Intel Adler Lake CPU with P and E cores | Hacker News Reader

Intel Adler Lake CPU with P and E cores

anandtech.com

24 pointssnider5 comments

1. Base Power and Turbo Power. Finally a simple term so we dont have to constantly argue about TDP and PL1 / PL2. Which still happens fairly often on HN. And some of us have been ranting about this for almost a decade.

2. + 19% IPC improvement vs 11900K which is basically an Icelake. Or ~10% improvement over TigerLake ( Which was never made available on Desktop )

3. PCI-E 5 and DDR5. Intel went from falling behind in PCI-E offering to leaping ahead of AMD. We should expect PCI-E 5.0 SSD shipping soon after ( 14 - 16GBps )

4. Chipset is on 14nm. No USB 4 or Thunderbolt 4. But integrated WiFi 6E MAC.

5. For those interested, this put Alder Lake, on a Desktop Platform, with Intel 7nm High Performance Node, at roughly 20-25W per Performance Core. With a ( non-verified ) Geekbench Score fairly similar ( ~6% faster ) to M1 HP Core. The Apple M1, on a TSMC 5nm Low Power node, at roughly 5W per core.

6. It will be interesting to see how the new efficiency cores perform. Which is basically a new generation Atom Core. These were previously scheduled for a Graviton like 64 - 128 Core chip on server. Not sure if that is still the case with Intel's chiplet strategy or what they called Tiles.

7. Worth wondering, Alder Lake was originally scheduled on Intel 7nm or what is now called Intel 4/3nm in 2019. What would happen had Intel not been so badly managed? But if that didn't happen, Pat Gelsinger may never be back at Intel.

8. AMD Zen 4, also with DDR5 and PCI-E 5.0 will be coming in late 2022. Depending on Intel's pace of execution, which seems to be getting better and better every time Pat Gelsinger provides an update, AMD may have some tough competition.

It will be exciting when proper reviews are out.

Intel is claiming performance at 65W comparable to 10th gen Intel using 250W, up to 19% performance per core, and efficiently improved multi-thread performance using the efficiency cores.

But... we will have to wait for reviews. CPUs officially available to buy November 4th.

A 4x perf/W improvement on multithreaded workloads (well, a multithreaded workload at least) is pretty impressive. But, its important to note that that is comparing to Rocket Lake, a stopgap processor family manufactured on Intel's old 14nm process. Alder Lake is "Intel 7" (or third generation 10nm before the rename - supposedly similar performance to TSMC N7).

Personally, I'm more interested in their laptop CPUs where efficiency is more important. But, there is presumably less to be gained since Intel's current Tiger Lake platform is already on their second generation 10nm process. Intel said today that Alder Lake laptop CPUs are shipping next month, but they still havent been formally announced.

If you take into consideration total cost of ownership (CPU, MB, DDR5) I wonder how does its price performance ratio compare with Zen 3.

If Intel won't have a better price / performance, I don't see a reason to buy it. Even if performance is a bit better.

Athlon Thunderbird 900Mhz I've bought in 2000 had the same launch price as Core i9 12900k. Inflation is 59%.

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