New information regarding Intel's next-gen Arrow Lake-S Desktop CPUs has been revealed which suggests the "Core Ultra Series 2" branding.
Intel Moving Towards Branding Both Desktop & Mobile CPUs Fall Under The Same "Core Ultra" Branding Starting With Arrow Lake, New Tidbits Revealed
The latest information comes from Golden Pig Upgrade over at social media platform, Bilibili. and covers a range of topics regarding Intel's next major launch in its CPU portfolio codenamed Arrow Lake. I believe that one of the reasons Golden Pig Upgrade decided to make such a long post was the recent inflow of very bogus information surrounding the next-gen Arrow Lake-S Desktop SKUs since some outlets reported on 15900K and 15700K chips which was seemingly incorrect. That is the literal start of his post so let's cover it in detail.
Intel Arrow Lake "Core Ultra Series 2" Family For Desktops & Mobile
First up, we have the naming scheme for the Intel Arrow Lake CPUs. The chips will follow the same branding for both desktop and mobile parts under the "Core Ultra Series 2" branding. This means that Intel's 14th Gen CPUs, codenamed Raptor Lake, will be the last lineup to use a dual naming scheme (1**** for desktops and 1** for mobile). The Arrow Lake CPUs will use a similar naming scheme as the mobility chips which will make things a bit easier despite the new naming scheme still being a mess in its regards.
Intel Arrow Lake-S Desktop CPUs will be heading to the next-gen LGA 1851 socket featured on 800-series motherboards with the following features:
- LGA 1851 Socket Longevity Planned Uptill 2026
- DDR5 Only Compatibility, No DDR4 Support
- Kicks off With 800-Series Motherboards
- Support For Up To DDR5-6400 Memory (Native JEDEC)
- Increased PCIe Gen 5.0 Lanes Through CPU & PCH
- Arrow Lake-S First Desktop Family Supported "Core Ultra Series 2"
- Arrow Lake-S CPUs feature 3 MB L2 Cache Per P-Core
- Arrow Lake-S CPUs feature Alchemist iGPUs (4 Xe-Cores)
- Arrow Lake-S CPUs feature integrated LLC "Adamantine" for GPU Tile
- Arrow Lake-S CPUs feature 8+16, 8+0, 6+8 CPU SKUs
- Launching In 2H 2024
No HT or LP E-Cores But New iGPU & NPU Cores
Next up, we have information about what's included and what's excluded from the desktop chips. The Intel Arrow Lake-S Desktop CPUs will do away with two major components that were featured in the previous desktop and mobile parts, these include hyper-threading and LP-E cores. The LP-E cores are a component that was first featured on Meteor Lake and will continue to be part of their mobility lineup but not including hyper-threading was something that was made evident in other reports too. It looks like the E-Cores will now carry the same tasks as HT & Intel is going to go full-in on its hybrid core design with future desktop chips too.
Furthermore, we get to know about the iGPU side of things. It is stated that Intel Arrow Lake-S CPUs for desktops will only include 4 Xe-Cores which is half the amount featured on the Meteor Lake CPU family.
This decision means that we will likely not see Intel being as aggressive on the iGPU front on the desktop side as AMD's Ryzen 8000G which features the full RDNA 3 iGPU configurations (Radeon 780M). Since Arrow Lake's iGPUs will feature just 4 Xe Cores, they won't be tagged as Arc Graphics & would instead be labeled as Intel Graphics since their performance tier isn't enough to be called Arc. They will get the same driver-level optimizations as the Arc GPU family. A previous report said that Arrow Lake-S Desktop CPUs will utilize the standard Xe-LPG (Alchemist) architecture while the Arrow Lake mobility SKUs will utilize the optimized and refined Xe-LPG+ (Alchemist+) cores.
Lastly, the inside talks about specific SKUs and their related process technologies. For desktops, it will be a single 6+8 SKU that will feature the Intel 20A process node for the compute tile while all of the remaining chips are said to be from TSMC (Desktop & Mobile). The 6+8 configuration will be featured on the Core Ultra 5 2** series desktop parts which will utilize a Non-K design. There is also a mention of Arrow Lake-S and Arrow Lake-HX CPUs still relying on a PCH for the specific platforms and won't do away with it like AMD.
Intel Arrow Lake-S Desktop CPUs are expected to launch in the second half of 2024 so stay tuned as we get more official details for these next-gen chips.
Intel Desktop CPU Generations Comparison:
| Processor Family | Processor Architecture | Processor Process | Processors Cores (Max) | Platform Chipset | Platform Socket | Memory Support | TDPs | PCIe Support | Launch |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Intel Coffee Lake | Coffee Lake | 14nm++ | 6/12 | 300-Series | LGA 1151 | DDR4 | 35-95W | PCIe 3.0 | 2017 |
| Intel Coffee Lake Refresh | Coffee Lake | 14nm++ | 8/16 | 300-Series | LGA 1151 | DDR4 | 35-95W | PCIe 3.0 | 2018 |
| Intel Comet Lake | Comet Lake | 14nm++ | 10/20 | 400-Series | LGA 1200 | DDR4 | 35-127W | PCIe 3.0 | 2020 |
| Intel Rocket Lake | Rocket Lake | 14nm++ | 10/20 | 500-Series | LGA 1200 | DDR4 | 35-125W | PCIe 4.0 | 2021 |
| Intel Alder Lake | Golden Cove (P-Core) Gracemont (E-Core) | Intel 7 | 16/24 | 600-Series | LGA 1700 | DDR5/DDR4 | 35-150W | PCIe 5.0 | 2021 |
| Intel Raptor Lake | Raptor Cove (P-Core) Gracemont (E-Core) | Intel 7 | 24/32 | 700-Series | LGA 1700 | DDR5/DDR4 | 35-150W | PCIe 5.0 | 2022 |
| Intel Raptor Lake Refresh | Raptor Cove (P-Core) Gracemont (E-Core) | Intel 7 | 24/32 | 700-Series | LGA 1700 | DDR5/DDR4 | 35-150W | PCIe 5.0 | 2023 |
| Intel Meteor Lake | Redwood Cove (P-Core) Crestmont (E-Core) | Intel 4 | 14/20 | 800-Series | LGA 1851 | DDR5 | 35-65W | PCIe 5.0 | 2024 (PS-Only) |
| Intel Bartlett Lake | Raptor Cove (P-Core) Gracemont (E-Core) | Intel 7 | TBD | 700-Series | LGA 1700 | DDR5/DDR4 | TBD | PCIe 5.0 | 2024 |
| Intel Arrow Lake | Cougar Cove (P-Core) Skymont (E-Core) | Intel 20A TSMC N3 | 24/24? | 800-Series | LGA 1851 | DDR5 | 35-125W | PCIe 5.0 | 2024 |
| Intel Panther Lake | Cougar Cove (P-Core) Skymont (E-Core) | Intel 18A | TBD | 900-Series | LGA 1851 | DDR5 | TBD | TBD | 2025 |
About the author: A Software Engineer by training and a PC enthusiast by passion, Hassan Mujtaba serves as Wccftech's Senior Editor for hardware section. With years of experience in the industry, he specializes in deep-dive technical analysis of next-generation CPU and GPU architectures, motherboards, and cooling solutions. His work involves not only breaking news on upcoming technologies but also extensive hands-on reviews and benchmarking.
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