Finally, at Intel’s Architecture Day 2021, the chip giant has unveiled its new mainstream desktop processors, codenamed Alder Lake. It is the first CPU architecture by Intel to finally use a 10nm process node, which is a huge uplift in performance over its age-old 14nm process.
Intel’s Alder Lake CPUs were leaked for quite some time now and the leaks did tell us almost all specs but now Intel has officially confirmed the first hybrid desktop CPU architecture. So, Alder Lake will be available for the desktop with LGA 1700 socket and for mobile with BGA Type3 socket and for ultra-mobile or thin & light notebooks with BGA Type4 HDI socket.
The Intel 12th Gen Core “Alder Lake-S” series will sport the first-of-a-kind Intel Hybrid Technology featuring high-performance cores (called Performance Cores or P-Cores) and high-efficiency cores (called Efficient Cores, or E-Cores). This is a similar concept we have seen for years now on mobile SoCs now being adopted on mainstream desktop processors.
So, Intel will offer this architecture in three different configurations i.e. 8 Performance Cores with 8 Efficient Cores, a 6+8, and finally a 2+8 configurations. As we saw in leaks, the flagship CPU here, the so-called Core i9-12900K will be equipped with 16 cores and 24 threads, while the Efficiency cores will not support hyper-threading.
These new desktop CPUs will also support two of Intel’s best technologies i.e. Intel Wi-Fi 6E and Thunderbolt 4 along with support for new DDR5 RAM standards. Intel has also confirmed that its client segment processors will have TDP will start from 9W to 125W.
Intel is also using the chiplet technology which AMD already uses in Ryzen processors, and you have three types of Fabrics: Compute Fabric, I/O Fabric, and Memory Fabric. So, the Compute Fabric is comparable to the Infinity Fabric building block, which is Scalable Data Fabric (SDF), while the I/O Fabric can be compared to Scalable Control Fabric (SCF).
Intel will also be the first to adopt to PCIe Gen5 interface up to 16 lanes even before the competition and will support next-gen GPUs with support for new interconnect standards. While the CPUs will also have four PCIe Gen4 lanes as well, totalling 20 lanes and the 600-series chipset will additionally offer x12 PCIe Gen4 lanes and x16 PCIe Gen 3 lanes.
Now, Intel also detailed or say gave a brief overview of the Alder Lake CPUs and how this hybrid approach help. That being said, Intel says the quad-core configuration for its Efficient cores should offer 80% more performance than a dual-core Skylake CPU and require 80% less power at ISO performance (the same frequency).
Also, Intel has confirmed up to 19% IPC improvement at ISO frequency when compared to its recently launched 11th Gen Rocket Lake processors.
Intel has announced these Alder Lake CPUs will feature a hardware thread scheduler that will communicate with the OS scheduler and it will be called Intel Thread Director which will dynamically adapt based on thermal and power settings.
via Videocardz and Intel
