Intel’s Raptor Lake and AMD's Ryzen 7000 have been hogging the CPU benchmarks limelight for the last few weeks. This is only natural, as we think the official launch of these 13th-Gen Intel Core processors may be just weeks away. However, we have had a pleasing stream of Meteor Lake 14th-Gen Intel Core information and leaks over recent months. Today that continues thanks to Linux boot logs which appear to be from a PC that features one of these exciting upcoming processors.
Japan’s Coelacanth Dream has published his analysis of a trio of Linux boot logs, initially shared on Github by thesofproject. It is no surprise that, at this early stage, the purported Meteor Lake (MTL) chip that has been spotted is described as an ‘ES’ or Engineering Sample. As is typical with these samples, the chip has no name and is ‘recognized’ as a Genuine Intel (R) 0000.
The most obvious Meteor Lake flag in the boot log is where the platform Direct Media Interface (DMI) is described as an “Intel Corporation Meteor Lake Client Platform / MTL-P DDR5 SODIMM SBS RVP,” giving away the game. Incidentally, another piece of Meteor Lake processor evidence comes from the CPU ID string, which was previously reported as associated with the 14th-Gen Intel Core processors.
The tested sample CPU had a base clock of just 1.2 GHz. Other logged data suggests that the Meteor Lake chip tested didn’t offer support for AVX-512 instructions. Intel has taken a step back from offering AVX-512 for consumers with the current Alder Lake generation, and it looks like it could continue through Raptor Lake to Meteor Lake.
Some processor core information is revealed in the logs. The three logs with Meteor Lake details are probably all from the same machine, but interestingly the logs differ in CPU core count reporting. One suggests the CPU in the system has 16 cores; another counts 20 processor cores. Coelacanth Dream reckons the discrepancy is probably due to different values being returned for APIC ID and Package / Die ID queries. Another possibility is that the Meteor Lake CPU isn’t properly supported in the Linux Coreboot BIOS / UEFI at this time, so different Coreboot configurations surface different values in respective boot logs.
If you are interested in learning more about Intel Meteor Lake, please check out our recent breakdown of the SoC’s parts. At the link, you can learn more about the ‘Intel 4’ Redwood Cove Performance cores, the Crestmont Efficiency cores, the onboard TSMC N3 fabricated Xe-LPG architecture GPU, PCIe Gen5 support on both desktop and mobile, and its ultra-fast memory support.
