Rocket Lake desktop chips have only just launched, but we're already looking ahead to the next generation of Intel silicon, codenamed Alder Lake.
It was an unusual move from Intel, given that 11th-gen the 11th-gen 'Rocket Lake' chips hadn't launched at the time. However, the inclusion of mobile chips means Alder Lake can be seen more as the true successor to 2020's Tiger Lake. Here's what you can expect from the next generation of Intel silicon.
Intel Alder Lake (12th-gen) Release Date
At the company's CES press conference and in an official newsroom post, Intel revealed that the Alder Lake chips will be due "in (the) second half of 2021". That's anytime from July onwards, but a more specific release date isn't yet known.
With Tiger Lake CPUs launching in September 2020, there's a chance that Alder Lake will officially launch around the same time in 2021. Indeed, an article on Hong-Kong based tech site HKEPC suggests they'll arrive in September 2021, although VideoCardz has opted for a more general 'Q4 2021'. This might just be the date of the announcement, however, with an earlier VideoCardz article suggesting they won't be available to buy until December 2021.
Intel Alder Lake (12th-gen) Price
Price is usually one of the last things to be revealed, so it's no surprise that there's no news in this area. The recommended pricing of the current 'Comet Lake' CPUs give a rough indication of how much you can expect to pay:
- Core i7-10710U – US$443 (approx. £325)
- Core i7-10510U – US$409 (approx. £300)
- Core i5-10210U – US$297 (approx. £220)
- Core i3-10110U – US$281 (approx. £205)
Intel also the Alder Lake CPUs as "a significant breakthrough", suggesting there may be a price increase. We're expecting Alder Lake mobile chips, too, but these are designed to be integrated into devices and so dependent on manufacturer pricing.
How Will Alder Lake And Rocket Lake Desktop Chips Differ?
The key difference will be target market, which shapes how the chips are designed. As Intel itself says, Rocket Lake chips will be primarily aimed at gamers and PC enthusiasts who want the absolute best performance on offer - but it'll likely have a price to match.
Alder Lake looks like it'll take a different approach, in order to appeal more to everyday consumers. Unlike Rocket Lake, it looks to focus just as much on power efficiency as performance, "combining high-performance cores and high-efficiency cores into a single product". The latter should lead to big improvements in battery life, so long as there aren't wholesale changes to the rest of the chip.
Sound familiar? ARM-based processors have historically sacrificed slightly on performance in order to maximise power efficiency, although Apple's M1 chip suggests it may be possible to have the best of both worlds.
With AMD and Microsoft both exploring ARM-based CPUs too, it's no surprise that Intel wants a piece of the action. Alder Lake doesn't quite fall into the same category, but it's clear the company sees a future in this type of chip.
Will There Be Alder Lake Laptop Chips?
Yes, and all signs point to them being a direct successor to 2020's Tiger Lake. Known as Alder Lake-P, these will be designed to power the next generation of Windows laptops and tablets. Unlike the desktop chips, Intel is aiming to make these processors the most capable you can find in any laptop, although it looks set to face stiff competition from AMD once again.
Intel Alder Lake (12th-gen) Spec News
Despite it being quite a few months before the expected release date, we already have plenty of news about Alder Lake, including from Intel itself.
As mentioned above, Intel says the system-on-a-chip (SoC) will combine high-performance and high-efficiency cores into one product. The company also speaks of "a significant breakthrough in x86 architecture", suggesting it will be able to overcome some of the compatibility issues suffered by existing ARM-based CPUs.
It will still be based on the 10nm process, although this will be an improved version of Intel's existing SuperFin technology. Intel is expected to move to 7nm from 2022 onwards. Alder Lake wasn't the company's announcement at CES, so the only other official news is that there will be "faster transistors".
The biggest leak so far then comes courtesy of VideoCardz, which has revealed a host of key Alder Lake specs. Interestingly, this appears to have come from a leaked internal presentation.
A shift to new Golden Core Cove design looks set to bring big performance gains. Intel says this will be an improvement of up to 20% in single-core and up to 2x for multi-thread. However, it's not clear whether the reference baseline here is Rocket Lake or Tiger Lake.
Despite not being ARM-based chips per se, Alder Lake will use ARM's big.LITTLE architecture. This includes both performance and power efficiency cores on the same chip, as is the case on Apple's M1 chip. In addition to performance gains, this should help extend the battery life of Alder Lake-powered PCs.
Elsewhere, we also have 'confirmation' that Alder Lake will support both Gen 4 and Gen 5 PCIe Express, as well as Thunderbolt 4 and DDR4/DDR5 memory.
Here's the summary slide that VideoCardz has obtained:
Intel Corporation AlderLake-S ADP-S DRR4 CRB
— APISAK (@TUM_APISAK) December 29, 2020
Intel 0000
Processor, 16 Cores, 24 Threads
GenuineIntel Family 6 Model 151 Stepping 0https://t.co/5MX0H3U9UP pic.twitter.com/Z0ewFGqeEV
Another popular component Twitter leaker has also got in the act, with @momomo_us suggesting Alder Lake will come with DDR5 support:
SiSoftware
— 188号 (@momomo_us) January 19, 2021
Intel Alder Lake Client Platform (Intel AlderLake-S ADP-S DDR5 UDIMM CRB)https://t.co/7VjKuRDrR6
Genuine Intel 0000 1.80GHz (16C 32T 1.8GHz/4GHz, 10x 1.25MB L2, 30MB L3)
Intel AlderLake-S Mobile Graphics Controller (256S 32C SM3.0 1.5GHz, 512kB L2, 12.8GB) pic.twitter.com/G6QAPeQsFd
Intel is yet to confirm or deny this information, but moving to the latest RAM standard would enable double the bandwidth and so much faster speeds. The image above also hinted that Alder Lake will hit a maximum frequency of 4.0GHz. That's a bit lower than the 5.3GHz Intel says Rocket Lake will be capable of, but we have to remember that these chips are designed to balance performance with power efficiency. As a result, we're excited to see the battery life figures Alder Lake is capable of.
The SiSoftware Sandra software detailed above has since been updated to support three different types of Alder Lake processor. As KitGuru reports, Alder Lake-S will be for desktops, Alder Lake-P for laptops and Alder Lake-M for lower-powered devices. This development is potentially significant, as it's the first time the entries have been free of typos. The article goes on to say that the M and P series will both likely be based on the x86 architecture.
A recent benchmark leak goes a step further, suggesting the P series will include a new high-end chip with 14 cores and 20 threads:
[GB5 GPU] Both unknown
— Benchleaks (@BenchLeaks) February 1, 2021
CPU: Genuine Intel 0000 0.80GHz (14C 20T)
Min/Max/Avg: 2837/4635/4280 MHz
GPU: Intel AlderLake-P Mobile Graphics Controller
API: Open CL
Score: 13446, -84.2% vs RTX 2070
GPU Mem: 6.31 GBhttps://t.co/BnjXLeRDRf
Given the fact that the core count on Intel chips usually goes up by the power of 2 (2, 4, 8, 16), this seems unusual.
The chips above look set to be just two of the many processors that look set to complete the Alder Lake lineup. Twitter leaker @9550pro posted what looks like an official guide to the mobile range:
Alder Lake Mobile pic.twitter.com/NXJ0Hk1EJb
— HXL (@9550pro) March 6, 2021
The key takeaway here is the sheer diversity of Alder Lake's mobile chips, with everything from the tablet-focused 5W M5 to the 55W 'muscle' H55. Those and the performance-focused U28 are all new to the range.
A subsequent Geekbench result reported by Videocardz suggests the high-end 16 core, 24 thread chip is already outperforming the current i9-9900K processor. The base frequency of 2.2GHz is the highest we've seen so far in benchmarks. However, as the article goes on to say, the 27.2GHz figure for maximum frequency is clearly an error, with the figure likely to be somewhere between 2.7 and 3.4GHz.
We'll update this article once we know more about Alder Lake. In the meantime, check out our guide to the recently-launched 11th-gen Rocket Lake desktop CPUs. We're also already looking ahead to 13th-gen Raptor Lake processors, expected to launch in 2022.
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