Intel Lunar Lake CPU Leaked, Features Unusual Cache Layout & No Hyper-Threading

Intel Lunar Lake CPU Leaked, Features Unusual Cache Layout & No Hyper-Threading

Intel’s Lunar Lake is set to be the direct successor of Meteor Lake CPUs, and recently it has been leaked with some of the preliminary specs revealed. The screenshot of the Task Manager (courtesy of Zhihu user XZiar) reveals what looks to be a system powered by a Lunar Lake CPU.

It is claimed the sample is on “A1” stepping, meaning this should be the first functioning prototype with rough edges very much present. Silicon in this state usually has unfinished features and low clock speeds, which get improved upon later “B”, “C”, or even further steppings.

The silicon in question features a 4P+4E layout, though interestingly, the total thread count comes at just 8, instead of the 12 that most would expect given that P-cores have traditionally come with the Hyper-threading feature. This isn’t the first time an Intel chip was seen without HT – the desktop successor to Raptor Lake, Arrow Lake, was also spotted with Hyper-threading not present.

Another interesting metric from the numbers shown in the Task Manager screenshot is the cache size. Conventional wisdom taught us that the higher the level the cache goes, the larger it gets (at the cost of access speeds). Here, the prototype silicon has a total of 14MB L2, while the L3 cache is slightly smaller at 12MB – although previous leaks have pointed to 16MB L3, XZiar claimed that the cache “isn’t up to par,” seemingly indicating that this may be a deliberate decision from Team Blue.

Source: Tom’s Hardware

Pokdepinion: E-cores are the new Hyper-threading? Intel seems to think so.