Alleged details on Intel's 12th-gen 'Alder Lake' processor and platform leak out

Fellow media outlet Videocardz says it has obtained slides that detail Intel's next-gen 'Alder Lake' CPU architecture and its adjoining platform. For those wondering, Alder Lake is the successor to the company's Rocket Lake-S processors which launched very recently.

According to the report, Alder Lake will be built on Intel's Enhanced 10nm SuperFin process and will be powered by the Golden Cove core architecture. When it comes to performance, the slides suggest that the next-gen processors will have a 20% improvement in their single-thread capabilities, presumably over their Rocket Lake predecessors. Improved single-thread performance is an outcome of higher clocks or higher IPC (Instructions retired Per Cycle) or a combination of both. Multi-threading will also, allegedly, see a doubling of performance and is likely because Intel will be adding more cores.

It has been known for some time that Alder Lake will employ the new Big-Bigger CPU design. The slide has the mention of 'Hardware Guided Scheduling' (HGS), a technology that is a part of the hybrid CPU design philosophy. According to Intel, HGS works with the Windows 10 scheduler to intelligently assign tasks to the appropriate cores and threads.

Interestingly, while it was already rumored that Intel will debut DDR5 support with Alder Lake-S, the new leak says that the platform will also retain DDR4 compatibility on cheaper 600-series chipset motherboards, and DDR5 will only be available on higher-end Z690 offerings. For DDR5, speeds of 4800MT/s will allegedly be supported, while for DDR4, the speed is 3200MT/s, which is the same as in Rocket Lake-S.

Another interesting detail is the presence of PCIe 5.0 support suggesting that Intel might well become the first to the x86 desktop market with the next-gen PCIe support, but PCIe 4.0 will also be present. The 600-series chipset will also support Thunderbolt 4, Intel Optane Memory H20, and more.

Since Intel only recently launched Rocket Lake and Tiger Lake, it will likely be a while before we see Alder Lake out in the wild, although the mobile variants may launch earlier like Intel generally does.

Source and images: Videocardz