One of the biggest controversies regarding Intel processors is that in very specific situations they can reach high consumption, especially when work accumulates and they have to reach high clock speeds. Well, a rumor that was discussed long before the release of the Intel Core 13 with Raptor Lake architecture is that they were going to bring a technology that would allow them to better control the energy they spend, the so-called DLVR, but disappeared from the scene. Or does it still exist in some form?
Manipulating the clock speed of any chip is related to its voltage, so the more voltage the chip receives, the higher the clock speed that can be achieved. At the same time, there are speeds that can operate at various values at different volts, but not all of them are suitable for the chip. That is why there are overclocking mechanisms that automatically manage these parameters. All this to avoid a fateful accident that could lead to the final death of the processor.
What is Intel DLVR?
It is the acronym for Digital Linear Voltage Regulator, its name is quite explicit and it is one of the pieces that Intel has designed for to be able to better optimize the consumption of their CPUs for PC. Its existence was known through leaks, but it was to present its new generation of desktop processors and this function disappeared from the map. Which hinted that it will rather be a technology that we will see in subsequent iterations.
What is the idea based on? Well, simple, instead of letting the motherboard be the only one in charge of managing the voltage that reaches the processor with the overclocking functions in the chipset. Intel’s proposal is to put a voltage regulator inside the processor. Of course, what interests us is what can be achieved with it, which is none other than having a better consumption curve. In Intel’s own patent you can read how they have achieved reduce consumption by 25% either increase performance by 7% on a processor without DLVR.
Why is it not in the Intel Core 13?
Well, a few hours ago it was learned that certain manufacturers were planning to support this technology with the BIOS, the idea of DLVR is not to work alone, but in tandem with the chipset’s voltage regulators. So it is normal that support was included in the firmware of the motherboards. The explanation for his disappearance? Well, it seems that the Intel Core 13 do have DLVR on the chip, but the decision was made to deactivate it from the factory.
The reason? We don’t know, the simplest explanation is that they want to take advantage of it for future generations and sell with Meteor Lake a chip, or rather a set of chips, more efficient and, therefore, with a higher performance per watt. It may also be that there was a bug that they did not have time to solve and that could point to the fact that the second batch of the processor had it.
It is not the first time that Intel adds or removes functions from one revision to another of the same generation, we already saw it with the AVX-512 in the previous generation. In any case, we don’t know anything, what’s more, the company that created the x86 ISA never officially announced DLVR.
