Intel Raptor Lake with 24 Cores and 32 Threads Demoed

[AleksandarK]

When Intel announced the company's first hybrid design, codenamed Alder Lake, we expected to see more of such design philosophies in future products. During Intel's 2022 investor meeting day, the company provided insights into future developments, and a successor to Alder Lake is no different. Codenamed "Raptor Lake," it features a novel Raptor Cove P-core design that is supposed to bring significant IPC uplift from the previous generation of processors. Using Intel 7 processor node, Raptor Lake brings a similar ecosystem of features to Alder Lake, however, with improved performance across the board.

Perhaps one of the most exciting things to note about Raptor Lake is the advancement in core count, specifically the increase in E-cores. Instead of eight P-cores and eight E-cores like Alder Lake, the Raptor Lake design will retain eight P-cores and double the E-core count to 16. It was a weird decision on Intel's end; however, it surely isn't anything terrible. The total number of cores now jumps to 24, and the total number of threads reaches 32. Additionally, Raptor Lake will bring some additional overclocking improvement features and retain socket compatibility with Alder Lake motherboards. That means that, at worst, you would need to perform a BIOS update to get your previous system ready for new hardware. We assume that Intel has been working with software vendors and its engineering team to optimize core utilization for this next-generation processor, even though they have more E-cores present. Below, we can see Intel's demonstration of Raptor Lake running Blender and Adobe Premiere and the CPU core utilization.

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[Crackong]

For the same die area.
I would prefer 14+0 instead of 8+16 as a desktop CPU

 

[low]

True, e-core are almost useless for gamers and home office users.

The question is about the sideeffect: half of the die will be e-cores, so cooling might be a problem.

 

[mama]

For the same die area.
I would prefer 14+0 instead of 8+16 as a desktop CPU

Again, from a cooling perspective, that may not be possible.

 

[tony359]

Intel not requiring a new motherboard? Thank you AMD!!!

 

[Verpal]

Intel not requiring a new motherboard? Thank you AMD!!!

Intel tick-tock model always allow one generational upgrade for tick, no upgrade for tock, this is just last decade on repeat.

If intel suddenly say 14th gen won't require mobo upgrade I will start praising her majesty the Queen Lisa Su though.

 

[Turmania]

Will they be compatible with ddr4 boards?

 

[Deleted member 24505]

Will they be compatible with ddr4 boards?

yes

 

[birdie]

For the same die area.
I would prefer 14+0 instead of 8+16 as a desktop CPU

1 P-core has roughly the size of 4 E-cores, so even in theory you can only have at most12 P-cores and then power efficiency for MT tasks would be thrown out of the window.

Will they be compatible with ddr4 boards?

RPL uses the same socket and will be compatible with existing LGA 1700 motherboards.

Intel not requiring a new motherboard? Thank you AMD!!!

Intel has normally allowed to run two generations of CPUs on the same motherboard. It's nothing new and AMD has nothing to do with that.

True, e-core are almost useless for gamers and home office users.

The question is about the sideeffect: half of the die will be e-cores, so cooling might be a problem.

Actually E-cores are a perfect fit for office users. Anything released in the past 15 years can run office suits just fine as long as you have enough RAM. E-cores have the performance of Sky Lake which is a plenty fast uArch.

 

[Deleted member 24505]

Looks like 14th gen Meteor lake will be LGA1700 too

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

yes

This is not known ATM.

It could drop ddr4 support.

 

[stimpy88]

And the power consumption/heat output?

 

[john_]

Perhaps one of the most exciting things to note about Raptor Lake is the advancement in core count, specifically the increase in E-cores.

I really get angry at this part of the news post. The author thinks that this new kind of stagnation, where performance cores are staying the same and Marketing cores are increasing, is something exciting.
It's not.

Thinking that the future will bring configurations with 8+16, then 8+24 and then 8+32 cores, where only those 8 cores are performance cores, for me it's not something exciting. It's marketing. A cheap way for Intel to match the number of cores AMD is offering. Not much different than what AMD did in the past, where it was taking 1,5 core and was marketing it as a full dual core module. In both cases we have MARKETING. Feeling excitting about MARKETING, is not something that I like seeing in a technology site like TechPowerUp.

 

[Crackong]

1 P-core has roughly the size of 4 E-cores, so even in theory you can only have at most12 P-cores and then power efficiency for MT tasks would be thrown out of the window.

From the official die shot

A 4 core cluster is about 1.4~1.5x P-core

 

[Parn]

We had GHz race where Intel's P4 with significantly higher frequency ran slower than AMD K8. It was all marketing and unsuspecting consumers bought into it. Now it seems like a new Core-count race has just started.

 

[BrainCruser]

For the same die area.
I would prefer 14+0 instead of 8+16 as a desktop CPU

12+0 is what you get from the same die area.

 

[docnorth]

And the power consumption/heat output?

Raptor Lake will supposedly come close to Intel's 10nm, aka "Intel 7 node", maximum density, so theoretically and for the same performance it will be more efficient than Zen3 but worse than Zen4, at least for P-cores.

 

[birdie]

From the official die shot

A 4 core cluster is about 1.4~1.5x P-core

Here's a high res picture of the 12900K die (warning, it's a 58MB file).

A P-core comes as 755 x 1097 = 828,235 px2
4 E-cores come as 995 x 960 = 955,200 px2

I.e. four E-cores are just 15% larger than a single P-core and in terms of MT performance they obliterate a single P-core (which wastes a ton if its transistors on AVX-512 instructions).

 

[HisDivineOrder]

I really get angry at this part of the news post. The author thinks that this new kind of stagnation, where performance cores are staying the same and Marketing cores are increasing, is something exciting.
It's not.

Thinking that the future will bring configurations with 8+16, then 8+24 and then 8+32 cores, where only those 8 cores are performance cores, for me it's not something exciting. It's marketing. A cheap way for Intel to match the number of cores AMD is offering. Not much different than what AMD did in the past, where it was taking 1,5 core and was marketing it as a full dual core module. In both cases we have MARKETING. Feeling excitting about MARKETING, is not something that I like seeing in a technology site like TechPowerUp.

Isn't Alder Lake outperforming Zen 3 though? It's not that it's cheap. It's that it works better in many situations.

 

[trsttte]

Here's a high res picture of the 12900K die (warning, it's a 58MB file).

A P-core comes as 755 x 1097 = 828,235 px2
4 E-cores come as 995 x 960 = 955,200 px2

I.e. four E-cores are just 15% larger than a single P-core and in terms of MT performance they obliterate a single P-core.

So comes to an end the age of large cores and SMT (hyperthreading) and begins the age of proper parallel computing and not depending on stupid single thread 5+ghz?

Neat! Only took about 10 years

 

[Crackong]

Here's a high res picture of the 12900K die (warning, it's a 58MB file).

A P-core comes as 755 x 1097 = 828,235 px2
4 E-cores come as 995 x 960 = 955,200 px2

I.e. four E-cores are just 15% larger than a single P-core and in terms of MT performance they obliterate a single P-core (which wastes a ton if its transistors on AVX-512 instructions).

I went back to a high res image and measure with the L3 area included, it is about 1.28x
You are right.

It only allows 12 P-cores to be fitted symmetrically in the same space.

 

[TheLostSwede]

Is it just me, or is this the least exciting demo Intel has ever done of an upcoming CPU?

 

[btarunr]

I was expecting the CPU-attached NVMe slot to be PCIe Gen 5 with Raptor Lake. Doesn't look to be the case. Raphael could be the first all-Gen5 SoC.

 

[Makaveli]

For the same die area.
I would prefer 14+0 instead of 8+16 as a desktop CPU

I do not believe intel's 10nm process can do 14 P cores without the cpu melting. Or you would have to lower clocks so much it will affect performance greatly.

 

[TheLostSwede]

I was expecting the CPU-attached NVMe slot to be PCIe Gen 5 with Raptor Lake. Doesn't look to be the case. Raphael could be the first all-Gen5 SoC.

Considering they're retaining the same CPU socket, it might not be possible. AMD managed to do it though (from PCIe 3.0 to 4.0), so who knows.