Microsoft may be using Intel’s 12th-gen processor platform, also known as Alder Lake, to launch its next version of Windows this fall. While the 12th-gen Alder Lake was previously expected to arrive in November on desktops, Intel may be moving up the launch of Alder Lake for desktop to October, according to the latest rumors, to coincide with the debut of the next release of Microsoft’s Windows operating system.
“The next Windows Version comes with massive scheduling upgrades, and it seems to be coming out around Alder Lake K’s launch,” Moore’s Law is Dead, which has a YouTube channel with the same name, wrote in a tweet. “Not a coincidence people … And yes — Microsoft will unveil ‘Windows 11’ (or whatever they call it) June 24. It’s a new Windows.”
Intel had previewed Alder Lake earlier this year at CES, noting that the new silicon will come with a hybrid design. Unlike previous desktop processors, Alder Lake will utilize a heterogeneous mix of cores, combining high-efficiency and high-performance cores. If the new launch timing is accurate, Microsoft and Intel likely would have worked closely together, according to Hot Hardware, to optimize the new release of Windows for the 12th-gen platform. Early leaks suggest that Alder Lake will deliver a 20% performance improvement over prior designs on single-threaded performance. The performance uplift goes as high as 100% for multithreaded performance.
In addition to the new hybrid architecture, Alder Lake will also support DDR5 memory and PCIe 5.0.
In terms of the next release of Windows, Microsoft had sent out a teaser that it will unveil its new release on June 24. The software giant based in Redmond, Washington, did not specify if the release will be a continuation of Windows 10 or if it will shift to a new numbering scheme and call it Windows 11 — or perhaps something else entirely.
Though Microsoft will announce and preview what’s to come with this next release of Windows, the operating system may not be commercially available until the fall, so the timing meshes well with the rumored earlier-than-anticipated launch of Alder Lake. Some are expecting that this new iteration of Windows will bring the much-anticipated Sun Valley visual overhaul to the platform, and if accurate, Alder Lake will be among the first crop of new processors to take advantage of all the changes coming to Microsoft’s operating system.