Intel to take page out of AMD's book for next-gen CPUs using Unified Core design
Intel inadvertently confirmed the existence of the “Unified Core” design a few days ago. We speculated that this Unified Core design could be a continuation of Jim Keller’s Royal Core Project. The story just got more interesting as Olrak29_ claims that the “Unified Core” is not Intel getting rid of P and E-cores, but something that mimics AMD’s strategy of full Zen 5 and smaller Zen 5c cores.
Past leaks alleged that Jim Keller’s hugely ambitious Royal Core Project would see Intel move away from separate P and E-cores in favor of a CPU tile that could function as both performance and efficiency cores when needed. In this context, we speculated that the recent confirmation of the Unified Core design meant that, in CPU architectures like Razer Lake, Intel could shift from using dedicated P, E, and LP E-cores to just one main CPU core type.
Olrak now suggests that Intel is not moving away from the current P/E/LP E-core structure, but is rather changing how it approaches the design of these cores.
Intel is reportedly taking a page out of AMD’s book by using the same general core architecture and IP for the P, E, and LP E-cores. The key difference between these "Unified Core" cores is the allegedly power curve. So, the P-cores will be allowed the most power consumption, then the E-cores, and lastly the LP E-cores. AMD uses the same general strategy with the big Zen 5 and the small Zen 5c cores, as these cores primarily differ in size and clock speeds.
More interestingly, Intel is reportedly basing the Unified Core on the efficiency-focused E-core and not the performance-oriented P-core. This makes sense, as Intel’s E-cores have come a long way in both power efficiency and performance. In fact, the Darkmont E-cores of the Intel Panther Lake CPUs perform better than the Raptor Cove P-cores of 13th-gen Intel CPUs at the same power level.
Moreover, Darkmont cores can also be super frugal when needed. The Darkmont LP E-cores, for instance, reportedly consume as little as 1 W during lighter tasks.
All of this to say, Intel seems to be building upon the innovations and the success of the E-cores with the Unified Core design. This makes us quite excited, as Intel has pretty much mastered the power efficiency side of the game with Panther Lake. All Intel needs to do now is increase the raw compute while keeping the efficiency gains intact.
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