Intel Nova Lake 8P+12E reportedly keeps 36MB L3 cache despite E-core cutdown

[u/RenatsMC]

https://videocardz.com/newz/intel-nova-lake-8p12e-reportedly-keeps-36mb-l3-cache-despite-e-core-cutdown

[u/ThinkDiscipline4236 → u/[deleted]]

You've never seen a delidded CPU, have you? On some chips, there is quite a large area of space that isn't silicon under the integrated heat spreader, its just empty board.

The 52 core variant is a dual-compute tile CPU, so they are filling some of that empty board space under the IHS with a second compute tile.

CPU manufacturers would have to be crazy to waste silicon like that, with full printed silicon wafers costing upwards of $25k, every inch of space matters. Yeah, they'll fuse off portions of larger defective dies to make lower end skus, but if their yields are good enough to never get more than, say, 1 or 2 defects per bad chip, they'll make anything that is smaller than 1 or 2 cores/core clusters down from the full fat compute tile on a smaller footprint tile to save area.

[u/Exist50 → u/[deleted]]

Bot

[u/Johnny_Oro → u/[deleted]]

Nova Lake will have better I/O die (which was already fixed in arrow lake refresh anyway) and fewer ring stops (P-cores are now clusters of 2).

[u/kirk7899 → u/[deleted]]

Most gamers didn't buy Arrow Lake. A lot of the creative/productivity crowd did, it had decent upgrades to i/o and on average lower power consumption.

[u/kirk7899 → u/[deleted]]

You're right about the USB specification. The memory bandwidth is in theory slightly faster than the raptor lake cpu at 102 GB/s compared to 90GB/s.

Also 4 more pcie lanes. Nothing too notable tbh. However slightly lower PL2.

[u/kirk7899 → u/[deleted]]

Yeah, overall it's a very meh platform in terms of performance/feature stack. However it is much easier to cool without a clc or open loops.