Wednesday, October 20th 2021

Retail Intel Core i9-12900K and Core i5-12600K Pictured
Here are some of the clearest shots of retail (non-ES) production versions of the upcoming Intel Core i9-12900K and i5-12600K "Alder Lake-S" desktop processors. Posted to the web by "DDAA117" on Chinese social media Zhihu, the pictures reveal the long and slender packages, with their S-spec codes: SRL4H for the i9-12900K and SRL4T for the i5-12600K. Based on what we know from older reports, the i9-12900K maxes out the "Alder Lake-S" silicon, featuring all 8 P-cores, and 8 E-cores. The i5-12600K, on the other hand, features 6 P-cores and 4 E-cores. Other areas of segmentation between the two include clock speeds, and possibly boost algorithms. The chips will be open to pre-orders from October 27, and generally available from November 4.
Source:
HXL (Twitter)
32 Comments on Retail Intel Core i9-12900K and Core i5-12600K Pictured
At the same time I do not see 12/16 core CPUs really mainstream for now (and not really counting ADL E-cores into that). And because of that, mainstream desktop segment could and should be monolithic, at least in comparison to current chiplet designs. My 5600X consumes 28W when idle. Idle meaning Windows with background stuff and some always on apps like Steam, Skype, etc running but their windows closed. Once I leave a browser open it will be more. 5600G in the same situation consumes maybe 16W (and my old i5-8400 consumed 5W but that is besides the point).
Apple M1 cores are power efficient but not THAT power efficient. These are running at low clocks, low voltage. Underclock and undervolt a Cezanne to same range and it will be quite competitive, even with the node disadvantage (Cezanne at 7nm vs M1 at 5nm). Also, M1 is huge. 5700G/5800U have 60% less transistors. M1 16B transistors vs Cezanne 10B transistors and that is with M1's 4P+4E (to use Intel's designation) against Cezanne's full 8P cores. In addition to smaller manufacturing process Apple also has the advantage of vertical integration so they can use whatever ISA they want however they want and optimize for it.
As for why Intel or AMD has not done this yet - software. You can read about Windows 11 and scheduler optimization for ADL and probably will be able to read about that for months or year(s) to come. This is not a trivial problem especially on higher performance levels of desktop or server market.
For the MSDT stack, 8 physical cores was already enough, maybe 10-12. Intel has them. They perform just fine, albeit at high TDP. As someone else stated, you do get more cores for the same TDP at AMD, and its also high. But really, the market for Ryzen 9 on MSDT? This is not where Intel gets the revenue.
You said it right. There is no E-core use case for gaming. So let's summarize the real world advantage for Intel here.
- The vast majority of MSDT-aimed use cases don't have any advantage.
- The core count on Intel products apparently goes up.
- The larger half of the ADL stack doesn't even use E cores.
- ONLY the SKUs that have E cores on desktop, benefit from a marginally lower idle usage and Intel can divert some margin of power headroom to the P core. Benchmark win. Yay. Real world use case? There is none. If you truly have a heavy multicore load you'd also need instructions to go with it. And if its simpler but still parallel, the thread count matters as much as frequency. So maybe you can transcode something a little bit quicker, by virtue of a double core count :p Worth...
- Any basic home PC doesn't even remotely know or care about all these developments and is fine with a 5 year older CPU, 2015 quad core would do the trick fine even. And here's the kicker... those already had 65W TDP too and idled well.
- On mobile, the same use cases exist, minus the heaviest desktop ones. Added use of more E cores alongside P cores? I don't see it, apart from, again, marginal power usage advantages. But laptops barely even idle more than desktops, if at all, because they just hibernate.
The competition here happens on IPC and mostly on benchmarks. The benefit of E cores is pure marketing: core count wars and synthetic wins. Its a bit like an engine that can rev in the red to show super high RPM, but it really can't drive continuously like that. And in that sense, its just Intel cranking out even more bursty CPUs for consumer, what's new? The real victory long term isn't big little. Its IPC increases, as it always has been, because the single core perf is pivotal for everything else. Not the way cores are set up, or split up... AMD has experienced a page of that black history too with FX.
Sure, its nice to believe in the idea that Intel is 'back' and 'competition is really on now', but I strongly doubt Intel has a design win here with the big little concept on x86. They can eek out a few % but the biggest win is the marketing win, much like the Megapixel, the Ghz, the Watts and all those other numbers Joe Simple won't understand, but higher is better. All I see is more CPUs nobody really needs, and exaggerated price points to go with it.
Newer APIs have enabled the use of more threads as well, but they'll still run on P cores anyway. Enough is just simply enough and more won't do a thing.