12th Generation: Intel Unveils Preview of Its Alder Lake Processors

Last Thursday (19), Intel shared new information about its 12th generation of processors, “Alder Lake”. The announcement occurred during the owner event Architecture Day this year, revealing some news and confirming part of the past rumors about the company.

The highlight of the preview was the official presentation of “Intel’s hybrid technology”, which will seek greater efficiency instead of just making its cores more powerful and with higher frequency rates. To achieve the feat, the company will use a combination of performance-oriented and “economy” cores.

According to Intel, however, this generation’s performance cores (dubbed “Golden Cove”) will be the most powerful ever developed, but it didn’t offer substantial comparative data. Similarly, the efficiency cores have been codenamed “Gracemont” and promise 40% more performance using the same energy as the Skylake Generation.

Greater cross-platform compatibility

Last year, Intel even offered, in a way, hybrid architecture processors with its Lakefield line. However, these models had limited performance and were aimed at portable devices such as tablets and ultra-light notebooks. Now, with the new approach, the company will offer an extensive range of more powerful and efficient options, having between 9W and 125W of energy consumption.

Despite not having announced specific models, Intel detailed how will be the arrangement of cores according to their platforms. In the Alder Lake Generation, the processors can have up to 16 cores, being 8 for performance and 8 for efficiency, reaching a total of 24 threads.

To top it off, Intel’s new processors will, according to the announcement, support new industry-first features, including DDR5 RAM, 5th Generation PCIe, Thunderbolt 4, and Wi-Fi 6. models will also support DDR4, LP5 and LP4x memory technologies.

The entire suite must be optimized by Thread Director, Intel’s new scheduling technology. The novelty will be responsible for distributing the operating system tasks to the cores, according to their demand and priority, designed to ensure the “best possible performance” in the Windows 11.

Intel’s new 12th Generation processors, Alder Lake, are expected to hit the market in the last quarter of this year.