Intel Arrow Lake-S Desktop CPUs To Feature 50% Bigger L2 P-Core Cache Versus Raptor Lake

Intel's next-generation Arrow Lake-S Desktop CPUs which will succeed the 14th Gen Raptor Lake lineup will feature a larger cache design.

The information has been revealed by Golden Pig Upgrade states that each of the P-Core featured on the Arrow Lake-S CPUs will carry an additional 1 MB of L2 cache, totaling 3 MB. That will mark a 50% increase over the 2 MB L2 cache per core featured on Raptor Cove and a 2.4x uplift over the Golden Cove cores. That's going to be a dramatic uplift to the L2 side of things whereas the CPUs will retain the same L3 cache counts from Raptor Lake chips.

The L2 of each large core of ARL-S will be increased to 3MB, cache madness

Golden Pig Upgrade (Machine Translated)

Following is the comparison between the L2 cache counts of the three hybrid generations:

Now based on recent reports, Intel's Arrow Lake-S is supposed to be part of the new LGA 1851 platform which is likely to make its debut later next year with the 800-series motherboards. The previous information suggests that Arrow Lake will be a mix of Lion Cove P-Cores and Skymont E-Cores but the same architectures are also confirmed for Lunar Lake which is expected to hit low-power platforms, kind of like Meteor Lake but minus the HX/S SKUs. The Arrow Lake-S CPUs will feature the "Intel 20A" process node and there have been rumors about Intel switching to TSMC 3nm process though nothing is concrete about the exact processes the tiles will be based upon.

Recently leaked benchmarks show that the Intel Arrow Lake-S Desktop CPUs in their current state are projected to offer up to a 21% performance gain over Raptor Lake CPUs at the same power and twice the iGPU performance. It was revealed that Intel still plans to make at least up to 8+16 core configurations for Arrow Lake-S which would match the existing Raptor Lake-S flagship, the Core i9-13900K/14900K. There were rumors of an even higher number of E-Cores but nothing has been formalized around those yet. Also, it remains to be seen if the desktop lineup will continue as the 15th Gen or standardize the "Core Ultra" series branding. The Arrow Lake CPUs will mark the 2nd generation of Core Ultra with Meteor Lake being the 1st.

The Arrow Lake-S Desktop CPU lineup is planned to release in late 2024 and will be supported by the LGA 1851 socketed motherboards within the 800-series family. The company has an Innovation event planned for 19th September so we can expect more details then.