Something to look forward to: Intel's high-powered Alder Lake-HX mobile platform is expected to be announced on May 10 at the company's Vision 2022 event. The chips will support PCIe Gen 5 and CPUs with up to 16 cores, both firsts for notebooks.
Rumors have been circulating for a while that Intel plans to release mobile CPUs featuring 16 cores, and today's leak confirms that. Videocardz has just published a slide containing the full specifications of the chipmaker's Alder Lake-HX lineup.
These chips will be desktop CPU dies installed on a BGA package, which will reportedly have the same length and width as desktop LGA (45x37.5mm), albeit with a reduced height from 4.4mm to 2mm.
Alder Lake-HX will also be the first mobile platform to feature PCIe Gen5, having a total of 48 PCIe lanes (Gen5x16 + Gen4x20 + Gen3x12). As a comparison, Intel's current flagship notebook platform, Alder Lake-H, features just 16 Gen4 lanes and 12 Gen3 lanes.
These new chips will also feature extensive overclocking functionality, supporting DDR5 with XMP 3.0 profiles, Dynamic Memory Boost, Efficient-core overclocking, as well as updated Intel Speed Optimizer and Extreme Tuning Utility.
Cooling these SKUs is going to be no easy task, as the entire lineup is rated for a 55W base TDP and a whopping 157W Turbo TDP, compared to Alder Lake-H chips that go up to just 45/115W.
Because these CPUs are based on desktop silicon, they will feature a significantly weaker iGPU, having a maximum of 32 GPU cores, compared to the 96 found on high-end AL-H parts. However, most of these chips will probably be paired with a dedicated GPU, so it isn't that big of a loss.
It's believed that Intel will officially announce the Alder Lake-HX platform on May 10 at their Vision 2022 event.