Intel Alder Lake-S (12th Gen) Hybrid ES CPU Leaks in Geekbench and SiSoftware databases: Flaunting 16 cores & DDR5-4800 memory (Updated)

[cj09beira]

On 12/30/2020 at 3:15 PM, NunoLava1998 said:

..wait, why does it have 24 threads and not 32 on a 16-core processor? 

this is not actually a 16 core chip but rather a 8 + 8 where the first 8 are normal cores and the last 8 are much weaker atom cores, and those lack hyperthreading 

[Taf the Ghost]

10 minutes ago, cj09beira said:

this is not actually a 16 core chip but rather a 8 + 8 where the first 8 are normal cores and the last 8 are much weaker atom cores, and those lack hyperthreading 

I still foresee Intel Legal having nightmares for months about how they're going to do the PR on this.

[cj09beira]

2 minutes ago, Taf the Ghost said:

I still foresee Intel Legal having nightmares for months about how they're going to do the PR on this.

i can wait for the intel fanboys to defend this as a 16 core, when they said bulldozer had only 4 cores, it will be glorious, i bet intel wont get in nearly as much trouble as amd did though 

[Taf the Ghost]

5 minutes ago, cj09beira said:

i can wait for the intel fanboys to defend this as a 16 core, when they said bulldozer had only 4 cores, it will be glorious, i bet intel wont get in nearly as much trouble as amd did though 

Depends how badly Windows handles it. That's actually the biggest issue. Though the stuff around Bulldozer was such, it probably was best described as a 12-core with terrible pipeline collisions, lol.

[porina]

 

9 minutes ago, Taf the Ghost said:

I still foresee Intel Legal having nightmares for months about how they're going to do the PR on this.

How do mobile phones cope with it now? They've been doing this for years.

 

Personally as a performance seeker, if I were to get Alder Lake for desktop, I'd look to the version without the small cores. I don't have much confidence in MS getting it working well and there may be situations where performance sensitive software will end up stuck on the slow cores. Like today if you have a laptop with iGPU and dGPU, a recent Windows Update seems to put more stuff on iGPU than before.

[Taf the Ghost]

1 hour ago, porina said:

 

How do mobile phones cope with it now? They've been doing this for years.

 

Personally as a performance seeker, if I were to get Alder Lake for desktop, I'd look to the version without the small cores. I don't have much confidence in MS getting it working well and there may be situations where performance sensitive software will end up stuck on the slow cores. Like today if you have a laptop with iGPU and dGPU, a recent Windows Update seems to put more stuff on iGPU than before.

The Zen1/Zen2 4c CCX design isn't that difficult from a Scheduler point of view. Took MS 3 major updates to Windows to get it somewhat fixed. And it still has issues with something like the big TR parts.

 

Yeah, my worry is actually Windows 10 more than the design not working.

[cj09beira]

3 hours ago, porina said:

 

How do mobile phones cope with it now? They've been doing this for years.

 

Personally as a performance seeker, if I were to get Alder Lake for desktop, I'd look to the version without the small cores. I don't have much confidence in MS getting it working well and there may be situations where performance sensitive software will end up stuck on the slow cores. Like today if you have a laptop with iGPU and dGPU, a recent Windows Update seems to put more stuff on iGPU than before.

part of it is how they are really well differentiated part of it is how they have been doing it for long so software had time to adapt.

still i really dont see how this is of benefit to desktop pcs at all, even laptops, as today many of the reasons why big little was useful are reduced by just how fast and precisely the cpus can clock up or down and disable inactive areas of the cpu

[D13H4RD]

I honestly foresee the first iteration of this design having some early teething pains. Not from the chip itself but from Windows and its scheduler, as mentioned before.

[DildorTheDecent]

On 12/30/2020 at 5:59 AM, leadeater said:

 

Oh really now? Hmmmm 

They finally cracked the 10GHz barrier, kek.

 

Never give up on your dreams.

[Bombastinator]

On 1/13/2021 at 1:16 AM, Falkentyne said:

I believe you're getting your facts wrong.

They did that with *Conroe*, which was first based off the mobile offering (Don't remember the name)  and gave us Core and Core 2 Duo, which blew the socks off everyone and destroyed AMD's offerings.  Core 2 had double the IPC of a Pentium 4 at the same clock, IIRC.

 

Netburst was before this.

I didn’t know about the ipc jump.  That is interesting.   I blamed it on the dual core ness.  I do know a 2.4ghz core2duo could mop the floor with a 5 ghz single core celeron  though.  The word was it was the extra core that made all the difference.  If it was ipc not dual core that made the difference though that has modern implications.

[BiG StroOnZ]

Minor, but still interesting update to this story (will add to OP) ~ 

 

Quote

A never-before-seen Intel (12th Gen) Alder Lake-S processor has been discovered on the SiSoftware website by @momomo_us. Along with once again confirming support for DDR5 memory (@ 4800MHz), the listing gave some details about the Xe Gen 12.2 iGPU and revealed 30 MB L3 cache. Clock rates were measured @ 1.8 GHz to 4.0 GHz.

 

 

 

The new sample that was discovered today has a higher clock speed though. With a base clock of 1.8 GHz and a boost of 4.0 GHz, we are looking at a faster CPU. The hybrid chip seemingly sports the same 16-core, 32-thread configuration. SiSoftware detects the Alder Lake-S part as a 16-core part, meaning there are eight Golden Cove cores and eight Gracemont cores onboard. The new Alder Lake-S sample reportedly features a 1.8 GHz base clock, 400 MHz higher than the previous leaked sample. It's uncertain if the two are the same processor or if Intel has managed to improve the previous chip's base clock. On this occasion, the software was able to pick up the processor's boost clock speed that's apparently configured to 4 GHz. The cache configuration remains unaltered: We still see the 12.5MB of L2 cache and 30MB of L3 cache. 

 

Surprisingly, the 1.4 GHz Alder Lake-S chip delivers a 21% higher score on the processor multi-media test than the 1.8 GHz sample. It's plausible that SiSoftware's Sandra benchmark software isn't yet fully optimized for Alder Lake-S. We shouldn't lose sight of the fact that Alder Lake-S arrives with a hybrid setup, so the whole high-performance and high-efficiency core arrangement can trip some software up. The 1.8 GHz Alder Lake-S part does score better in some of the other tests though. The memory bandwidth test is one of the benchmarks that stand out the most. There's an improvement up to a whopping 153.6%. The logical reasoning behind the substantial uplift is that the previous Alder Lake-S was paired with DDR4 memory, while the new sample purportedly runs with DDR5 memory.

 

Source 1: https://www.notebookcheck.net/16-core-Intel-Alder-Lake-S-desktop-processor-s-SiSoftware-entry-reveals-specs-Xe-Gen-12-2-iGPU-details-30-MB-L3-cache-and-DDR5-memory-support.515770.0.html

 

Source 2: https://videocardz.com/newz/intel-alder-lake-s-processor-with-16-cores-at-4-ghz-and-ddr5-4800-memory-spotted

 

Source 3: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/alder-lake-s-cpu-hits-4-ghz-with-ddr5-memory