Could Intel’s Next Arrow Lake Processor Deliver a Massive 45% CPI Boost Over 12th Gen Alder Lake (opens in a new tab) family? That would be a huge performance boost per core and per clock, and that’s exactly what YouTube channel RedGamingTech is claiming for Intel’s upcoming desktop architecture.
To be clear, Arrow Lake is 100% a thing. It’s been listed on Intel’s public roadmaps, mentioned in earnings calls, the lot. Right now we know that it will definitely happen next year. Intel has also confirmed that it will be part of a new generation of so-called “disaggregated” processors, which is another way of saying that it will be built from a number of tiles, or chiplets, like processors. desktop from AMD.
What we haven’t heard from Intel is any indication of performance expectations. Enter RedGamingTech (opens in a new tab). They claim that Arrow Lake will deliver a massive 45% increase in CPI over Alder Lake and therefore a similar improvement over last 13th Generation Raptor Lake (opens in a new tab) chips, whose architecture is largely the same as that of Alder Lake.
IPC refers to instructions per clock, and what we’re really talking about here is the performance offered for a single software thread at a given clock speed from one of Arrow Lake’s performance cores. In other words, that doesn’t mean Arrow Lake will deliver 45% more performance overall.
It could be more, it could even be less than that, even if the 45% increase in the CPI is accurate. Arrow Lake is said to sport Lion Cove Performance cores and Skymont Efficiency cores. No IPC improvement numbers have been associated with these new efficiency cores, and they will of course play a major role in determining the overall performance of the new processor.
Clock speeds are obviously another major factor, as is the number of cores. There’s no firm info on either from Intel, although RedGamingTech says Arrow Lake was originally meant to offer eight P cores and 32 E cores, but has since been downgraded to the same eight cores. P and 16 E-account as Raptor Lake. .
Even if that’s true, assuming Arrow Lake can at least match Raptor Lake for clocks, it’s going to be a blisteringly fast processor. If it brings more electronic cores than Raptor, it will seriously fly for multi-threaded tasks.
At this point, you might be wondering where meteor lake (opens in a new tab) fits into all of this, given that it’s also on Intel’s official roadmaps and is expected to go into production later this year, in other words, before Arrow Lake. Well, as we’ve said many times, Meteor Lake has always felt like a mobile-only architecture, like Intel’s Ice Lake and Tiger Lake chips.
The rumor that Meteor Lake will be limited to six performance cores doesn’t mean Intel will regress from eight performance cores on the desktop, or even in laptops. Instead, Meteor Lake chips will be aimed at thin and light laptops, with Raptor Lake and an upcoming Raptor Lake refresh doing the heavy lifting in the desktop and also present in high-performance laptops.
Incidentally, it’s not yet clear where Arrow Lake will fit into Intel’s generational nomenclature. Raptor Lake’s current chips are 13th generation. So you can assume Arrow Lake will be 14th gen. But a Raptor Lake refresh is due later this year and could get the 14th-gen tag.
And what about Meteor Lake? Our guess is that the Raptor Lake and Meteor Lake refresh will be dubbed 14th Gen and Arrow Lake will get the 15th Gen tag. But Intel’s “Gen” tags never really meant much and confused and obscured as much as they helped useful product identification.
Either way, you have it. Intel’s Arrow Lake chips might just be a major step up from the best desktop processors available today. If this latest information is accurate, AMD’s next-gen Zen 5-based Ryzen processors will need to be special enough just to keep up, let alone beat Arrow Lake.
And they just might be so special Zen 5 (opens in a new tab) expected to be AMD’s first hybrid architecture with high-performance, high-efficiency cores. But that’s a story for another day.