Desktop Intel Arrow Lake-S appears to follow Apple M SoCs with no Hyperthreading as internal documents leak key specs and chipset details

With the launch of Intel’s Meteor Lake CPUs only for laptops, the company intends to service the desktop market with the upcoming Arrow Lake products. The desktop Arrow Lake (ARL-S) processors are expected to have a late 2024 or early 2025 launch. Now, thanks to internal documents posted by Yuuki_AnS on X (now deleted), we have a detailed look at the possible core configuration of three ARL-S SKUs and the new platform that will debut with Arrow Lake.

According to the leaked documents, the three ARL-S SKUs feature 8+16, 6+16, and 6+8 core configurations. So, the top-of-the-line Arrow Lake die could have a total of 24 cores with 8 P-cores and 16 E-cores. This die also includes a GT1 iGPU and has 125 W TDP. However, what is most interesting about this configuration is the mention of only “8 IA cores/8-Threads (Disabled in BIOS)”.

We reported in July 2023 that Arrow Lake CPUs could ditch Hyperthreading altogether as Intel supposedly couldn’t get SMT-2 and SMT-4 working with the new Lion Cove P-cores. The report came to us through Moore’s Law Is Dead who reiterated the claim in October. The information of ARL-S having 8 P-cores with 8-threads rules out any hyperthreading as explained by 3DCenter.

While Hyperthreading (HT) does provide a nice multi-core performance boost, Intel ditching HT in ARL-S might not impact the performance too much as modern processors with their increasing core counts are much less dependent on simultaneous threading. For example, Apple’s excellent M-series SoCs don’t support any form of multi-threading.

Moving on, the ARL-S CPUs will rely on the LGA1851 platform with Intel’s new 800 series chipset. Some notable details regarding the new chipset include support for DRR5-only memory at 6400 MT/s, 24 PCIe lanes from the CPU (20x PCIe Gen 5 + 4x PCIe Gen 4), 24 PCIe Gen 4 lanes from the chipset, DisplayPort 2.0 UHBR20, and Thunderbolt 4.

As is the case with all leaks, we have no way to verify the recency of these internal documents. So, there is a possibility that they could be old and ARL-S has seen significant changes since. Therefore, we’ll have to wait and see whether ARL-S CPUs release with or without any sort of multi-threading.

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