Though Intel already previewed its Alder Lake processors — the architecture behind the company’s upcoming 12th-gen silicon launching later this year — we are learning more about the CPU through a series of recent leaks and unofficial benchmarks. The latest leak suggests that Intel’s 16-core processor with 32 threads could top out with a clock speed of 4GHz, and that the processor will support DDR5-4800 memory.
The latest leak comes by way of Twitter user @momomo_us, who spotted the detailed listing for Alder Lake on the SiSoftware database. The database revealed that Alder Lake has a base clock speed of 1.8GHz, but the desktop processor can reach speeds of 4GHz with boost.
The benchmark listed this early sample of Alder Lake with “Good performance,” showing that it had beat 79.43% of other ranked processors. This is still a pre-release chip, so performance will likely continue to change until Intel finalizes the chip.
Additional specifications for this particular Alder Lake desktop configuration include 10x 1.25MB of L2 cache and 30MB of L3 cache. It appears that Intel had increased the amount of L3 cache by a third — or 10MB — when compared against the 10th-Gen Core i9-10900K. While it supports 32 threads, it appears that the SiSoftware database had mistakenly listed Alder Lake with 32 threads.
When Intel previewed its upcoming processor at CES, the company stated that Alder Lake will use a heterogenous mix of cores by combining high performance and high efficiency cores on a single processor. Alder Lake will be Intel’s first processor to be manufactured using the 10nm SuperFin process, and it is expected to launch in 2021 with support for PCI Gen5 and DDR5 memory. The chip is also expected to support the new Wi-Fi 6E standard.
Based on SiSilicon’s listing, we can deduce that the CPU will have 32 execution units, or EUs, and 256 shading units clocked at 1.5GHz, according to Videocardz. The database also showed an Alder Lake-S processor with a mobile graphics controller, so it’s unclear what Intel’s plans are for graphics support with this chipset.
Compared to prior leaks, it appears that the memory bandwidth has increased. The listing details memory bandwidth at 34.21 GBps.
Intel stated that the new processor family will come with faster transistors and improved MIM capacitors. On mobile, Alder Lake will succeed the current 11th-gen Tiger Lake processor.