Meteor Lake is one of the future generations of CPUs that Intel has confirmed, with a release soon. But for now, and until the manufacturer makes an official statement, all that is said about them are rumors like this, which could be confirmed or denied at any time. Rumors in this story claim that the Meteor Lake generation will include L4 cache, a direct cache layer on the CPU that hasn't been used for several generations.
In the latest Linux kernel patches , Intel engineers are introducing initial support for the Meteor Lake generation of processors. Among the changes are some potentially interesting features, with L4 cache being one of them.
Meteor Lake would put a lot of emphasis on the CPU cache
In a patch note released yesterday, an Intel engineer stated: “ In MTL, GT can no longer allocate in LLC – only the CPU can. This, along with the addition of support for ADM/L4 cache, requires an update to the MOCS/PAT table .” This would mean that, starting with Meteor Lake, integrated graphics can no longer perform allocations in the last-level cache (LLC), the highest-number cache accessed by the cores before searching RAM. Instead, only the CPU cores can allocate in it.
In the statements, there is mention of the level 4 (L4) cache of the Meteor Lake platform. For the first time since the Haswell and Broadwell generations, Intel may be planning to bring back the L4 cache and integrate it into the CPU.
For those wondering what the CPU's L1, L2, and L3 caches are, modern processors use them. The L1 cache is the fastest and smallest, while the others are larger but slower. Including an L4 cache is usually unnecessary, as this type of cache can take up a large area on the processor die without providing much benefit . This would significantly increase manufacturing costs.
Source: Tech Power Up
