Intel core, new unknown 6-core cpu discovered

A leaked Intel CPU has been discovered in the SiSoft database. This Intel Core CPU has six cores, Hyper-Threading, and was used in a server or workstation configuration with six other identical cores for a total of 12 cores and 24 threads. What is interesting, however, is that the amount of L2 cache per core has increased from just 256KB on Coffee Lake CPUs, such as the Core i9-9900K, to 1.25MB. This is even more cache per core than that offered by the Core i9-10980XE (1 MB) or Ice Lake (512 KB) portable CPUs.

Intel Core, new unknown 6-core CPU discovered

The amount of L2 cache per core is important to consider because it has a great architectural impact on performance. This difference can be between two totally different architectures (AMD vs. Zen Bulldozer), or between two architectures that share the same core, but almost nothing else (Intel's Skylake vs. Skylake X). This Intel CPU is probably not using a Skylake core, however, considering that Intel already has an architecture in this segment that is based on Skylake: Coffee Lake, which will soon be replaced by Comet Lake. This CPU is most likely using one of the new Intel architectures that it designed for the 10nm node. But what architecture is that?

Since the 10nm Ice Lake CPUs were released earlier this year and we have no indication that Intel is going to release variants with more cores for the desktop, we can probably ignore the possibility that it is Ice Lake.

The two most likely possibilities are either a 10nm Tiger Lake CPU or a 14nm Rocket Lake CPU. There is little information on either of the two architectures, but a leak from Tiger Lake revealed that it has 1.25MB of L2 cache per core, just like this leaked CPU. That could be strong evidence that this really is the Tiger Lake, but there has been no indication so far that Tiger Lake offers more than 4 cores, while Rocket Lake has been seen with eight cores.

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This leaked CPU also has less L3 cache than the leaked Tiger Lake CPU; Because L3 caches can be quite large, it makes sense for a CPU on a less dense node to have less L3 cache than a CPU on a denser node. Considering also that this leaked CPU is a desktop CPU, and that Rocket Lake is expected to succeed Comet Lake, it seems more likely that this leaked CPU is Rocket Lake at the 14nm node, using Willow Cove cores like Tiger Lake.

Intel has already revealed that it has the option to backport 7nm-targeted architectures over the 10nm node, so the possibility that Rocket Lake is a 14nm architecture with designs intended for 10nm CPUs is certainly there.

We will keep an eye on all the information about the upcoming Intel Core processors.

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