It's no secret that Intel's next-gen Alder Lake processors will feature Efficient (E) and Performance (P) cores. As we detailed back in August, it's an approach similar to how smartphone processors work. Intel has now confirmed that the Alder Lake mobile chips will feature up to 14 cores. They'll be distributed between efficient and performance cores.

Intel's new developer guide talks about this architecture at length, explaining how the cores will be distributed in at least two SKUs. The new Alder Lake-P series, which is replacing Tiger Lake-U, will offer up to 2 performance cores and 8 efficient cores. The A cores mentioned in the diagram stand for Atom, which is another name for “Gracemont” Efficient cores.

Schematic chart detailing Intel Alder Lake mobile chip architecture

The H-series processors, on the other hand, will feature 6 performance cores and 8 efficient cores, and will presumably be a part of the Alder Lake P-series unless they continue calling it the same. Intel previously confirmed these configurations during its Architecture Day 2021 keynote, but it didn't mention the new P designation for mobile processors.

The efficient cores, in case you don't know, are designed for low-power tasks, and they'll deliver up to 40% more single-threaded performance than the Skylake cores while using the same amount of power. That performance uptick is more when it comes to multi-threaded tasks. The performance cores naturally focus on improving the overall performance of the processor. Intel promises up to 19 percent performance improvement over the Cypress Cove cores at the same frequency.

These cores will work together in Alder Lake processors to improve the overall computing experience. They'll coordinate using Intel's new Thread Director feature. We hope to learn more about these soon as Intel reveals more info leading up to the launch next year. As noted by the folks over at Videocardz, the guide also talks about how the Alder Lake CPUs will have the AVX512 instructions disabled when the efficient cores are active.

Alder Lake processor first launch scheduled for Q4 2021

A screenshot of text detailing Intel Alder Lake platform's launch.

Intel says the Alder Lake platform is expected to launch worldwide in Q4 2021. It also notes that the platform will be available for desktop, notebook, Ultrabook, and convertible form-factors with various SKUs. We expect them to rollout SKUs gradually over a period of time, but that roadmap is still under the wraps. We'll know more about the Alder Lake platform later this month at Intel's Innovation event.