At Intel’s 2020 Architectural Day, the company revealed its entire client and enterprise roadmap for at least the two coming years. On the client-side, the primary new product is Alder Lake which Intel has confirmed will be a hybrid SoC, similar to Lakefield. Although we’re not sure whether 3D Packaging “Foveros” will be present on the desktop chips, the chances are slim. Regardless, it’s more or less certain that the hybrid or Big-Little configuration will make its way across both the desktop as well as mobile lineups.
While Lakefield consisted of the Sunny Cove cores for high-performance tasks while the Tremont core for low-power workloads, Alder Lake will be a whole generation apart. Up to 16 Golden Cove cores and Gracemont cores will be paired together in Intel’s 12th Gen processor lineup.
Intel didn’t say anything about the node, but these CPUs are expected to be fabbed on its 10nm+++ process. They are expected to support the PCIe 4.0/5.0 standard, a step up from 11th Gen Rocket Lake-S as well as DDR5 memory.
It’ll be interesting to see if the addition of low-power Gracement cores help in terms of power efficiency and how the x86 Eco-system adjusts to this radical change.
Alongside Alder Lake, the server and Data Center segment will see the Sapphire Rapids launch. Like the former, it’ll be fabbed on the third iteration of the 10nm node with support for PCIe 5.0, DDR5, and CXL 1.1 interconnect. It’s unclear whether Alder Lake will stick to PCIe 4.0 like Rocket Lake-S or make the transition to PCIe 5.0 as well. Considering that the lineup will require the new LGA1700 socket, it would make sense if Intel upgraded both the memory and I/O to DDR5 and PCIe 5.0, respectively.
