Intel’s new Core Ultra desktop processors (Series 2), named Arrow Lake, have been announced. This processor was developed with the goal of providing high performance and power efficiency to enthusiasts and bringing AI PCs to the desktop market.
With new CPU cores and packaging technology, Arrow Lake has evolved with the top priority of reducing power consumption and heat generation. The background to this was concern that the power consumption of desktop PCs had increased significantly over the past three years.
However, improvements in energy efficiency may come unnecessarily at the expense of performance. Therefore, the development goal for Arrow Lake was to maintain top-line gaming performance while maintaining the performance advantage in single-threaded and multi-threaded.
And to extend AI to all desktop PC segments, we introduced the AI hardware stack. This will make it possible to support new AI applications in games.
The built-in graphics have also been updated. Equipped with Xe-LPG and supports advanced displays and codecs. Enthusiasts often use discrete GPUs, but Intel Quick Sync Video is still used in major production software.
Arrow Lake delivers the top-level gaming performance of Raptor Lake with about half the power. In other words, we aimed to create a CPU for enthusiasts who want a quiet, high-performance system with a significant increase in performance per watt and lower operating temperatures.
Arrow Lake has been reduced to 24 threads from Raptor Lake’s 32 threads, but it is said to have an advantage in multi-threaded performance. In other words, the performance of each thread is higher.
The latest CPU core architecture and cache optimization
Let’s briefly summarize the CPU cores used in Arrow Lake, Skymont (E core) and Lion Cove (P core). Both cores have excellent flexibility and scalability, and Lunar Lake, which is aimed at mobile computers, uses these cores to provide a 10W TDP model. On the other hand, Arrow Lake has a maximum power of 250W for a desktop, and it can be said that it is a product that has spread the flexibility of the power band of this architecture to the highest level.
Lion Cove has added a neat clock change function. This reduces voltage and frequency overshoot, improves energy efficiency, and helps with overclocking.
And, with the VNNI instruction in Skymont and the AVX-VNNI instruction executable in Lion Cove, about 15 TOPS of AI processing can be done using the CPU alone. However, on dedicated platforms, AI processing can be offloaded to the GPU or NPU, freeing up the CPU for more important workloads.
It also has the flexibility to change performance and power consumption by changing the cache hierarchy per output, thus changing IPC (Instructions Per Cycle) across outputs.
In Lunar Lake, an 8MB side-memory cache protects against the effects of losing the Skymont cache. Arrow Lake, on the other hand, is a late-stage LLC cache that can access both Skymont and Lion Cove cores. Specifically compared to Raptor Lake, Lion Cove’s L2 cache will increase from 2MB to 3MB per core, while Skymont will have 4MB of shared L2 cache per cluster.
First NPU added to desktop processors
AI is expected to dramatically change the gaming experience over the next few years. Intel wanted to bring AI-enabled processors to the desktop to support this type of gaming experience. And Arrow Lake is the first time a desktop processor has an NPU. As mentioned above, the CPU core and built-in graphics are also equipped with AI processing extensions such as AVX-VNNI and DP4a. The stage will have a total of 36 TOPS. He hopes that new software stacks will appear in the future, and that it will become a must-have feature for PC gamers.
Platform and overclocking
Arrow Lake requires motherboards with the new LGA1851 socket. The chipset is Intel 800 series. The chipset provides rich PCIe, SATA, and USB support for storage and connection to the latest peripherals.
Thunderbolt 4 is also included as standard, and Thunderbolt 5 is also supported as an option. Both support Thunderbolt Share, which allows you to connect two PCs via Thunderbolt and exchange files and share keyboards, mice, monitors, etc.
For wireless, it supports Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3 as standard, and offers Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4, and 2.5Gigabit Ethernet as options.
In terms of wireless connections, it supports 1Gigabit Ethernet as standard. These options also have versions built by the Killer Network team that include the latest Killer software.
And with Arrow Lake, overclocking has been improved. Both Lion Cove and Skymont allow you to change the frequency in 16.6MHz increments, allowing you to increase the performance of the core. The ability to adjust core and cluster voltages separately also allows Skymont to run at a lower voltage than Lion Cove, giving it more room for heat dissipation.
And dual base clocks allow precise tuning of heart and ring frequencies independent of memory and system hardware. In addition, overcoming die-to-die fabric and SOC tile improves memory mobility.
Using DLVR (Digital Linear Voltage Regulator), Lion Cove can adjust voltage individually for each core and Skymont for each cluster, allowing for finer tuning than previous generations.
When crossing Arrow Lake, you will get the most benefit by targeting the Skymont frequency, interlaced frequency, and memory frequency. Lion Cove also has some room, but by design Lion Cove’s frequency goes out quickly.
Supports the latest DDR5 fast technology
Memory supports up to 192GB of DDR5-6400 as standard. Arrow Lake is also strong in overclocking memory and can be overclocked to over 8,000MT/s. It also supports the latest standards such as Clock Unbuffered DIMM, and supports ECC memory for enterprises.
Clock Unbuffered DIMM (CUDIMM) and CSODIMM are new DDR5 memory modules that add a clock driver to the memory stick. This restores or amplifies the signal from the memory controller and stabilizes the high frequencies. CUDIMM is the memory standard for desktops, and CSODIMM is the memory standard for notebooks.
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