CPUs

Intel Lakefield “Hybrid CPU” Specs Announced: 4+1 Cores, Gen11 iGPU & 7W TDP

Intel yesterday announced the official specs of its first “hybrid” CPU, codenamed Lakefield. There are a lot of firsts with this one, featuring the Foveros 3D stacking technology and a big.LITTLE-like compute design. You get four Tremont cores (low power) and one Sunny Cove (high-perf) core for always-on levels of battery life. According to Intel, the Lakefield SoC has a standby power as low as 2.5mW, 91% lower than the previous Blue chip based on the small Goldmont cores.

There are two Lakefield SoCs that feature the same 4+1 core design with varying clock speeds and a Gen11 based iGPU. Both designs come with 8GB of LPDDR4 DRAM running at 4267MHz, stacked above the compute die. At launch, Lakefield will debut in just two devices, namely the Samsung Galaxy Book S and the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 fold, followed by the MS Surface Book Neo later this year.

LakefieldCoresBase
Freq
1C
Turbo
nT
Turbo
Gen11
IGP
IGP
Freq
DRAM
LP4
TDP
i5-L16G71+414003000180064 EUs50042677 W
i3-L13G41+48002800130048 EUs50042677 W

The Lakefield SoCs follow Intel’s traditional naming scheme with the lower-end model dubbed the Core i3-L13G4 and the higher-end variant being the Core i5-L16G7. Both chips feature the same core design and are distinguished by different clock speeds and the accompanying iGPUs. The former features considerably lower base as well as boost clocks. The graphics core includes 48 EUs for the Core i3-L13G4 and 64 EUs for the L16G7, both running at 500MHz.

Both the CPUs have a TDP of 7W, but the PL2 limits are going to be likely higher at around 12W or 15W. Furthermore, the cache hierarchy of the chips appears to be different from usual Intel chips. All five cores (Tremont and Sunny Cove) get a shared 4MB L3 cache stash, but at the moment, Intel hasn’t said anything about the L2 and L1 caches.

Furthermore, it appears that AVX-512 workloads that the newer Ice Lake chips feature won’t be natively supported on Lakefield. This is likely due to the higher-power draw incurred by these wider instructions.

At the moment, it seems that just like Ice Lake, Lakefield based devices will launch in limited numbers in the US and Europe. We most likely won’t see an APAC launch which is no surprise considering that Ice Lake laptops are still hard to find in the region.

Areej Syed

Processors, PC gaming, and the past. I have been writing about computer hardware for over seven years with more than 5000 published articles. Started off during engineering college and haven't stopped since. Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Divinity, Torment, Baldur's Gate and so much more... Contact: areejs12@hardwaretimes.com.
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