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Intel Alder Lake-S CPU samples appear to be getting faster

by Mark Tyson on 20 January 2021, 10:11

Tags: Intel (NASDAQ:INTC)

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HEXUS has previous reported on sightings of Intel Alder Lake-S processors in online benchmarking databases. Last October, for example, such a chip appeared in SiSoft Sandra but seemed to confuse that tool's hardware detection algorithms. The following month we shared what looked like in-the-flesh photos of an Alder Lake-S engineering sample from above, and showing its LGA1700 contacts from below.

A few hours ago one of the most consistent Twitter tech treasure hunters, Momomo_us, uncovered a new SiSoft Sandra database entry, which provides evidence of Intel's progress in tuning ADL-S and in SiSoft's hardware detections. VideoCardz was one of the first sites to report on the findings.

Sandra IDs the processor in the spotlight as follows:

  • Genuine Intel(R) 0000 1.80GHz (16C 32T 1.8GHz/4GHz, 10x 1.25MB L2, 30MB L3)

Of note in that string of letters and digits is the indication that the ADL-S chip tested has 16 cores and 32 threads, a base/boost clock speed of 1.8/4.0GHz, and 10x 1.25 MLB of L2 cache and a total of 30MB L3 cache. The L3 cache quota is 10MB more than the current flagship Core i9-10900K.

From what we know of the ALD-S architecture Sandra is still misreporting the threads count. It is thought that the 16 physical cores are made up from 8 performance and 8 efficiency cores and only the former support Hyperthreading. Thus, the true C/T count should be reported as 16C/24T. This is 'confirmed' in other Sandra test results which remark that the processor completed various tasks utilising 24 threads.

Moving along to the memory specs revealed here, the bandwidth test shows improvement vs the previous ADL-S results of a significant 150 per cent. This can be explained by the test system now using DDR5 rather than DDR4 memory.

Last but not least, the integrated GPU is described as follows:

  • Mobile Graphics Controller (256S 32C SM3.0 1.5GHz, 512kB L2, 12.8GB) (OpenCL)

The overall GPU performance score has been uplifted by nearly 40 per cent since the last time ADL was spotted in Sandra. The EU/shader count remains the same but the GPU clock speed at 1.50GHz is 350MHz improved over the last sample.

Even from the above rough sketch of its capabilities, one gets the feeling that ADL-S is going to be a significant step change for Intel. It is touted as an H2 2021 release. In the meantime we are still awaiting Rocket Lake-S, which is expected at the end of March and looks like it won't have long in the limelight.



HEXUS Forums :: 26 Comments

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so it's not a full 16 core CPU then, it's 8(+8). It will be interesting to see how it compares to a 3950x or 5950x given those AMD chips are full 16 core 32 thread CPUs.
I guess it would compare badly on desktop vs 5950X, but quite well in a laptop vs 5800H.

But the most interesting thing there for me was the DDR5 popping up. In this house we haven't entirely moved away from DDR3 :D
ik9000
so it's not a full 16 core CPU then, it's 8(+8). It will be interesting to see how it compares to a 3950x or 5950x given those AMD chips are full 16 core 32 thread CPUs.

It's an 8/16 part with a bolted on low power CPU.

From a technical standpoint it is interesting but i keep asking myself what problem is Intel is trying to fix by putting this on the Desktop. Looking at AMD, you can change the power budget of a CPU really quite low and it will even “turn off” cores when not in use with very aggressive power saving settings being on. So why do we need the low power cores when using them are so egregious in the sense you lose features if you have both enabled! (see AVX instruction set loss etc)

But the Alder Lake series is looking like Intels Bulldozer architecture.
DanceswithUnix
I guess it would compare badly on desktop vs 5950X, but quite well in a laptop vs 5800H.

But the most interesting thing there for me was the DDR5 popping up. In this house we haven't entirely moved away from DDR3 :D

I thought it implied this would be the last DDR4 and DDR5 was looming rather than this getting DDR5, though I might have misread.
DanceswithUnix
I guess it would compare badly on desktop vs 5950X, but quite well in a laptop vs 5800H.

But the most interesting thing there for me was the DDR5 popping up. In this house we haven't entirely moved away from DDR3 :D

Only things left on DDR3 here are servers or systems that need ECC/Registered memory because in DDR4 flavour I'd need to budget a hell of a lot more