Leaked roadmap for Intel Alder Lake CPUs for laptops reveals impressive specs

While it looks like Alder Lake desktop processors are around the corner, we still don’t know much about Intel’s next chips for the best laptops, but a leaked roadmap may have given us a glimpse. 

According to this leaked roadmap, spotted by Wccftech, Alder Lake-P and Alder Lake-M will supposedly start production in November 2021 with an early 2022 launch. 

This leaked roadmap seems to back up an earlier rumor leak by Twitter user @9550pro about the Alder Lake-P and -M microarchitectures being behind the next-gen U- and H-series chips. But, it’s still way too early to tell whether or not these leaks are real – even with the new leaked roadmap. It’s entirely possible that Intel will come up with an entirely new microarchitecture for its 12th-generation mobile processors, it wouldn’t be the first time. 

With this timeline, we’re not sure when these processors would actually be announced. But if Intel really is aiming for a launch at the beginning of the year, it’s possible Team Blue will save it for CES 2022.

Analysis: what is going on?

Intel Alder Lake-M processors, according to this leak, will supposedly replace the current-generation U-series chips found in laptops like the Dell XPS 13, with 7-15W SKUs meant for smaller mobile devices. Alder Lake-P, on the other hand, will supposedly support PCIe 5.0 and DDR5 and will be behind the H-series chips. 

Given that these features are likely to appear in Alder Lake-S processors like the Intel Core i9-12900K, this makes sense, though we don’t know why Intel wouldn’t just include PCIe 5.0 and DDR5 in its ultraportable-class chips, too. 

Also just like Alder Lake-S, it’s likely that these processors will also use a big.LITTLE hybrid design. That means we could potentially see CPUs with up to 14 cores in a laptop with these 12th-gen processors, but it would be similar to the Apple M1, with some larger high-performance cores and some smaller high-efficiency cores. So we don’t know how well that will actually translate to CPU performance. 

Either way, we likely won’t have to wait long. Rumors are pointing to Intel 12th-gen desktop processors launching on November 19, which is right around the corner. 

Via KitGuru