Quote:Last but not least we have “ADLS,” Alder Lake, which replaces Rocket Lake in 2021 but is still expected to rely on 10nm manufacturing. Only two “dev” models are listed, so we don’t know anything at all really, but it’s likely Intel doesn’t either – it’s still four generations away. There are also three listings yet to be deciphered, “iRYFGT2,” “iJSLSIM,” and “iGLVGT2.” Each with only one model.

Quote:A Weibo user has shared two alleged Intel PowerPoint slides pointing to the chipmaker's 10nm rollout for 2020. As with any leak, however, approach this information with skepticism as it hasn't been confirmed by Intel.

The first slide's title roughly translates to "Moore's Law: Return to a Two-Year Cadence" and details the estimated timeline for Intel's upcoming 10nm and 7nm nodes. This is the same chart that Intel shared at its 2019 investor meeting with some additional annotations that weren't previously present.
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The second slide allegedly contains all the 10nm product launches that we could be see from Intel throughout this year.

Alder Lake is the codename for Intel's upcoming 10nm desktop CPUs that are rumored to adopt the hybrid architecture like Lakefield. Rumors point to a 16-core configuration comprised of eight big cores and eight small cores. For reference, Lakefield utilizes a combination of Sunny Cove and Tremont cores. The current possibilities for Alder Lake include Willow Cove or Golden Cove for the more powerful cores and Tremont or Gracemont for the low-power cores. The exact design is unknown at this point.

Tiger Lake will reportedly replace the existing Ice Lake family. The new 10nm processors look like they'll fuse Intel's Willow Cove cores with its Gen12 Xe graphics engine. Another improvement worth mentioning is that Tiger Lake chips are expected to come with a larger amount of L3 cache, up to 50% more than Ice Lake. Tiger Lake could come out this summer.

Quote:"Alder Lake" is a desktop processor that implements Intel's new heterogenous x86 core design that's making its debut with "Lakefield." The chip features up to 8 larger "Willow Cove" or "Golden Cove" CPU cores, and up to 8 smaller "Tremont" or "Gracemont" cores. This 8-big/8-small combo lets the chip achieve TDP targets around 80 Watts. Next up is "Tiger Lake," Intel's next-generation mobile processor family succeeding "Ice Lake." This microarchitecture implements "Willow Cove" CPU cores in a homogeneous setup, alongside Xe architecture based integrated graphics. "Ice Lake-SP" is Intel's next enterprise architecture that places mature "Sunny Cove" CPU cores in extreme core-count dies. Lastly, there's "Snow Ridge," an SoC purpose built for 5G base-stations. Image quality notwithstanding, these slides don't appear particularly new, and it's likely that COVID-19 has destabilized the roadmap. For instance, "Alder Lake," and "Ice Lake-SP" are expected to be 10 nm++ chips, a node that doesn't go live before 2021.

Quote:In the past six months, major Intel roadmap rumors have included the following:

• Intel has canceled all 10nm desktop CPUs. Desktop remains on 14nm through 2021.
  
• Intel will introduce a new 14nm desktop CPU architecture named Rocket Lake in late 2020, with backported 10nm features.
  
• Intel will launch 10nm desktop Alder Lake in an 8+8 big.Little configuration as an upcoming follow-up to LGA 1200 CPUs. Implied 2021 launch date.
  

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If the first scenario is true, the other two obviously aren’t. If the second scenario (Intel backporting 10nm features) is true, the third probably isn’t. Why would Intel launch Rocket Lake after taking the enormous trouble to backport its capabilities, only to turn around and launch a “true” 10nm desktop CPU at exactly the same time? It wouldn’t.
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Some of you may remember rumors that AMD would develop a super-APU with a high-clocked Piledriver-derived CPU and a wide desktop GPU for graphics, all connected to a unified pool of HBM, in a socket capable of withstanding the power draw. Sources inside AMD confirmed that this was a real product the company was considering building, but ultimately abandoned. The rumors about Tarnhelm weren’t false; they just didn’t come true. This rumor could certainly still be true, but given that it contradicts earlier rumors, we know that some of the information in circulation about Intel’s upcoming plans is incorrect. Salt accordingly.

Quote:We've hardly had a moment to catch our breath since Intel formally announced the Comet Lake-S desktop CPUs, but new rumors are already streaming in about future Intel products. The latest claims Alder Lake-S chips will drop into a new socket known as LGA1700.

The information comes courtesy of the Taiwanese lit-tech, where the company listed a product entry for an LGA1700 interposer and noted that it is for the Alder Lake-S platform.
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However, Alder Lake-S featuring a new socket wouldn't be that surprising. Alder Lake-S chips are expected to feature a whole new design, with rumors pointing to a big.Little architecture. This is a hybrid architecture featuring small, efficient Gracemont cores paired with an equal number of big, punchy and power-hungry Golden Cove cores. In a way, the design is similar to Intel's Lakefield platform, which will be the first to feature Intel's Foveros 3D stacking technology on a CPU.

Because of its increased pin count, the LGA1700 socket is also expected to grow in size, as was tweeted by hardware leaker @Komachi_ensaka in January. Whereas the LGA1151 and LGA1200 sockets measure 37.5 x 37.5mm, LGA1700 is expected to maintain the same width but grow slightly taller to 45mm. Unfortunately, this radically new socket design would also mean that existing CPU coolers likely won't be compatible without tweaks.

We previously heard rumors that Alder Lake-S would debut this year, but with Rocket Lake-S still needing to land first, we're not positive on a release date. Plus, at this time Intel hasn't confirmed either upcoming CPU generations, so take information on the rumored chips with a pinch of salt.

Quote:Rumored to feature up to 16 cores, Alder Lake CPUs could present an x86 iteration of the big.LITTLE design, where one pairs eight "big" and eight "small" cores that are activated according to increased or decreased performance requirements, thus bringing the best of both worlds - power efficiency and performance. This design would be present on Intel's 3D packaging technology called Foveros. The Alder Lake CPU support patch was added on April 27th to the Chrome OS repository, which would indicate that Intel will be pushing these CPUs out relatively quickly. The commit message titled "add support for ADL gpiochip" contained the following: "On Alderlake platform, the pinctrl (gpiochip) driver label is "INTC105x:00", hence declare it properly." The Chrome Unboxed speculates that Alder Lake could come out in mid or late 2021, depending on how fast Intel could supply OEMs with enough volume.

Quote:According to a NotebookCheck report, Intel is designing the LGA1700 socket to support at least three future generations of Core processors (that's "Alder Lake-S" and two of its successors). This should give the platform a degree of longevity as it introduces several new computing concepts to the client desktop form-factor, such as heterogenous CPU cores. "Alder Lake-S" combines 8 each of low-power "Gracemont" and high performance "Golden Cove" CPU cores in a setup rivaling the Arm big.LITTLE, where light computing workloads and system idling are completely handled by the low-power cores, while the high-performance cores are only woken up from their power-gated slumber as needed, before being put back to sleep when they're not.

Quote:New GNU compiler updates released today (as reported by Phoronix) serve as yet another sign that Intel will release its hybrid architecture, which combines big cores with smaller cores, for desktop PCs when the Alder Lake-S CPUs land.
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The GNU compiler updates include a list of compatible instructions for both Intel's upcoming data center Sapphire Ridge chips and Alder Lake desktop chips, with the latter noticeably missing support for AVX-512, a SIMD instruction that Intel recently introduced to its desktop chips. These instructions are disabled in Intel's hybrid Lakefield chips to keep the instruction set consistent between cores (Atom doesn't support AVX instructions), therefore easing operating system scheduling routines that target different workloads at the cores best suited for the task. Therefore, the lack of AVX-512 support for Alder Lake could serve as further evidence that Intel will bring its hybrid architecture to desktop PCs.

Quote:Intel's announcement today that its 7nm process will be delayed until late 2022 or early 2023 sent shockwaves through the industry, but the company also revealed that its first 10nm CPUs for the desktop won't come to market until the second half of 2021. AMD's continued push with its 7nm Ryzen processors has caught Intel flat footed as it continues to lose market share in the desktop PC market, so the relatively long wait for 10nm processors could prove to be a significant disadvantage for Intel.
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The new chips will land in a new LGA1700 socket, and are also expected to use the new DDR5 specification. According to Intel's announcement today, we won't see the new chips until the second half of 2021.

Quote:Hardware sleuth @Tum_Apisak has discovered benchmark submissions for one of Intel's future Alder Lake-S processors. The new breed of hybrid chips will make their way to the market sometime in 2021.

Alder Lake-S is a new microarchitecture and a hybrid one, so SiSoftware might not properly detect the processor. There's plenty of evidence of that: The Alder Lake-S specimen reportedly arrives with 16 cores and 32 threads, but the software picked it up with 16 threads and 24 threads in certain benchmarks.

Since Intel has already shared Alder Lake-S's recipe with the hardware world, we know the 16-chip is comprised of Golden Cove and Gracemont cores. The core count aligns with one of the potential configurations for Alder Lake-S. Barring any changes, the 16-core Alder Lake-S sample should have eight Golden Cove cores and eight Gracemont cores.

SiSoftware lists the Alder Lake-S processor with a clock speed of 1.4 GHz, which we think is probably for the Gracemont cores. The chip also seems to feature 12.5MB of L2 cache and 30MB of L3 cache. The iGPU inside the Alder Lake-S comes equipped with 256 shader cores at 1.15 GHz and adheres to a previous submission that surfaced last month. Intel didn't indicate which graphics engine it will use for Alder Lake-S, but it's likely to be the Xe LP iGPU.
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It's too early to pass judgment on Alder Lake-S, and given its unique design, SiSoftware's benchmarks might not be optimized for the chip. Therefore, we recommend you take the Alder Lake-S results with a bit of salt. Furthermore, there are only a few Alder Lake-S results, which could skew the aggregated numbers. For what it's worth, the Alder Lake-S seems to beat the Ryzen 5 3600 in the Processor Arithmetic and .NET Arithmetic benchmarks.

Quote:Intel's future 12th Generation Alder Lake-S CPU is purportedly pictured in a recent article by Videocardz, showcasing a new larger form factor designed to fit into the future LGA 1700 socket. Intel reportedly will use the LGA 1700 socket for two generations of desktop CPUs after Alder Lake-S.

The socket dimensions for LGA 1700 will be 37.5mm x 45mm, which is about 7.5mm taller than Intel's current LGA 1200 socket. Presumably, the bigger size is to make way for larger core counts than Rocket Lake. For instance, we've already seen hints of a 16-core 32-thread Alder Lake CPU that might be on the way.
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Videocardz says DDR5 support should be coming to Alder Lake as well. This is not confirmed, but DDR5 is ready for adoption, and SK Hynix has begun production on DDR5 RAM modules already. So it is possible.

Among many other announcements (full breakdown here), Intel announced at its Architecture Day 2020 that the company would release its Alder Lake-S processors for the desktop PC in 2021. That means they'll be a fast follower to the 14nm Rocket Lake processors that land in Q1, 2020.

Quote:Intel's 12th Generation Alder Lake-S processors may be still be a far way off. But the chipmaker has already started sampling the chips to PC partners, and other engineering samples are already running in the hardware world, too. A high-end SKU (via Leakbench) with 16 cores has seemingly broken its cover in Geekbench 5.
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Coming back to the Alder Lake-S sample, there should be eight Golden Cove cores and eight Gracemont cores present. We suspect that only the Golden Cove cores leverage Intel's Hyper-Threading technology. Therefore, we have 16 threads from the Golden Cove cores and eight threads from the Gracemont cores, which adds up to the reported total of 24 threads.

Geekbench 5 reported a 1.38 GHz base clock speed that's probably for the Gracemont cores. The reported boost clock, on the other hand, is clearly a mistake, which is common among unreleased hardware that goes through benchmarking software.
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The preliminary performance from the 16-core Alder Lake-S part is far from impressive though. As with any unreleased hardware, we recommend taking the benchmark numbers with some skeptical salt. As far as today's sample goes, the Alder Lake-S processor scored 996 points in the single-core test and 6,931 points in the multi-core test. For comparison, the single-core performance is right in the same alley as the AMD's mobile Ryzen 5 4600H (994 average points), while its multi-core performance on par with the Ryzen 5 3600X (6,906 average points).

Alder Lake-S, which commands the new LGA1700 socket, will come out of Intel's 10nm Enhanced SuperFin silicon oven. The chipmaker has previously affirmed that Alder Lake-S competes in the performance segment. Today's outing doesn't look very imposing, although Intel won't likely release Alder Lake until the second half of 2021, so this may just be a teaser of what Alder Lake could offer.

Quote:Alder Lake won't just be the first to bring an x86 hybrid architecture to desktops; the processors have also been pegged to leverage the high-velocity PCIe 5.0 interface. Coreboot (via Komachi_Ensaka), an open-source substitute for UEFI, seems to contain valuable information on the potential PCIe configuration that we could see on Alder Lake.
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Alder Lake-P appears to provide a flexible PCIe layout. The processor reportedly offers one PCIe 5.0 x8 lane or two PCIe 4.0 x4 lanes. It would appear that neither interface supports bifurcation, meaning you can't split up the PCIe 5.0 lane or get the PCIe 4.0 lanes to operate at x8. Nonetheless, both are backward compatible with previous-gen devices.

A single PCIe 5.0 x8 lane might sound lackluster at first, but it actually provides plenty of bandwidth. PCIe 5.0 x8 is essentially equivalent to PCIe 4.0 x16; therefore, the interface is good for up to 32 GBps of bandwidth, which is more than any consumer PCIe-based device can consume.
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There are quite a few mainstream PCIe 4.0 products, including graphics cards and M.2 SSDs, on the market right now. Tests have shown that even the fastest graphics cards have yet to saturate a PCIe 3.0 x16 interface, much less PCIe 4.0. M.2 SSDs, on the other hand, have been able to exploit the extra bandwidth that PCIe 4.0 brings to the table. We expect the PCIe 5.0 situation to play out the same.

Quote:A never-before-seen Alder Lake-S processor sample (via momomo_us) has surfaced with improved specifications and DDR5 support. The hybrid chip seemingly sports the same 16-core, 32-thread configuration as an early sample that appeared back in October, potentially helping Intel climb up the rankings of our CPU benchmark hierarchy.

SiSoftware detects the Alder Lake-S part as a 16-core part, meaning there are eight Golden Cove cores and eight Gracemont cores onboard. The configuration coincides with one of many possible Alder Lake-S combinations that appeared in a coreboot patch. Unless Intel has another combination in the pipeline, the 16-core Alder Lake-S should be the flagship SKU.

The new Alder Lake-S sample reportedly features a 1.8 GHz base clock, 400 MHz higher than the previous leaked sample. It's uncertain if the two are the same processor or if Intel has managed to improve the previous chip's base clock. On this occasion, the software was able to pick up the processor's boost clock speed that's apparently configured to 4 GHz. The cache configuration remains unaltered: We still see the 12.5MB of L2 cache and 30MB of L3 cache.
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The memory bandwidth test is one of the benchmarks that stand out the most. There's an improvement up to a whopping 153.6%. The logical reasoning behind the substantial uplift is that the previous Alder Lake-S was paired with DDR4 memory, while the new sample purportedly runs with DDR5 memory.
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The new benchmarks certainly restore some faith in Alder Lake-S. It seems that Intel has been playing with the heterogeneous chips to see how far they can go. Alder Lake-S will land in the second half of this year. So there is, admittedly, more than enough time for further improvements. In the meantime, Intel will release its Rocket Lake CPUs to fend off AMD's Ryzen 5000 processors.

Quote:2021 is shaping up to be a big year for Intel in the DIY desktop space, with the company preparing to launch not one, but two generations of desktop processors. Having announced them in January, the 11th Gen Core "Rocket Lake-S" desktop processors in the LGA1200 package, will release to market in March, with the company claiming a restoration in gaming performance leadership away from AMD's Ryzen 5000 series. Sources tell Uniko's Hardware that the company will announce its 12th Gen successor, the Core "Alder Lake-S" in September 2021.

Quote:There has been a good number of Alder Lake benchmarks that have popped up on the radar. Yesterday's Geekbench 5 submission (via Benchleaks), however, gives us a first peek into the hybrid processor's big cores.
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The latest Alder Lake-S sample lacks a name, but given the details that we already know about Intel's hybrid chips, we don't doubt its veracity. The processor under test was operating from a motherboard or test platform based on the upcoming LGA1700 socket. Alder Lake-S is pegged to support both DDR4 and DDR5 memory. Although the submission itself doesn't specify the type of memory, the detailed report revealed the memory running with timings configured to 36-34-34-63. Given the really sloppy timings, the processor was very likely paired with DDR5 memory.

The Alder Lake processor features eight cores and 16 threads, implying that it's rolling with only the 'Big' Golden Cove cores since the Gracemont cores lack Huper-Threading support. The processor appears to feature a 3 GHz base and boost clock, but it may be an early engineering sample. Nonetheless, a previous Alder Lake-S chip emerged with a 4 GHz boost clock. However, it was the 16-core model, alluding to the eight Golden Cove cores and eight Gracemont cores. Will Intel clock the Golden Core-exclusive SKUs higher than the hybrid SKUs, or vice versa? It's still uncertain how Alder Lake-S will play out.

Unfortunately, the Geekbench 5 submission doesn't provide us with any meaningful insight into the Alder Lake-S chip's performance, so it's unclear how it will stack up in our CPU Benchmarks hierarchy. The OpenCL benchmark only taxes the graphics card, which in this case was a GeForce RTX 2080. So, we can't really pass judgment on the Alder Lake-S processor's gaming performance or whether it bottlenecks the Turing-based graphics card or not.

Alder Lake, which is based on Intel's 10nm Enhanced SuperFin process, will enter mass production in the second half of this year. Not surprisingly, the processors will command fresh LGA1700 motherboards with the 600-series chipset and, of course, DDR5 memory. Upgrading to the new platform certainly won't be easy on the pockets, and pricing will be the ultimate determinant on whether or not Alder Lake makes an appearance on our list of Best CPUs for gaming.