Recently confidential data from Intel on the upcoming 15th Gen Arrow Lake processors surfaced. Crucial information related to hyperthreading, a major feature of Intel processors, has been spotted by the German news site 3DCenter.org. Hyperthreading increases the total thread count of the CPU, providing better scheduling of ongoing tasks.
The confidential material was leaked by X (formerly Twitter) user @yuuki_ans and has since been taken down. Now, the leaked Intel documents suggest the company could be planning to move away from hyper-threading completely!
This is a massive change in the processor’s architectural design. Moreover, Intel is moving to a new kind of core configuration for future processors. The change has already been implemented on Core Ultra processors for laptops.
A new type of LP E-core is being added to Intel processors. This stands for Low Power E-cores, also being referred to as Low Power Island. With more efficient scheduling, Intel wants to use this extremely low-power and super-efficient core type for background tasks. Anything that does not demand the compute requirements of P-cores & E-cores will run on LP E-cores instead.
The compute tile of the processor (on Meteor Lake architecture) has the performance (P) and efficiency (E) cores, but it is the SoC tile in which the low power (LP) efficiency cores lie. We could see a similar design implementation on Intel 15th Gen Arrow Lake, too.
How much will it affect performance if Intel Arrow Lake processors do not feature hyperthreading? For many workloads, including gaming, the impact will be minimal. Older processors benefitted from hyper-threading greatly, but this is not equivalently true for modern chips. Among new features, it is also expected for this Arrow Lake platform to come with an NPU for AI processing.
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Even with hyperthreading gone, Intel should be able to leverage a more efficient manufacturing process (Intel 4 or better) to provide a good upliftment in performance for the new generation.
Do note that this is a rumor, and nothing is set in stone yet. The documents reveal that “enabling the performance cores will cause system instability,” so this unnamed Intel processor looks like an early engineering sample.
By the way, Intel has also rebranded its processors. Now, the terminology of Core Ultra will be used for future chips. Also, it is highly expected that the 14th generation will be the last Core i3/i5/i7/i9 CPUs to come. Newer processors, such as the upcoming chips based on the aforementioned Arrow Lake, could be called Core Ultra instead.
Intel has also started fresh, calling Core Ultra processors on new laptops under the ‘Series 1‘ banner. Since this is a leaked Intel document that has surfaced quite early, it is understandable that Arrow Lake is called 15th Gen here. But it would be quite weird for Intel to release new CPUs under the old generational naming scheme.
What do you think about hyperthreading being left behind in Arrow Lake? Leave your thoughts in the comments below!
