Igor’s Lab is reporting that Intel’s upcoming 12th-gen CPUs for desktop codenamed Alder Lake-S will arrive with enthusiast-class SKUs first in 2021 with non-K CPUs possibly getting a 2022 release date. This means that only Intel unlocked -K and -KF CPUs will be available for the CPU family.
Alder Lake-S will also arrive together with Intel’s enthusiast Z690 chipset with lower-tier chipsets H- and B- series arriving around Q1 2022 around CES.
Alder Lake-S will make the leap from traditional CPU cores to hybrid cores mixing in Golden Cove cores and high-efficiency Gracemont cores which is akin to ARM’s big.LITTLE CPU setup. Alder Lake-S is expected to usher in a slew of next-generation I/O including PCIe Gen5 as well as DDR5 memory support. Furthermore, news of ATX12Vo being implemented on certain boards is expected to debut in the Alder Lake-S generation.
