AIDA64, the system information, and diagnostics tool has added support for Intel’s Rocket Lake processors along with preliminary support for the Alder Lake hybrid CPUs. Interestingly, the changelog specifically mentions that support for Rocket Lake desktop as well as mobile chips has been added. This may sound all well and good at first, but if you have a good memory you’ll remember that the Rocket mobile lineup was supposedly canceled in favor of 10nm octa-core Tiger Lake-H chips.
This could simply be an error or perhaps the earlier rumor was wrong and we’ll see both Rocket Lake as well as Tiger Lake-based mobile processors in early 2021. In case you’re wondering, there are two primary differences between the two lineups: Firstly, while Rocket Lake is based on the highly mature 14nm node and a variant of the Sunny Cove core architecture, Tiger Lake leverages the 10nm SuperFin node along with the Willow Cove core architecture. Both families utilize the Gen12 Xe graphics architecture and the differences are only on the CPU side with minor variances in the memory subsystem.
The latest version of AIDA64 (6.30) adds an AVX-512 test for Tiger Lake and Rocket Lake processors in a 64-bit environment (OS). This is also a bit unusual as the latter likely won’t come with native AVX-512 support. Intel hasn’t said anything on the matter but there’s a chance that it just might include it as the Sunny Cove based Ice Lake mobile chips do as well. From what we know about Alder Lake-S, it won’t support AVX-512 due to the hybrid core design.
Speaking of the 12th Gen lineup, this update also adds preliminary support for Alder Lake-S. These chips are slated to land in later 2021 or early 2022, along with a new LGA1700 socket. These will be the first hybrid CPUs from Intel leveraging the Golden Cove and Gracemont cores along with the 10nm enhanced SuperFin process.
