It was announced in November 2021 that Intel Alder Lake would use a hybrid architecture combining performance and efficiency cores, similar to ARM big.LITTLE. This was Intel's second hybrid architecture, after the mobile-only Lakefield released in June 2020. While the desktop Alder Lake processors were already on the market by January 2022, the mobile processors were not, although release was expected early that year. Starting cost were USD $289 for the Core i5-12600K. Gracemont was the name given to the efficiency cores, while Golden Cove cores were set for tasks such as gaming and video processing. First laptop tests were performed later that month, with PCMag positively reviewing the Core i9-12900HK, stating the H series represented "Intel's enthusiast line," with "the same hybrid designs" also in the P-series and U-series chips to come out later that year.
In April 2022, press reported on "hints" that Intel was working on Alder Lake-X. Intel officially announced the HX processor series on May 10, 2022, including Core i5, Core i7 and Core i9 models, when Intel announced "seven new mobile processors for the 12th Gen Intel Core mobile family at its Intel Vision event. With the lineup based on Intel's desktop Alder Lake chips, it was named the Alder Lake-HX series, or 12th-gen Core HX, with the Core i9-12950HX as the flagship and Intel's first 16-core chip designed for laptops.
For the Alder Lake generation, Intel produced 4 different dies. Each die has a different number of P-cores (P) and E-cores (E) and GPU Execution Units.
Alder Lake requires special support from the operating system due to its relatively unusual-for-x86 hybrid nature. For software unable to be upgraded, a UEFI-provided compatibility mode may be used to disable the E-cores; it is enabled by the user turning on scroll lock.
There are minor differences between the behavior of the two cores with regard to an undefined overflow flag in certain bitwise operations.
Alder Lake's CPU topology has performance implications, especially for gaming environments where the developers are not used to NUMA setups. Microsoft added support for Intel Thread Director (ITD) in Windows 11. A wide variety of inputs, including whether a process' window is in the foreground, feeds into the ITD. The ITD can function to a lesser extent with the OS providing less or no cooperation. Support in Linux is merged in kernel 5.18 but this alone is not sufficient until the kernel gets hints from userspace in order to schedule tasks to run on certain types of cores. Windows 10 version 21H2 and later Windows 10 has support for Intel Thread Director, but such support is limited.
These CPUs feature 35 W minimum assured, 45 W base and 157 W maximum turbo power consumption.
These CPUs feature 35 W minimum assured, 45 W base and 95 W (Core i5) or 115 W (Core i7/i9) maximum turbo power consumption.
These CPUs feature 20 W minimum assured, 28 W base and 64 W maximum turbo power consumption.
Most of these processors are identical to the corresponding Alder Lake-H and Alder Lake-U processors (without the L suffix) listed above.
These CPUs feature 35 W minimum assured, 45 W base and 65 W maximum assured power consumption.
These CPUs feature 12 W minimum assured, 15 W base and 28 W maximum assured power consumption.
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Price is Recommended Customer Price (RCP) at launch. RCP is the trade price that processors are sold by Intel to retailers and OEMs. Actual MSRP for consumers is higher.
Price is Recommended Customer Price (RCP) at launch. RCP is the trade price that processors are sold by Intel to retailers and OEMs. Actual MSRP for consumers is higher.
Price is Recommended Customer Price (RCP) at launch. RCP is the trade price that processors are sold by Intel to retailers and OEMs. Actual MSRP for consumers is higher.
Price is Recommended Customer Price (RCP) at launch. RCP is the trade price that processors are sold by Intel to retailers and OEMs. Actual MSRP for consumers is higher.
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