Intel Alder Lake to use Thread Director for better scheduling

Intel made a number of announcements today, we'll start with the news about Alder Lake. The chip giant is pitching the hybrid architecture of Alder Lake as the biggest architectural shift in a generation for the x86 market. Alder Lake will combine Performance cores with Efficient cores. To optimize performance, Alder Lake will use a new Thread Director.

Alder Lake is made on the Intel 7 node and will ship this Fall. The Performance cores are Golden Cove based while the Efficient cores are based on Gracemont. Other novelties of Alder Lake include PCI Express 5.0 and DDR5 support. The desktop version of Alder Lake will require a motherboard with LGA1700 socket. There will be SKUs from 9W to 125W.

x86 Architectures: With its Efficient-core and its Performance-core, Intel signals the biggest architectural shift in a generation for x86 central processing units. The Efficient-core microarchitecture is designed for throughput efficiency and efficient offloading of background tasks for multitasking. It runs at low voltage and creates headroom to increase frequency and ramp up performance for more demanding workloads. The Performance-core microarchitecture is designed for speed, the highest performing CPU core Intel has built. It pushes the limits of low latency and single-threaded application performance and provides a significant boost at high-power efficiency that can better support large applications.

Client Computing – “Alder Lake,” Intel Thread Director: Intel’s next-generation client architecture, code-named “Alder Lake,” is Intel’s first performance hybrid architecture. Alder Lake integrates a Performance-core and an Efficient-core to provide significant performance across all workload types. For the cores to work seamlessly with the operating system, Intel developed Intel® Thread Director. Built directly into the core, Thread Director empowers the operating system to place the right thread on the right core at the right time. Alder Lake will deliver performance that scales to support all client segments from ultra-portable laptops to enthusiast and commercial desktops.