Over the weekend, there have been a series of leaks from sources such as Golden Pig Upgrade, and High Yield YT, surrounding Intel's next-generation desktop processor, the Core Ultra 2-series "Arrow Lake-S." The lineup is likely to continue the new client processor naming scheme Intel introduced with the Core Ultra 1-series "Meteor Lake" on the mobile platform. "Arrow Lake-S" is rumored to debut the new Socket LGA1851, which retains cooler-compatibility with LGA1700. Although Intel has nucleated all I/O functions of the traditional PCH to "Meteor Lake," making it a single-chip solution on the mobile platform; and although the mobile "Arrow Lake" will continue to be single-chip; the desktop "Arrow Lake-S" will be a 2-chip solution. This is mainly because the desktop platform demands a lot more PCIe lanes, for a larger number of NVMe storage devices, or high bandwidth devices such as Thunderbolt and USB4 hubs, etc.

Another key finding in this latest series of leaks, is that unlike "Meteor Lake," the desktop "Arrow Lake-S" will do away with low-power island E-cores located in the SoC tile of the processor. All CPU cores are located in the Compute tile, which is expected to be built in the Intel 20A foundry node—the company's first node to implement GAAFETs (nanosheets), with backside power delivery; as well as an advanced 2nd generation EUV lithography. Intel's 1st Gen EUV is used on the current FinFET-based Intel 4 and Intel 3 foundry nodes.The Compute tile is rumored to have an 8P+8E CPU core configuration. Each of the 8 "Lion Cove" P-cores features 3 MB of dedicated L2 cache, and the P-core architecture is said to offer an IPC uplift over the current "Redwood Cove" P-cores powering "Meteor Lake." Perhaps the biggest ISA change is the lack of Hyper-Threading for the P-cores. The E-core microarchitecture is "Skymont," with another round of IPC increases. At generational IPC growth-rate of Intel's E-cores, "Skymont" is expected to offer IPC comparable to the "Willow Cove" cores powering 11th Gen "Tiger Lake" mobile processors.

Intel tends to give its client desktop processors significantly smaller iGPUs than its mobile chips, and the trend continues with "Arrow Lake-S." Apparently the chip comes with the smallest version of the Xe-LPG+ iGPU, with just 4 Xe cores (64 EU, or 512 unified shaders). Intel will avoid the Arc Graphics branding for this iGPU, it will be called simply "Intel Graphics" followed by a 3-digit model number. Some of the lower processor SKUs could even have fewer Xe cores. This is consistent with what Intel is doing with "Meteor Lake," where only the iGPU models with 7 or 8 Xe cores get Arc Graphics branding, while the ones with fewer Xe cores, such as the Core Ultra 5 125U with 4 Xe cores, is branded "Intel Graphics."

Intel will include its 2nd Gen NPU (neural processing unit) with "Arrow Lake-S," making these the company's first desktop processors to support Intel AI Boost feature-set, which the company debuted with "Meteor Lake" on the mobile platform. Its first generation NPU offers a 10 TOPS AI inferencing performance at a significantly lower power footprint that having the AI workload executed on the CPU cores; and it's expected that Intel will nearly triple the performance of this NPU with "Arrow Lake."

Intel is expected to debut the Core Ultra 2-series "Arrow Lake-S" desktop processors in the second half of 2024.