Latest Linux Patch Further Confirms Intel Alder Lake As A Hybrid Core Design

Jiving with all the recent rumors, the latest Linux kernel patch work further spells out clearly that Intel Alder Lake will feature a hybrid core design akin to Arm's big.LITTLE architecture.

As covered previously Intel's own documentation has outlined a HYBRID bit coming and with Alder Lake having a shortened up list of supported instruction set extensions, among other open-source patch material, has been going along with the recent rumors of Alder Lake packing a mix of Atom and Core processors.

With the latest patch sent out by Intel's Tony Luck on Monday night, it's adding the latest CPU models to their header file list. Notably that under a new section labeled "Hybrid Core/Atom Processors" is Alder Lake alongside Lakefield. That's the most clear indication to date that indeed Alder Lake is a hybrid core design.

Rumors so far have pointed to Alder Lake having a mix of Golden Cove and Gracemont cores. Besides the mix of cores, DDR5 and PCI Express 4.0 are expected for these CPUs potentially shipping in 2021.