Rocket Lake Preparing for Launch
I FIRST STARTED WRITING for MaximumPC just before Intel launched its Broadwell desktop processors in 2015. Those were the very first 14nm chips to hit the market, and even after delays, Intel was basically two years ahead of the competition. So, it seems
Intel stumbled, badly, on the transition to 10nm. Yes, we know 10nm Ice Lake processors have been shipping since 2019, and SuperFIN (10nm+) Tiger Lake CPUs launched last year. But both were confined to mobile solutions, suggesting Intel was still not ready to make bigger 10nm chips. Serverclass Ice Lake-LP 10nm Xeon CPUs and desktop and mobile Alder Lake parts will change that later this year. In the interim, we have Rocket Lake. It feels a lot like this will be a repeat of what we saw with Broadwell desktop chips: Too little, too late.
Rocket Lake packs new Cypress Cove CPU cores, an architectural back-porting of Ice Lake’s Sunny Cove cores to the 14nm process. Sunny Cove originally used 10nm lithography, and backporting means Intel had to rework things. There are architectural differences, and a trimming down in CPU core counts compared to existing desktop chips. Comet Lake offers 10-core/20thread solutions at the top of the stack; Rocket Lake will drop to eight-core/16-thread models. If Intel can achieve the 19 percent higher IPC targets it’s aiming for, Rocket Lake stands a chance, but it looks very weak compared to AMD’s 12- and 16core offerings.
The Cypress Cove cores bring upgraded AVX512 support, but that’s problematic as it’s not widely used. With the right workloads, it can provide a significant boost to performance, but AVX can also cause a massive jump in power use.
Rocket Lake will be Intel’s first desktop chip to support PCIe Gen4, too, doubling the bandwidth between the CPU and graphics card. The CPU comes with 20 Gen4 lanes, including four dedicated for the first M.2 slot and 16 for the first PCIe slot, similar to AMD’s Ryzen platforms as well as Comet Lake. Intel also doubled the width of the DMI 3.0 connection between the CPU and the PCH chipset, from x4 to x8. That should improve throughput to storage devices and peripherals, but it’s only on “select” 500-series mobos— presumably all Z590 boards, but not B560 or H510. 400-series boards are also limited to x4 DMI.
Finally, Rocket Lake will include Intel’s 12th-gen Xe Graphics. All of the Skylake-derived CPUs of the past six years have used some variant of Gen9/9.5 graphics, while Ice Lake laptops included 11thgen. Tiger Lake moved to 12thgen Xe Graphics, with up to 96 EUs (Execution Units), and Rocket Lake will also have Xe Graphics, but only up to 32 EUs.
Alder Lake is due this year, though, and its Enhanced SuperFIN 10nm process and Golden Cove cores should beat Rocket Lake. With the 11900K using up to 250W peak power, waiting for Alder Lake seems sensible. The saving grace for Intel is that its 14nm node is mature, with good yields. While AMD looks to increase output of Zen 3 chips, and everyone competes for wafer starts at TSMC, Intel should have plenty of chips to go around.
Jarred Walton has been a PC and gaming enthusiast for over 30 years.