[Hardware] Is Raptor Lake an update from Intel or really some new gaming CPUs?

[WilkerCSBD]

When we don't have Rocket Lake-S based CPUs on our PCs yet, the rumor mill not only points to the already confirmed Alder Lake launch but a little further. Where rumors speak of a CPU codenamed Intel Raptor Lake. Is Raptor Lake the thirteenth generation of Intel Core or failing that a minor update on Alder Lake?

Intel's release cadence is at least one new generation Intel Core every year. All this to stand up to AMD and not let its biggest rival rest. For this, Intel is making use of its greater resources to deploy new generations of its CPUs with an almost annual release rate in order to maintain its classic dominance over the market.

Intel Raptor Lake

Raptor Lake Roadmap

Months after the launch of its Gen 12, based on Alder Lake, Intel could launch Raptor Lake as Gen 13. From Alder Lake the main novelty will be the use of an architecture that will mix high-consumption and performance CPU cores with other more modest Intel Atom style. In other words, a big.LITTLE strategy like that of ARM cores. All this accompanied by PCI Express 5.0 support and DDR5 memory.

So Raptor Lake will inherit much of the features of Alder Lake, while at the same time offering small updates. Since while Alder Lake is going to be the first desktop CPU based on Intel's 10nm node, Raptor Lake will continue to use said node, being rather a less ambitious upgrade than Alder Lake, but no worse for it being Raptor Lake. an update.

One of the changes that is expected with respect to Alder Lake is an improvement in the cores used, it is known that the maximum configuration of Alder Lake will be 8 Golden Cove cores and 8 Tremont cores, which would be Intel Atom-type cores. The first high-performance and the second low-power, for a total of 16 cores and 24 threads of execution. In the case of Raptor Lake, it is expected that its cores will be updated versions of those of Alder Lake, with improvements that allow them to achieve higher clock speeds and optimizations in the cache, as well as support for LPDDR5X memory for the version for laptops.

Raptor Lake: Intel Gen 13 or a Gen 12 upgrade?
Raptor lake

Intel has plans to release a new generation of CPUs year after year at the very least. This year 2021 we will see the launch of Intel Rocket Lake-S for desktop PCs as Gen 11 that will occur in a few days and by the end of the year we will see Alder Lake as Gen 12.

The name mess comes from the number of code names that are speculated for the generations of the Intel Core beyond Alder Lake, we know that Intel has already confirmed Lunar Lake as a future architecture, but the names of Meteor Lake and Raptor Lake were until recently in doubt, since they will coincide in time, At the moment, the new roadmap seems to have confirmed Raptor Lake, which by its specifications does not seem more than a slightly updated version of Alder Lake, which brings us to wonder if Meteor Lake is not another name for Raptor Lake.

What do you think Intel will do, will Lunar Lake be Intel's Gen 13 CPUs or will it be Raptor Lake? Only time will tell.