A range of nine processors designed primarily for embedded systems.
Launched on November 4, 2021, Intel's Alder Lake architecture will soon be celebrating its third anniversary. Over the past three years, Intel has constantly praised the qualities of its big.LITTLE dual architecture, which combines high-performance(P-cores) - but energy-hungry - cores for the most demanding tasks, and efficient(E-cores) - much more energy-efficient - cores for "everyday" tasks. This duo of P and E cores has of course been carried over to subsequent generations, the Raptor Lake and Raptor Lake Refresh architectures, and Intel has already promoted it for the future Arrow Lake range.
However, Intel also seems to have other ideas, other projects, as explained by the VideoCardz site, which has noticed the update of the ARK database maintained by Intel to detail the technical characteristics of all its chips, past and present. With this update, Intel has introduced nine new processors for its 14th generation of chips, the Raptor Lake Refresh. These nine processors closely resemble models already on sale... except for one detail: they are distinguished by the complete absence of E-cores, offering only P-cores. This choice is all the more surprising given that, on ARK, we can see that Intel is targeting these processors at "embedded systems" that could make good use of E-cores.
VideoCardz details the new 14th generation processor range © VideoCardz
This new series of nine processors also introduces new letters to categorize Intel chips: "KE" for the most powerful, "E" for "normal" and "TE" for those with lower power consumption. Thus, the Core i9-14901KE is a model with just 8 high-performance cores, capable of boosting performance up to 5.8 GHz, and a TDP of 125 watts. This is the only "KE", as Intel has subsequently opted for "E" models (Core i9-14901E, Core i9-14701E, Core i9-14501E, Core i9-14401E) with a TDP of 65 watts and "TE" models (Core i9-14901TE, Core i9-14701TE, Core i9-14501TE, Core i9-14401TE) with a TDP of 35 watts.
It's a safe bet that Intel has thought through this release of processors, which must therefore do without the major asset that the American firm has been promoting since the launch of Alder Lake. A release that has come as a surprise to many analysts, but which will undoubtedly enable the company to respond to very specific demands: it should be noted that Intel has not communicated in the usual way about these nine chips, and has not yet given any information about pricing.
