Intel has announced the release of Lunar Lake mobile processors, bearing the 4P+4E core formula, that don’t support Hyper-Threading technology. Yet, the new core architecture, Lion Cove, gives these processors the edge over the previous Meteor Lake processors. According to Intel, this new architecture allows for a 14% increase in instructions per cycle (IPC) compared to the Redwood Cove used in Meteor Lake processors.
Lion Cove boasts significant innovations compared to its predecessor, Redwood Cove. The branch prediction unit of the new core has been expanded eight-fold, meaning faster handling of incoming data. The throughput from L2 to instruction cache has been tripled, while instruction fetch capacity is doubled to 128 bytes per cycle. Decoding speed has also been increased, from 6 to 8 instructions per cycle. Furthermore, the micro-operation cache size and speed have been increased.
In prior architectures, instruction allocation was overseen by a single scheduler, which presented some issues. With Lion Cove, the out-of-order execution is separated into integer and vector domains for enhanced flexibility. Other enhancements include an increase in execution ports, rising from 12 to 18, and additional execution units.
Lion Cove cores feature a new L0 cache level due to the added buffer of 192 kilobytes between the existing L1 and L2 caches, resulting in the renaming of the L1 to L0 cache. The Lunar Lake processors will have an increased L2 cache size of 2.5 megabytes, which will extend further to 3 megabytes in the forthcoming Arrow Lake processors.
Cumulatively, these innovations result in a 14% increase in IPC compared to the previous Redwood Cove architecture from Meteor Lake processors. Intel reports performance gains ranging from 10 to 18% compared to Meteor Lake when considering various power constraints.
Although Lunar Lake doesn’t support Hyper-Threading, Lion Cove’s architecture itself does consider this technology. Intel has implemented two versions of Lion Cove cores; the more energy-efficient variant forgoes Hyper-Threading, while the high-performance version retains it. The latter is intended for use in high-performing desktop and server processors.
The Lunar Lake processors, featuring Lion Cove cores, are set to hit the market in the third quarter of 2024. These processors will be utilised in thin laptops on Intel’s platform, meeting the requirements of Copilot Plus PC. Later in the year, the Arrow Lake processors, also based on Lion Cove cores and targeted at desktop PCs, will be released.
