Saturday, January 20th 2024
Detailed Intel Arrow Lake-S Platform Specifications Leaked, Confirms Native Thunderbolt 4 Support
Courtesy of X/Twitter user @yuuki_ans, we now have what should be very detailed information on Intel's next generation consumer desktop platform, assuming the leaked information is real. The leaker not only provided confirmation on the CPU specs of the Arrow Lake-S desktop CPUs, which will feature up to an 8+16+1 core configuration. However, it appears that it's not all smooth sailing for Intel to get Arrow Lake-S up and running, as a note points out that the pre-alpha hardware has the performance cores disabled due to a hardware bug that is expected to be fixed in a future hardware revision. We can also see that the official memory support is DDR5-6400 from the block diagram, which is quite a jump from DDR5-5600 which is what the current 14th gen CPUs officially support.
That said, the rest of the documentation shared is very detailed and provides us with a ton of details in terms of the various platform interfaces we can expect. For starters, the Arrow Lake-S CPUs will feature native Thunderbolt 4/USB4 support (once again an odd mistake here stating USB4.0), as well as DisplayPort 2.0 (UHBR20 only) and HDMI 2.1 support. The CPU is said to deliver 24 PCIe lanes, of which 16 are PCIe 5.0 lanes for the GPU and the remaining eight are for NVMe SSDs, with half being PCIe 5.0 and half PCIe 4.0.
The chipset which is expected to carry the 800-series naming will connect via a DMI Gen 4 interface with up to eight lanes to the CPU. Here we can apparently expect a further 24 PCIe 4.0 lanes, up to 10 USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps) ports, of which eight can be combined to offer USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 (20 Gbps) ports instead. That said, there are some oddities in this leaked information that puts up some red flags. The above mentioned IA Cores and USB4.0 mistakes are odd and there's also a suggestion that the CPU should feature eight SATA 3.0 ports (muxed with PCIe) and the chipset featuring a further eight (also muxed). Furthermore WiFi support is only listed at 802.11ax R2 or WiFi 6E as it's now better known as, but that there will be Bluetooth 6 support in the same module.
Now keep in mind that we're looking at the specs for an Intel test platform here, so we might just be looking at a sloppy engineer that threw this document together to be able to send along some specs to Intel's partners that are getting boards to start to work on their UEFI implementations and board designs. That said, there are a few too many oddities in this leak to be able to say that the features are set in stone or even that it's a real leak, but it does reflect what is already known about Arrow Lake-S. As such, take this for what it is, namely an interesting look into what might be.
Sources:
@yuuki_ans, via VideoCardz
That said, the rest of the documentation shared is very detailed and provides us with a ton of details in terms of the various platform interfaces we can expect. For starters, the Arrow Lake-S CPUs will feature native Thunderbolt 4/USB4 support (once again an odd mistake here stating USB4.0), as well as DisplayPort 2.0 (UHBR20 only) and HDMI 2.1 support. The CPU is said to deliver 24 PCIe lanes, of which 16 are PCIe 5.0 lanes for the GPU and the remaining eight are for NVMe SSDs, with half being PCIe 5.0 and half PCIe 4.0.
Now keep in mind that we're looking at the specs for an Intel test platform here, so we might just be looking at a sloppy engineer that threw this document together to be able to send along some specs to Intel's partners that are getting boards to start to work on their UEFI implementations and board designs. That said, there are a few too many oddities in this leak to be able to say that the features are set in stone or even that it's a real leak, but it does reflect what is already known about Arrow Lake-S. As such, take this for what it is, namely an interesting look into what might be.
35 Comments on Detailed Intel Arrow Lake-S Platform Specifications Leaked, Confirms Native Thunderbolt 4 Support
The reason it connects to the CPU is due to the native Thunderbolt 4/USB4 support.
www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/211299/intel-jhl9040r-thunderbolt-4-retimer/specifications.html
Intel already does this with some mobile CPU SKUs.
It's straight Thunderbolt 4/USB4 from the CPU to the physical ports, with some signal redrivers/retimers on the board.
that would be a keeper
If this is the case, this would be a very early engineering sample, and probably something only distributed to very few partners, which in turn wouldn't make it hard to find out who leaked this.
half the package not working doesn’t bode well for a 2024 release
PCIe obviously allows for down to x1 in a x16 slot, so if you want to install some janky M.2 adapters to your M.2 slots to split four lanes into two, go ahead, it will work, at least on AMD.
And before you ask, yes, someone made one already.
www.amfeltec.com/flexible-minipci-express-2way-splitter/
And I think bifurcation is becoming/will become more appealing now that we have 5.0. "I don't need the ultimate speed, I need the lanes!" is an opinion I've often seen expressed here at TPU forums. Those who need the lanes actually need the ability to connect many devices, SSDs, graphics cards, network cards, basically to squeeze out workstation-level connectivity from a consumer desktop system.
The splitter you linked to ... it's unclear if it's a passive splitter or it has a PCIe bridge chip onboard. The price difference is huge if we're talking PCIe 5.0 or 4.0.