[The Exiled]

Intel Architecture Day 2021: Alder Lake, Golden Cove, and Gracemont Detailed

Alder Lake is set to come to market for both desktop and mobile, and we’re expecting the desktop hardware to start to appear by the end of the year – perhaps a little latter for the rest of the family, but all-in-all we expect Intel is experiencing some serious squeaky bum time regarding to how all the pieces will fit in place at that launch. The two main critical factors are operating systems and memory. Because Alder Lake is Intel’s first full-stack attempt to commercialize a hybrid design, it has had to work closely with Microsoft to enable all the features it needs to make managing a hybrid core design properly beneficial to users. Intel’s new Thread Director Technology couples an integrated microcontroller per P-core and a new API for Windows 11 such that the scheduler in the operating system can take hints about the workflow on the core at a super fine granularity – every 30 microseconds or so.

For memory, as a core design, Alder Lake will have support for DDR4 and DDR5, however only one can be used at any given time. Systems will have to be designed for one or the other – Intel will state that by offering both, OEMs will have the opportunity to use the right memory at the right time for the right cost, however the push to full DDR5 would simplify the platform a lot more. From a design perspective, both the P-core and E-core are showcasing substantial improvements to their designs compared to previous generations. The Golden Cove core also has very solid IPC figure gains, Intel saying 19%, although the fact there are some regressions is interesting. However, for Gracemont, Intel has taken that concept to the extreme. The performance numbers Intel provided were somewhat insane for Gracemont, suggesting +8% performance over Skylake at peak power, or a variety of 40% ST perf/power or 80% MT perf/power against Skylake.

One harsh criticism Intel is going to get back is dropping AVX-512 for this generation. That’s nothing to say if the functionality will come back later, but if rumors are believed and Zen 4 has some AVX-512 support, we might be in a situation where the only latest consumer hardware on the market supporting AVX-512 is from AMD. That would be a turn up.

Izvor: AnandTech