20 new processors at once. When it renews its ranges, Intel does not take half measures and this time it is the 12th generation “Alder Lake” family of chips for lighter laptops and ultraportables that is in the spotlight. The first part of the range, for the most powerful laptops, was unveiled at the beginning of the year. This Alder Lake family — all types of computers and workstations combined — has no less than 50 references.
Alder Lake: Intel charts its course to catch up with Apple (1/2)
These Core processors for (ultra)-portables are divided into two ranges. First the P series (10 to 14 cores and a consumption of 28 up to 64W). Then the double U series (one has up to 6 cores, the other 10 and they consume between 9 and 29W for the first and from 15 to 55W for the other). The graphics part is provided by the integrated Iris Xe chip.
As with their desktop cousins, these processors use a hybrid architecture – now common at Apple between its iPhones and its latest Macs – with performance-oriented cores (“P”, there can be up to 6) and low-power cores (“E”, max 8).
By using the fastest processor in this range – a Core i7-1280p (14 cores, 6P and 8E consuming 28 to 64W) the foundry advances gains of 70% on multicore operations, compared to its previous big Core i7 11th generation; +200% in Blender’s BMW benchmark and +30% with Photoshop’s PugetBench test. Intel is also said more or less faster than the M1 and M1 Pro in its various tests. It should be noted that the M1 Max does not appear in these comparisons although it is entirely intended to be used with Photoshop and Blender and can be fitted to the MacBook Pro 14″.
We will therefore keep a cautious distance with these different assertions. We have seen that these 12th generation chips could indeed be fast – the H series for large laptops – but in return for significant sacrifices in power consumption and autonomy. Two major criteria for machines to transport and on which Apple makes no concessions.
The new Core i9 is more powerful (and much more power-hungry) than Apple’s M1 Pro/Max
These processors also offer support for DDR5 / LPDDR5 memory, Thunderbolt 4, the latest generation 6E Wi-Fi, PCIe 4.0 but not HDMI in its 2.1 version. Laptops equipped with Alder Lake will arrive in greater numbers from next month.