Intel Lunar Lake 8-Core ‘A1’ Sample in Task Manager Confirms No Hyperthreading Support
HXL has shared a sample of what appears to be an 8-core Lunar Lake-MX processor from Zhihu. The shared image showcases the CPU’s specifications in Task Manager, revealing 8 cores, but more importantly, just 8 threads.
Lunar Lake 8-Core Sample in Task Manager
The CPU appears to be an early Engineering Sample, something that is given by its name. For more context, all Lunar Lake processors feature 8 cores as per a previous leak. Hence, it is kind of difficult to pinpoint the model and Core Ultra series.
Speaking of the cores, Lunar Lake packs 8 cores, divided across 4 performance and 4 efficient cores. This specific sample is running at 2.78GHz. Over to the left, we can also see the Intel AI Boost NPU, which Intel touts as a 3x AI bump over Meteor Lake.
A key takeaway from this screenshot is the fact that Lunar Lake abandons hyperthreading. The 4 performance cores only feature 4 threads, making it clear as daylight that Lion Cove does not support hyperthreading. The implications of this decision will only surface once these processors hit shelves.
Furthermore, if we go into the cache side of things, Lion Cove is expected to feature 3MB of L2 Cache. This leaves behind just 2MB for the E-core cluster, which is less than even Raptor Lake (4MB per each E-Core cluster).
Bionic_Squash says that Lunar Lake packs 2.5MB L2 cache per P-cores, leaving behind 4MB for the Skymont-based E-cores. The L3 slice size remains constant at 3MB, however, Skymont E-cores on Lunar Lake will feature no L3 cache.
Lunar Lake-MX will be powered by blazing fast LPDDR5x-8533 memory with support for WiFi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4.
Lunar Lake will feature Lion Cove P-Cores and Skymont E-Cores. The GPU side of things sees a huge upgrade with Battlemage, Xe2-based graphics. As per official leaked documentation, Lunar Lake is designed using the TSMC N3B node (CPU Tile). The same leak claims that Meteor Lake at peak potential can outclass the Apple M2′s iGPU at 3.8 TFLOPS. Read our article for a more detailed overview.
More accurate figures and specs should pop up as we approach the launch date.
Source: zhihu
