Intel reveals Wildcat Lake processors with up to 40 TOPS AI, UCIe packaging

Intel has revealed details for its upcoming Wildcat Lake (Core Series 3) processor series, aimed at the entry-level PC market. The series seeks to reduce platform costs by employing more economical packaging solutions and optimized motherboard design while maintaining enhanced performance.

The Wildcat Lake processors are capable of delivering up to 40 TOPS (trillions of operations per second) of AI compute performance, representing up to a 2.7x improvement over previous Raptor Lake U Refresh models. Creativity and productivity performance see an uplift of up to 2.1x, alongside a significant 64% reduction in processor power consumption.

To improve cost-effectiveness and manufacturing efficiency, Intel is moving away from the Foveros packaging used in the Panther Lake (Core Ultra Series 3) series. Instead, Wildcat Lake will utilize an organic multi-chip package (MCP) in conjunction with the UCIe (Universal Chiplet Interconnect Express) standard. UCIe facilitates seamless interoperability between chiplets from different manufacturers within the same package, offering flexibility in chip composition.

The new processors will feature a compute die manufactured on Intel's 18A process and an I/O die on TSMC's N6 process. While the UCIe packaging approach may be more cost-effective, it requires a larger I/O area compared to Foveros technology. The compute die size has been reduced by 38%, with some features scaled back, including the number of Xe graphics cores (2 vs. 4), NPU units (1 vs. 3), and P-cores (2 vs. 4). Certain specialized features, such as ray tracing and the Image Processing Unit (IPU), have been omitted to achieve a more accessible price point.

Intel's introduction of the Wildcat Lake series underscores the company's strategy to deliver more capable yet affordable performance solutions for the mainstream market. The adoption of new packaging techniques and chip design optimizations aims to significantly advance AI performance in consumer devices.