Revision as of 10:43, 11 February 2023

Alder Lake (ADL) is Intel's successor to both Tiger Lake and Rocket Lake, an Intel 7-process based microarchitecture for mainstream workstations, desktops, and mobile devices. Alder Lake is Intel's first 10-nanometer-class proper successor to all prior generation of processors - spanning from ultra-low power to desktop and workstations. The microarchitecture was developed by Intel's R&D center in Haifa, Israel.

For desktop and mobile, Alder Lake is branded as 12th Generation Intel Core i3, Core i5, Core i7, and Core i9 processors.

Codenames

Brands

Intel released Alder Lake under 3 main brand families for mainstream workstations, desktops, and mobile.

Logo	Family	General Description	Differentiating Features
			Cores	HT	AVX	AVX2	TBT	TBMT
	Core i3	Low-end Performance	4 (4+0)	✔	✔	✔	✔	✘
	Core i5	Mid-range Performance	10 (6+4) 6 (6+0)	✔	✔	✔	✔	✘
	Core i7	High-end Performance	12 (8+4)	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔
	Core i9	Extreme Performance	16 (8+8)	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔

Process Technology

Intel is planning Alder Lake to be built on an improved Intel 7 node (previously 10nm Enhanced SuperFin (ESF)). This will be the case for both the powerful Golden Cove cores, and Gracemont cores.

Compiler support

CPUID

History

In January 2021 Intel teased Alder Lake in their CES 2021 speech. On the July 26th's Intel Accelerated webcast, CEO Pat Gelsinger hinted at the Alder Lake lineup being released at a future event called "Intel Innovation" which aired between October 27-28th.

Architecture

Key changes from Tiger Lake

• Core
  • Hybrid Golden Cove (performance core) & Gracemont (efficiency core) microarchitecture
  • Higher IPC(Intel self-reported 19% IPC)
  • Intel 7 node
• Memory
  • Support for DDR5
  • Speeds of at least 4800MHz, up to 5600MHz
• Improved power delivery system

Overview

Alder Lake departs from all prior Intel SoCs by featuring the company's first mainstream implementation of a single-ISA heterogeneous multi-core microarchitecture. While not the first (Lakefield was), Alder Lake is the first to target all market segments from mobile to desktop and workstation. The overall microarchitecture builds on its predecessor, Tigerlake but expends on its by integrating two vastly different types of cores - up to eight big cores based on the Golden Cove microarchitecture and up to eight small cores based on the Gracemont microarchitecture. The big cores are designed to push single-thread performance while the small cores are designed to push multi-thread power efficiency. By finely orchestrating thread scheduling based on performance demand, Alder Lake is able to provide both higher multi-threading performance-efficiency and better single-thread performance.

SoC design

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Die

Alder Lake comes in four die variants depending on the market segment.

ADL-S (8P+8E)

• 8 performance cores + 8 efficiency cores
• 32 EU gpu (256 shaders)
• Intel 7 process
• 10.5 mm x 20.5 mm
  • 215.25 mm² die size

ADL-S (6P+0E)

• 6 performance cores, no efficiency cores
• 32 EU gpu (256 shaders)
• Intel 7 process
• 10.5 mm x 15.5 mm
  • 162.75 mm² die size

Additional Shots