Continuing Intel’s tradition of previewing their new products prior to the actual embargo, we are now allowed to share with you information regarding Intel’s new upcoming CPUs. Intel has announced that 12th-generation Intel Core CPUs aka Alder Lake will debut on desktop and we will have 6 unlocked SKUs at launch. Intel brands the 12th-gen Core CPUs as the “best gaming processors in the world” while also claiming improved experience and performance that will please content creators as well as lifting up overclocking expectations.
In this article we’ll cover details regarding the new 12th-gen Core CPUs, what to expect and more information regarding the hybrid architecture that will debut with Alder Lake. Reviews will be up November 4th and in those reviews we will be directing readers to this article.
That said, let’s jump right in.
Intel: The story so far…
Intel has a lot riding on this release and newly-appointed CEO Pat Gelsinger has been busy making the rounds to turn things around for Intel since he stepped into his new role earlier this year. Pat Gelsinger has been very vocal about his plans and most of his actions as of taking duty has been under the microscope from the tech media including Intel entering the contract foundry business where they’ll be providing foundry services for customers like Amazon. Pat has also been talking to people from across the globe regarding expanding Intel’s foreign foundries and he’s been eyeing Europe to further solidify not only Intel but the West’s independence over Taiwan’s TSMC dominion over the global chip supply.
For us consumers though, good will can only be established with good products and Alder Lake will be the first new product under Pat Gelsinger’s term. That being said, Intel’s first step into gaining back their leadership performance in the mainstream desktop space rides on the success of Alder Lake.
AMD has decidedly beat Intel with their Zen 3 architecture both in single-threaded and multi-threaded applications. Ryzen has been a growing threat to Intel since the first Zen release back in 2017, decidedly putting Intel in bad light with their insistence on keeping core counts low whilst AMD offers more and more cores. This may be partly due to their manufacturing woes to transition to 10nm, ending their tick-tock cycle. With 2020 proving to be a tough year for all but a boon for digitalization in all aspects of life, Intel poured their efforts into providing what they have for now and prolonging 14nm by just one more generation.
This year, Intel has made many bold announcements aside from their IDM 2.0 strategy: Intel will starting tapping into 3rd-party foundries to make their chips while they optimize their own. Intel has also announced their entry into the discrete graphics with their Arc GPU brand. Intel has also rebranded their node naming, further diluting into the marketing mess that is node names with their 10nm Enhanced SuperFin process now known as the Intel 7 process. It has been noted that Intel has always had denser transistor counts against smaller nodes from other foundries.
