While some details about the next-gen Intel Arrow Lake CPUs were always known, new information could surprise many. Including about the manufacturing part.
After Intel released the 14th-gen Raptor Lake Refresh CPUs, everyone knew that its successor would be called Intel Arrow Lake.
What we didn’t know is about anything else about them. Including their specs and other details.
A year ago, we started getting information about a possible lackluster performance increase in the CPU side but rather good performance increase in the iGPU side.
Then we came to know that they will come with 50% more L2 cache. Which means that the L2 cache will be increased from 2MB to 3MB. Which is considered quite good at L2 cache levels.
Since then, we have gotten more rumors, but nothing fully reliable. But now we have more information from more trusted sources.
Intel Arrow Lake Details Leak
A well known leaker Golden Pig Upgrade Package has shared (translated), via @Olrak29_, Tom’s Hardware and VideoCardz huge amount of details about the next-gen Intel Arrow Lake CPUs.
In the post, the leaker is perplexed about the amount of inaccurate details that have come forward so far. So he’s claiming these things.
Intel Core Ultra Series 2, Not Intel 15-Gen
The first detail he has revealed is that Intel Arrow Lake CPUs will not be called Intel 15th-Gen processors. But instead they will be, in all likelihood, be called Intel Core Ultra Series 2 CPUs.
The reason is simple. Intel retired the Core i series branding and replaced it with Intel Core Ultra series. So it cannot be a continuation of the Core i series branding by calling it 15th-gen.
So why series 2. That’s because the first CPU series in the Intel Core Ultra branding was Intel Meteor Lake, which didn’t release on desktops.
No Hyper-threading, No Low Powered E-cores
The second claim is that Intel Arrow Lake CPUs will not come with Hyper-Threading, nor will they come with LP E-cores. Though, NPU is still present and will perform similar to Meteor Lake.
To explain it simply, there are many rumors coming around that Intel is going to remove Hyper-Threading from its processors, two decades after including it.
Instead, Intel will introduce something called Rentable Units. TechPowerUP has a short description for it. Basically, in Rentable Units, the processor will split the CPU instruction and assigning it to either P-cores or E-cores as per the requirement.
As for lack of LP E-cores. It’s something Intel introduced something recently. The LP E-cores are low powered E-cores that, as the name suggest, are even lowered powered E-Cores that don’t use much power and could help in low power use cases. The leaker claims that next-gen Intel desktop CPUs will not use it yet.
NPU too is something that Intel introduced with the Meteor Lake series and is expected to be introduced on desktop CPUs too. NPU, which is the short name for neural processing unit, are specialized chips which are designed for accelerated artificial intelligence at the hardware level.
Think of them similar to what a hardware encoder or decoder is for videos. Except, NPUs are hardware based CPU solution for faster AI. So them being on next-gen Intel processors is welcomed. But their performance is expected to be something to be desired, as it’s expected to be similar to that found in Intel Meteor Lake.
4 Xe GPU Cores
The leaker claims that Intel Arrow Lake CPUs will come with 4 Xe GPU cores. Because these are under 7 cores, the Task Manager will report it as Intel Graphics instead of Intel Arc Graphics. Which is similar to how it is reported for Intel Core Ultra 5 125H mobile CPU.
Intel introduced Arc dedicated graphics card based iGPU inside the CPUs recently. The 4 Xe GPU cores will be a sweet-spot between a powerful and not so powerful iGPU.
It must be mentioned that MSI Claw handled gaming console comes with 8 XE GPU cores (except cheap variant, which comes with 7), so it’s unlikely that 4 Xe GPU cores in the Arrow Lake series will be sufficient for gaming.
No DDR4 Support, Only DDR5 RAM
The leaker mentions that Intel Arrow Lake CPUs will not come with DDR4 support. This is on the expected lines.
Intel introduced the support for DDR5 RAM in the Intel Alder Lake CPU series. However, to keep backward compatibility, it also supported DDR4 RAM.
On the other hand, when AMD released the Ryzen 7000 series, it didn’t come with any DDR4 support and stuck to just DDR5 RAM. Which made the AM5 platform very expensive initially.
But now DDR5 is cheaper and is the only way forward. So Intel removing the dual support for DDR4 and DDR5 and sticking to just DDR5 RAM is quite expected.
TSMC To Make Intel CPU Tile
One of the most important leak shared is that the mobile version of Intel Arrow Lake CPUs would be made by TSMC. Only the desktop version of them will be made by Intel on the 20A (2nm) node, that too only those CPUs in the Core Ultra 5, non-K, 6+8 cores and below range.
Intel introduced new tile based processors with Meteor Lake. It split the processors into different individual tiles like CPU tile, SoC tile, I/O tile and GPU tile.
While it was always known that TSMC will make SoC, I/O and GPU tiles for Intel, it will also make the CPU tile will come as a surprise.
The claims that TSMC was going to make Intel CPU tile too aren’t new. But this new leak almost confirms it.
The surprise is that not only Intel mobile CPU tiles. But in all likelihood, even Intel Arrow Lake desktop CPU tiles of Core Ultra 7 and Core Ultra 9 will be made by TSMC is a massive surprise if it turns out to true.
So basically, Intel would only be branding and designing them, the whole CPU manufacturing could be done by TSMC. Maybe packaging is still done by Intel, with TSMC only making the wafers. But we aren’t aware about specific details.
Why, one might think. The reasons could be that Intel is currently in the process of massively increasing the size of its semiconductor manufacturing fabricating units. Especially on the smaller nodes like 20A (2nm), 18A (1.8nm) sizes.
These new fabricating units take time to run at full scale. As Intel might not be able to scale these units completely at full speeds, Intel could be relying on TSMC to supply them the chips instead for now.
No PCH Design For Intel, Unlike AMD
Finally, the leaker claims that Intel is still not able to do PCH free solutions for desktop and HX platform, which AMD platforms are able to do.
What is means that unlike AMD with it’s AM5 platform, which has been able to move a lot of things, from the chipset to the processor, Intel isn’t able to do that yet with Intel Arrow Lake.
Conclusion
Intel Arrow Lake is possibly the biggest change that desktop CPUs are going to see. These new leaks are the biggest confirmation so far.
Some of these leaks are easily believable, but some of them are quite surprising. For example, branding name change and no DDR4 support is quite fine and just confirms the highly possible things.
However, confirmation of Intel ditching Hyper-Threading and TSMC possibly making flagship Intel Arrow Lake CPUs is massive.
How true are these claims, only time will tell. As for when will Intel Arrow Lake release, it’s expected that they will be released in the later part of this year. Possibly starting with the K-series and then non-K series processors.
