Revolutionary Intel Royal Core project could see P and E cores disappear in favor of CPU tiles for added efficiency and performance

Intel is scheduled to launch the 14^th gen Meteor Lake and 15^th gen Arrow Lake CPUs potentially in Q4 2023 and the H2 2024 respectively. Beyond Arrow Lake, Intel has also revealed that the Lunar Lake architecture will release in 2024. Paul from RedGamingTech has now shared very early information regarding Intel’s “Royal Core” project that could come after Lunar Lake.

For the uninitiated, Royal Core is rumored to be Intel’s answer to Apple’s ARM-based M series SoCs. Supposedly first headed by Jim Keller, the project’s goal is to make Intel x86 processors more power efficient than Apple’s in-house silicon. Paul suggests that “Royal Core” is not the name of a specific CPU architecture but rather a terminology that Intel is using internally to describe the company’s project of designing next-gen CPUs. Per the leaker, Royal Core is Intel’s effort to increase performance and efficiency at a “smaller area cost”.

Intel Royal Core will reportedly rely on individual CPU tiles rather than separate core types like the P and E-cores in Alder Lake and Raptor Lake processors. Each of these CPU tiles can resemble a performance core (P-core) when working in “Cove” mode for intensive tasks and be segmented into possibly two units to simulate smaller efficiency cores (E-core) in “Mont” mode while handling lighter loads.

To explain the Royal Core project, the leaker gives the example of two GeForce GPUs in SLI working in conjunction to offer more raw horsepower when needed and functioning separately to handle different tasks, for instance, driving different virtual machines.

Additionally, Paul mentions that there could be a distributed cache accessible by all CPU tiles. The leaker also alleges a huge IPC uplift for the Royal Core as well as efficiency gains but shares no figures.

Finally, we won’t be seeing processors using the Intel Royal Core enhancements before 2025 which seems reasonable, since the company already has Meteor Lake, Arrow Lake, and Lunar Lake architectures in the pipeline. This is also why you shouldn’t take this early information as final, as we may end up seeing processors that are a big departure from what RedGamingTech has shared.

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