Serial leaker @yuuki_ans on X/Twitter has released details on Intel's upcoming Barlow Rridge Thunderbolt 5 controller which will be known as the JHL9580 or JHL9540 depending on the SKU. The good news is that Intel has finally moved to PCIe 4.0 for the bus interface, which was expected due to the increased bandwidth on offer by Thunderbolt 5 over Thunderbolt 3 and 4. Barlow Ridge will use a PCIe 4.0 x4 interface to connect to the host and it appears that the earlier leak that suggested native Thunderbolt support in Arrow Lake-S might be incorrect, as there are diagrams showing Barlow Ridge connected to Arrow Lake-S CPUs.

Besides the faster bus, Thunderbolt 5 brings asymmetrical data transmission support which means that for display applications there will be a 120/40 Gbps mode, whereas for data only applications Thunderbolt 5 will deliver a symmetrical 80 Gbps mode. We should point out that this only appears to apply to the JHL9580 SKU, which also supports 40 Gbps USB4 speeds, whereas the JHL9540 for some reason remains a Thunderbolt 4 controller. That said, both of the Barlow Ridge SKUs get support for 20 Gbps USB 3.2 Gen 2x2, something that was lacking in previous Thunderbolt implementations. There will also be support for DisplayPort 2.1 via DP Alt Mode with full UHBR20 support when used with a DP80 certified cable. Actual data transfers are limited to the 64 Gbps PCIe 4.0 interface to the host system, just like USB4, but this does at least give Thunderbolt 5 extra head room for display data even in symmetrical mode. The Barlow Ridge controllers appear to be connected directly to the Arrow Lake-S CPUs via the PCIe 4.0 x4 interface, much in the same way USB4 host controllers connect to AMD's Ryzen 7000-series CPUS.

A leaked Intel documentation we reported on a few days ago covered the Arrow Lake-S platform and some implementation details. However, there was an interesting catch in the file. The leaked document indicates that the upcoming 15th-Generation Arrow Lake desktop CPUs could lack Hyper-Threading (HT) support. The technical memo lists Arrow Lake's expected eight performance cores without any threads enabled via SMT. This aligns with previous rumors of Hyper-Threading removal. Losing Hyper-Threading could significantly impact Arrow Lake's multi-threaded application performance versus its Raptor Lake predecessors. Estimates suggest HT provides a 10-15% speedup across heavily-threaded workloads by enabling logical cores. However, for gaming, disabling HT has negligible impact and can even boost FPS in some titles. So Arrow Lake may still hit Intel's rumored 30% gaming performance targets through architectural improvements alone.

However, a replacement for the traditional HT is likely to come in the form of Rentable Units. This new approach is a response to the adoption of a hybrid core architecture, which has seen an increase in applications leveraging low-power E-cores for enhanced performance and efficiency. Rentable Units are a more efficient pseudo-multi-threaded solution that splits the first thread of incoming instructions into two partitions, assigning them to different cores based on complexity. Rentable Units will use timers and counters to measure P/E core utilization and send parts of the thread to each core for processing. This inherently requires larger cache sizes, where Arrow Lake is rumored to have 3 MB of L2 cache per core. Arrow Lake is also noted to support faster DDR5-6400 memory. But between higher clocks, more E-cores, and various core architecture updates, raw throughput metrics may not change much without Hyper-Threading.

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.

Thanks to the 3D renders and technical drawings obtained by Igor's Lab, we have insights into the structure of Intel's next-generation LGA-1851 socket for Arrow Lake processors. Scheduled to arrive in mid-2024, the LGA-1851 socket was originally intended for Meteor Lake-S desktop processors. However, the socket is now awaiting Arrow Lake since Meteor Lake is now a mobile-only processor generation. The first notable thing about LGA-1851 is that it will directly connect a dedicated PCIe 5.0 x4 interface to the CPU, besides the x16 lanes going to the GPU. This results in native support for high-speed PCIe 5.0 NVMe SSDs that can achieve speeds of over 12 GB/s in both read and write workloads.

Intel Arrow Lake-S will be available with eight P-cores and 16 E-cores in SKUs with different combinations of the two. The accompanying 800 series chipset includes Z890, B860, and H810 models, with an evident absence of H870 SKU. There will be W880 and Q870 workstation-grade chipsets as well. It is worth pointing out that Arrow Lake will enable DRAM capacities of up to 48 GB per DIMM at 6400 MT/s. We expect to hear more about Arrow Lake-S as we near the 2024 launch date and we get to see the Intel 20A node being used in client products. Below, you can see the technical drawings of the Independent Loading Mechanism (ILM) and chipset 3D models.

Intel's next-generation designs are nearing launch, and we are already getting information about the upcoming generations. Today, we have the information that Intel's Arrow Lake-S desktop/client implementations of the Arrow Lake family will feature as much as 3 MB of level two (L2) cache for each performance core. Currently, Intel's latest 13th-generation Raptor Lake and 14th-generation Raptor Lake Refresh feature 2 MB of L2 cache per performance core. However, the 15th generation Arrow Lake, scheduled for launch in 2024, will bump that up by 50% and reach 3 MB. Given that P-cores are getting a boost in capacity, we expect E-cores to do so as well, but at a smaller size.

Arrow Lake will utilize Lion Cove P-core microarchitecture, while the E-core design will be based on Skymont. Intel plans to use a 20A node for this CPU, and more details will be presented next year.

Intel's future-generation "Arrow Lake-S" desktop processor is already being sampled internally, and to some of the company's closest industry partners, and some of the first performance projections of the processor, comparing it with the current "Raptor Lake-S" (Core i9-13900K), have surfaced, and upcoming "Raptor Lake Refresh" desktop processor (probably the i9-14900K), have surfaced. First, while the "Raptor Lake Refresh" family sees core-count increases across the board for Core i3, Core i5, and Core i7 brand extensions, the 14th Gen Core i9 series is widely expected to be a damp squib compared to the current i9-13900 series, and it shows in the performance projection graphs, where the supposed-i9-14900K is barely 0% to 3% faster, probably on account of slightly higher clock speeds (100-300 MHz).

The "Arrow Lake-S" processor in these graphs has a core-configuration of 8P+16E. Since this is a projection, it does not reflect the final core-configuration of "Arrow Lake-S," but is a guideline on what performance increase to expect versus "Raptor Lake," assuming the same core-configuration and power limits. All said and done, "Arrow Lake-S" is projected to offer a performance increase ranging between 6% in the worst case, to 21% in the best-case benchmark, compared to the current i9-13900K, assuming an identical core-config and power-limits. The CPU benchmarks in the projection span the SPECrate2017 suite, CrossMark, SYSmark 25, WebXPRT 4, Chrome Speedometer 2.1, and Geekbench 5.4.5 ST and MT.

The fate of Intel's Meteor Lake-S desktop CPU lineup has been the topic of much debate since the end of last year - at the time, industry tipsters proposed that part of the product range had been disposed of entirely, but several leaks throughout the course of 2023 have indicated that MTL-S processors were on-track for a launch later in the year - albeit restricted to i3 and i5 offerings. An Intel employee has also confirmed that a new SKU naming system will be implemented as part of the upcoming Meteor Lake lineup - although he did not clarify whether this would encompass both mobile and desktop variants.

An alleged Intel client CPU roadmap has made its way onto the internet, and tipsters think that the information on hand shows that Team Blue has pulled the plug on its Meteor Lake-S (6 Performance and 8 Efficiency cores) desktop processors. The presentation slide was likely authored earlier this month - so these developments are relatively fresh, with provisions for Core S, H, PX, M, U & N series. The heavily redacted infographic maps out product release windows going as far forward as Q4 2026. OneRaichu posits that an Arrow Lake-S (6P + 8E) CPU lineup will replace MTL-S. It is possible that Intel's Raptor Lake-S refresh could serve as an interim release this year, since the Arrow Lake generation is expected to arrive in 2024.