One of the anomalies that many of you may have noticed is the fact that there is no 16-core version of their latest generation laptop CPUs. Well, this configuration would not have been ruled out by the manufacturer and will appear in the coming months under a new range named Alder Lake-HX. Let’s see, therefore, what are the details about these processors.
One thing that caught the attention of the leaked Alder Lake roadmap for laptops was the last column, referred to as H55, where they talked about processors with a 8 P-Cores and 8 E-Cores configurationbut designed for laptops and with a TDP up to 55W. This is above what is normally seen even in high-end gaming laptops, but below the 65 W of the base desktop models.
The difference between these models and the ones we see on the desktop would be in the fact that, like the current processors for laptops, the Alder Lake-HX will be soldered to the motherboard of the laptop. Although at the moment we do not know if Intel is going to use the same packaging as the models already available on the market or an exclusive one, since according to the specifications of the processor it seems to be the same CPU as on the desktop.
What models of Alder Lake-HX CPUs will be released?
12980HX😀
— HXL (@9550pro) February 25, 2022
Through a Twitter conversation between two of the most well-known information leakers, we have learned that the Intel Core i9-12980HX or i9-12980HK would be the first Laptop CPU with 16 cores based on Alder Lake architecture. The HX tagline seems to have become an industry standard since it is also used by AMD in some top-of-the-range models of its Ryzen 6000.
Loa Alder Lake-HX will not be sold as separate processors since they make use of encapsulated S-BGAwhich means that they will go welded to base plate. So they are strong candidates not only for laptops, but also for some of the pre-built PCs on the OEM market. Let’s remember that Intel also did the same a few months ago with a variant of its Tiger Lake-H which I call Tiger Lake-B.
As for the expected models, at the moment we only know about the i9-12980HX, but a more advanced model could appear in the form of the i9-12990HX or i9-12990HK. Since it is based on the desktop version, this processor will have different packaging than the laptop versions and therefore require special PCBs.
A processor for gaming and as a portable workstation
The fact that the processor’s TDP is higher means that these are going to have a different form factor than laptops already on the market as they need better cooling. So we should expect them to be thicker and luckier than 15-inch models and up. The fact that its integrated GPU is 32 EU means that a dedicated GPU is needed for heavy tasks, tolerance to a higher TDP could also bring us together models with an RTX 3080 Ti for laptops
