In principle, they would be two different products, but really the entire manufacturing line would be the same, except for the final part.
Now to finish and in the face of high-end processors, in the design you would only have to change the chip that integrates the cores and caches for another with a greater capacity. Which is what it seems to be that Intel will do with Arrow Lake, which will be aimed at the high-end enthusiast, that is, that of the i7 and i9. While Meteor Lake could be the architecture of the i5 and below. In any case, it all boils down to the elimination of duplication by the largest processor manufacturer in history. All this will lead to the “disappearance” of desktop “processors”, at least in the more modest ranges in terms of performance.