Intel Alder Lake Mobile is the next generation of mobile CPUs. Intel is accelerating the development of new processing platforms and the twelfth generation ‘Alder Lake’ will undoubtedly be the most interesting and innovative due to its hybrid architecture and its goal of closing the transition to 10-nanometer manufacturing technology processes.
The Alder Lake Mobile will be the CPUs for laptops and probably where the virtues of the new architecture will be best highlighted, combining high-performance CPU processing cores with other types of cores of lower power, but with greater energy efficiency to balance performance, consumption and also the final sale price.
Intel has already started to use this type of design in the ‘Lakefield’ for foldable such as the Surface Neo and it will ring a bell because the general idea follows the big.LITTLE design philosophy proposed by ARM and massively used for years in devices such as smartphones and tablets. The novelty here is to do it in x86 architecture and with higher performance chips than ARM in cell phones.
Intel Alder Lake Mobile versions
According to the leaked slide, Intel’s twelfth generation of CPUs for mobile devices will be divided into three main categories and five performance segments, each intended for a different product:
Alder Lake M. The first and least powerful will be divided into two series M5 and U9, with the power consumption of 5W and 9W respectively. They will be used for 2-in-1s, convertibles, and in general ultra-thin notebook designs. According to the leaked product stack, the Alder Lake-M5 will offer 1 high-performance ‘Golden Cove’ core and up to 4 lower performance, but more efficient Golden Cove cores. The U9 series will feature up to 2 high-performance cores and up to 8 smaller cores.
Alder Lake P. The middle models will be divided into three series according to performance, U15, U28, and H45, with a respective power consumption of 15, 28, and 45 Watts. The first will be offered with up to 2 large cores and up to 8 small cores, while the U28s will be a new addition to Intel’s mobile lineup with up to 6 large cores and up to 8 small cores.
The H45 would be the most powerful, with the same core count as the previous one, 6 large cores and up to 8 small cores, but with higher working frequencies. All will have integrated Intel Xe next-generation graphics with 96 execution units, indicating that these chips will be used without dedicated graphics.
Alder Lake S. These will be the higher performance versions of the Alder Lake Mobile and will be intended for large gaming laptops or basic workstations that do not leap the Xeon. The H55 as the name suggests will have a 55W TDP. With 8 high-performance physical cores and another 8 efficient Golden Cove cores, they will also have integrated graphics, but will only have 32 execution units. This indicates that computers with these processors will have additional dedicated graphics from NVIDIA or AMD, or the same from Intel if they achieve sufficient performance.
These Alder Lake Mobile are interesting for the use of a hybrid architecture and other new technologies with the jump to LPDDR5 RAM and PCIe 5.0 interface. They point to launch later this year, although we will have to wait for Intel’s decision as the Tiger Lake launches are still in progress and Intel is going to accumulate launches in a short period due to the problematic transition to 10-nanometer manufacturing processes.
If you get lost with Intel’s catalog we recommend reading our last special where we review the current platforms, those that are coming soon as these Alder Lake Mobile, and those that Intel has discontinued, but you can still find on sale.
