Back in March, HEXUS wrote about Intel’s confirmation that Raptor Lake-S would be its 13th generation Core processor series. The 12th gen Alder Lake-S (ADL) desktop processors should arrive later this year, with Raptor Lake-S (RPL) debuting in 2022. Alongside the launch of ADL will be the arrival of the new LGA 1700 socket, supported by the Intel 600 Series chipset. ADL presents a big change in architecture, delivering a mainstream hybrid processor to desktop users for the first time, and it looks very much more likely that the supporting motherboards – Intel Z690 and so on, will be designed to support future RPL processors for desktop too.
Making dual-gen platform compatibility look more likely than ever, Twitter’s @Komachi_Ensaka has uncovered a document recently published by the SATA-IO group which outlines a Codename Alder-Raptor Lake PCH-S SATA Controller. The highlighted Platform Controller Hubs (PCHs), with 7AB0, 7ACB, 7A30, and 7A4B device IDs, are probably Intel’s 600-series chipsets for desktops and laptops. The name of this controller confirms its use will span ADL and RPL generations.
HEXUS has reported on quite a few information news nuggets regarding Alder Lake, both official and leaks/rumours. Our last report on the next gen processors for both desktops and laptops summed up that ADL would deliver a “significant breakthrough in x86 architecture” with its mix of high performance (Golden Cove) and high efficiency (Gracemont) cores, enhanced 10nm SuperFin fabrication, as well as other refinements. A leaked slide indicated that users would be looking at 20 per cent faster single thread performance, and up to double multithread performance. Intel’s ADL processors will come packing up to 16C/24T, with an Xe LP GPU on board (unless you buy an ‘F’ model). ADL platforms will also support Gen4 and Gen5 PCIe IO, as well as DDR4 and DDR5, and Thunderbolt 4, Wi-Fi 6e.
At the time of writing, what upgrades will be delivered by RPL are not at all certain. However, things look positive for ADL adopters, who might see the shiny new RPL CPUs a few months later and consider them to be worthwhile upgrades.