Low-power Alder Lake-N processors are coming to Chromebooks and embedded systems

Intel Alder Lake-N processors succeeding Jasper Lake processors expected to appear in Chromebooks and embedded systems soon with early hints of upcoming processor features found in Coreboot source tree and Sound Open Firmware (SOF) project .

The Coelacanth’s Dream person or team has analyzed Alder Lake-N related engagements and found some interesting information on CPU cores, GPU, media capabilities and peripherals, as well as benchmark maps of the Google Chromium team.

Their latest update analyzes a partial boot log in the SOF project and so far we know that:

• Alder Lake-N is an Atom-only “Gracemont” processor (no hybrid variant like Alder Lake-S desktop processors) with up to 8 threads/8 cores
• Alder Lake-N has two 4-core clusters that share L2 cache
• The new processors are expected to come with Intel UHD Gen12 graphics, just like the Alder Lake-P/M mobile processors, but limited to 32 EUs (execution units)
• LPDRR5 memory support
• Gen12 Media means support 8Kp60 VP9, ​​AV1, H.265 and H.264 video decoding and 8Kp60 encoding
• PCIe Interfaces – None connected to CPU, up to 5 ports, up to 9 lanes connected to PCH
• USB – Up to 2 USB interfaces with Type-C support
• The Alder Lake-N Chromebook board is codenamed Nissa with variants named Nivviks and Nereid.

Coelacanth’s Dream indicates that many features are similar to Elkhart Lake and Jasper Lake processors, but Gracemont cores should offer significantly better performance and the latest Intel UHD Gen12 (Intel Xe) graphics should also improve 3D graphics performance.

While most Alder Lake CPUs are “Hybrid CPUs” with cores that are both high performance and efficient, Alder Lake-N will only ship with efficient cores. Since Jasper Lake CPUs are limited to four cores, and it’s the same story for Elkhart Lake embedded/IoT CPUs, the new Atom/Pentium/Celeron CPU should perform even better in workloads multithreaded with up to 8 cores.

Since Intel has yet to unveil the new processors, it may take several months/quarters before they are available in products.

Via Tom’s Hardware

Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 on a part-time basis, before stepping down as Director of Software Engineering and starting writing daily news and reviews full-time later in 2011.