Intel details Alder Lake-P and Alder Lake-U: Significant multi-core gains over Core i7-1195G7 but Ryzen 7 5800U shows higher efficiency at 15 W ^↺

Alder Lake-P will offer up to 14 cores that include six P-cores and eight E-cores. Alder Lake-U, on the other hand, tops-out at 10 cores with two P-cores and up to eight E-cores Like their H-series counterparts, Alder Lake-P and Alder Lake-U also feature Intel Thread Director and support various memory standards including DDR5-4800, DDR4-3200, LPDDR5-5200, and LPDDR4x-4267.

Alder Lake-P parts are rated at a 28 W base TDP with a max TDP of 64 W and have a package size of 50x25x1.3 mm. Alder Lake-U is offered in two TDP variants — 9 W and 15 W. ADL-U 15 W has the same BGA package size as that of ADL-P. ADL-U 9W, however, comes in a 28.5x19x1.1 mm package.

Intel also detailed some platform enhancements, particularly the new image processing that supposedly offers a 10x improvement over 10th gen processors. 

The 28 W ADL-P and 15 W ADL-U CPUs offer a total of eight PCIe Gen4, 12 PCIe Gen3 lanes, and can support four Thunderbolt 4 connections. The 9 W ADL-U CPUs have to make do with just four PCIe Gen4, 10 PCIe Gen3, and two Thunderbolt 4 connectors owing to the reduced power limits.

Intel claims "enthusiast-level performance" with ADL-P. Taking the Tiger Lake Core i7-1195G7 at 28 W to offer 100% relative performance, Intel showed that the Core i7-1265U is able to offer around 20% better multi-core performance at 28 W while matching the AMD Ryzen 7 5800U (~16 W) and comfortably leading the Apple M1 (12 W).

The Core i7-1265U's stated performance does raise a few questions, however. Intel said in the footnotes that the Core i7-1265U was run at a fixed PL1 at 12 W, 15 W, 20 W, and 28 W with Dynamic Tuning enabled at 25 W. From the graph, it is clear that the Ryzen 7 5800U is able to offer higher performance at ~16 W compared to the Core i7-1265U.

There's another thing to consider as well. The Core i7-1265U offers 2 P-cores and 8 E-cores while the Ryzen 7 5800U offers 8C/16T. The Ryzen 7 6800U will also offer an 8C/16T configuration with further enhancements to power efficiency. So, while it is good to see the Core i7-1265U match Ryzen's multi-core performance with just two hyperthreading-enabled cores and 12 threads, it seems to require more SoC power to achieve the same.

We do not know the relative performance figures of 9 W ADL-U parts such as the Core i7-1260U, but AMD could have a potential advantage in ultra-thin form factors. Besides, the 6 nm Ryzen 6000 series will also include an RDNA 2 iGPU that should offer much better performance overall compared to the 11th gen Xe graphics that Intel continues to use in the 12th gen.

Intel said that it expects more than 250 designs in 2022 featuring Alder Lake-P and Alder Lake-U processors. New foldable designs are also on the anvil with 9 W ADL-U chips, and Intel is even extending the new Evo 3 specification to accommodate foldables.

Around 8 odd designs will also offer exclusive Evo 3 features such as the Intel Visual Sensing Controller that will be embedded in the lid electronics to provide ultra-low power user presence sensing. 5G is now part of the Evo spec as well with 15+ designs expected to feature 5G connectivity. 

Intel is bringing a new Multi Device Experience feature to select Evo 3 laptops this holiday. Multi Device Experience allows seamless roaming between laptop, phone, tablet, and even smartwatches.