Intel Rocket Lake-S will give us a taste of what is to come. Alder Lake-S will be a whole new meal.
Intel Alder Lake-S
A roundup of all Alder Lake-S rumors:
- Intel Alder Lake-S is a successor to Comet Lake-S.
- Alder Lake-S will feature a new socket (LGA1700).
- The socket is expected to support up to 3 Intel CPU generations.
- Alder Lake-S is expected to feature big core / small core architecture.
- The series is rumored to feature Golden Cove/Gracemont cores.
LGA1700
Lit-Tech, a Taiwanese-based manufacturer responsible for Voltage Regulator Testing Tools to the Asian market now lists Alder Lake-S compatible equipment. What is worth noting is that the site lists many unreleased architectures such as Ice Lake-S/H or Tiger Lake-H. In fact, it even lists Intel Xe DG1 interposer, so we are unsure how accurate this list is.
This is not the first time we are hearing about LGA1700 socket. It was previously mentioned back in January by Komachi_Ensaka on Twitter. The exact dimensions were also provided (45.0mm x 37.5mm), revealing that the socket will be bigger than LGA1151/1200 (37.5mm x 37.5mm).
Big and Small Core
More details on the Big/Small core architecture are beginning to surface. As we reported back in March, Alder Lake-S will be the first Intel mainstream architecture to offer ARM’s big.LITTLE approach to desktop processors. The CPUs would feature up to 16 cores, where 8 would be ‘Big’ and the rest would use ‘Small’ architecture.
It is now speculated that these architectures are Golden Cove (Willow Cove successor) and Gracement (Tremont successor) respectively. Willow Cove is expected to appear in the Rocket Lake-S processor, which we independently confirmed to feature a new microarchitecture.
(LEFT) Ptt/Sharkbay Alder Lake Leak | (RIGHT) Chiphell rumor translated by RetiredEngineer (Twitter)
LGA 1700 for 3 generations
The interesting rumor is that the new socket would support up to 3 generations of Intel Core processors. This would be a change for Intel, as the company is known for a rather short socket lifespan (despite the fact that they look almost identical). The pin layout changes are often considered unnecessary and unclear to customers.
This is particularly important, as we approach the launch of the 4th gen AMD Ryzen desktop processors, which will be compatible with the same AM4 socket. AMD has not yet made any long term promises for its successor (AM5).
The rumor would be an indicator that Intel’s LGA1700 socket will compete with AMD’s AM5 socket in terms of platform longevity.
| INTEL Mainstream CPU Series Specs | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| VideoCardz.com | Coffee Lake-S | Comet Lake-S | Rocket Lake-S | Alder Lake-S | Meteor Lake-S |
| CPU Fabrication Node | 14nm | 14nm | 14nm | ? | ? |
| Microarchitecture | Skylake | Skylake | Willow Cove (?) | Golden Cove + Gracemont | ? |
| Max Core Count | up to 8 cores | up to 10 cores | up to 8 cores | up to 16 (8 BIG + 8 SMALL) | ? |
| Socket | LGA1151 | LGA1200 | LGA1200 | LGA1700 (?) | LGA1700 |
| Memory Support | DDR4 | DDR4 | DDR4 | DDR4 -> DDR5 | DDR5 |
| PCI-E Support | PCIe 3.0 | PCIe 3.0 | PCIe 4.0 | PCIe 4.0 | PCIe 4.0 |
| Intel Core Series | 8th/9th Gen Core-S | 10th Gen Core-S | 11th Gen Core-S (?) | 12th Gen Core-S (?) | ? |
| Motherboard Chipsets | Intel 300 (eg. Z390) | Intel 400 (eg. Z490) | Intel 500 (Z590) | Intel 600 (eg. Z690) (?) | ? |
| Launch | 2018 | 2020 | late 2020 | 2021-2022 | 2022-2023 |
Source: Wccftech, Chiphell, RetiredEngineer (Twitter) translation, Komachi_Ensaka (Twitter) on Meteor Lake
