Intel Alder Lake PCI Express 5.0 details pop up

Posted on Thursday, December 31 2020 @ 10:32 CET by Thomas De Maesschalck
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Sometime towards the end of 2021, we can expect Intel's Alder Lake-S architecture. This 10nm chip will be Intel's first desktop processor to adopt a hybrid architecture with up to eight high-performance cores and up to eight energy-efficient cores.

Now there's some fresh information about the PCI Express support of Alder Lake-P, which is a mobile series. Tom's Hardware writes new leaks indicate Alder Lake-P will have a flexible PCI Express layout with PCI Express 5.0 and PCI Express 4.0 lanes:
Alder Lake-P appears to provide a flexible PCIe layout. The processor reportedly offers one PCIe 5.0 x8 lane or two PCIe 4.0 x4 lanes. It would appear that neither interface supports bifurcation, meaning you can't split up the PCIe 5.0 lane or get the PCIe 4.0 lanes to operate at x8. Nonetheless, both are backward compatible with previous-gen devices.
It's not sure if Alder Lake-S will have the same configuration. One PCI Express 5.0 x8 lane offers 32GB/s of bandwidth, which is the equivalent of PCI Express 4.0 x16.


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Thomas De Maesschalck

Thomas has been messing with computer since early childhood and firmly believes the Internet is the best thing since sliced bread. Enjoys playing with new tech, is fascinated by science, and passionate about financial markets. When not behind a computer, he can be found with running shoes on or lifting heavy weights in the weight room.



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