Intel’s Alder Lake chip will build upon its predecessor, the first hybrid core known as Lakefield, by prioritizing performance over battery life for thin-and-light laptops, small-form-factor PCs, and other compact designs. Announced Thursday as part of Intel Architecture Day, the chip will be available in 2021.
Alder Lake’s performance focus fills an unmet need in the prior generation, Lakefield, which Intel unveiled about a year ago. At the time, the company talked about using its Foveros technology to stack a “computeâ€� die on top of a “baseâ€� die, saving space for small-form-factor PCs. But Lakefield also steals a page from rival Arm processors, combining four low-power “Tremontâ€� Atom cores for low-intensity tasks, with a single “Sunny Coveâ€� Core CPU for heavier burdens. Lakefield quietly debuted in a version of Samsung’s Galaxy Book S, under the discreetly bland description of “Intel Core processor with Intel Hybrid Technology.â€� Â