Intel Alder Lake-S bringing 16 big.LITTLE cores and PCIe 4.0 to the table?

A leak on Chinese message boards indicates Intel's future Alder Lake-S processor could feature up to sixteen cores in an ARM big.LITTLE-like configuration. The leak indicates the higher-end models will have eight big cores and eight small cores, while lower-end parts will get just six big cores for example. The big cores will likely take care of high-performance scenarios while the smaller cores will be used for tasks where energy-efficiency is of importance.

Sixteen core parts in this big.LITTLE-like configuration will start at 80W TDP and will range up to 125W TDP (possibly even 150W TDP). Alder Lake-S will support PCI Express 4.0 support and will reportedly use the LGA1700 socket so that means you'll need a new motherboard.

Alder Lake-S is believed to be 12th Gen Core and is rumored to be a 10nm part.

It has also been speculated that Alder Lake S will require a new socket (LGA1700), meaning that the upcoming LGA1200 socket will only be used for Comet Lake S (10th Gen Core) and possibly for Rocket Lake S (11th Gen Core?).

The 12th Gen core series would be the first Intel series to support PCI-Express 4.0. There is no confirmation on DDR5 support. These series are expected to use a 10nm node, although it was never fully confirmed.

Interestingly, not even half a year ago, there was a rumor that 10nm Alder Lake got cancelled in favor of going to 7nm Meteor Lake. Guess we'll find out more later this year.

Via: VideoCardz