New details about Intel Alder Lake-M and Alder Lake-P processors emerge

Coelacanth's Dream has discovered a recent Coreboot update that contains some new details about Intel's Alder Lake-M and Alder Lake-P platforms. While the Coreboot update applies to Google's Chrome OS platform, the details also apply to other Alder Lake supported platforms.

The update describes that Intel has separated its Alder Lake processors into four categories, with only one utilising Alder Lake-M architecture. The categories, TDPs and core combinations are as follows:

• Alder Lake-M: 9 W TDP - 2 performance cores/8 efficiency cores
• Alder Lake-P: 15 W TDP - 2 performance cores/8 efficiency cores
• Alder Lake-P: 28 W TDP - 4 performance cores/8 efficiency cores
• Alder Lake-P: 45 W TDP - 6 performance cores/8 efficiency cores

These TDPs follow those that Intel established with Tiger Lake, as do Alder Lake's PL2 power consumption. However, Alder Lake-M and Alder Lake-P also support higher PL4 TDPs, effective when processors utilise Turbo Boost. As the table below shows, Alder Lake-P processors can use significantly more wattage in PL4 than Tiger Lake-U series ones can. Even Alder Lake-M's 9 W chips can consume 68 W in this state.

It is worth noting that Alder Lake chips will only maintain these PL4 levels for a few milliseconds before dropping to PL2. Overall, Alder Lake and Tiger Lake processors should be about as efficient as each other in terms of power consumption.

Intel is expected to reveal its Alder Lake Mobile product stack in the autumn. All Alder Lake-M and Alder Lake-P processors should feature Intel GT2 integrated GPUs, too.

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