Intel Corp. today expanded its consumer processor portfolio by introducing 20 new central processing units for the laptop market.

The new CPUs are organized into two product lines, the P series and the U series, that vary in design. The P series processors are designed for laptops that prioritize performance, while the U series trades off some speed for significantly increased power efficiency.

All the CPUs are based on Intel’s latest 12th Gen Intel Core, or Alder Lake, architecture. Every Alder Lake chip includes two sets of processing cores: performance cores designed to maximize the speed at which calculations are carried out and efficiency cores that have more limited performance and use less electricity.

The most powerful of the 20 new CPUs Intel debuted today, the Core i7-1280P, combines six performance cores with eight efficiency cores. Also included: an integrated graphics card based on Intel’s Xe architecture. The CPU cores have a maximum frequency of 4.8 GHz, while the integrated graphics card can operate at up to 1.45 GHz.

The i7-1280P is part of the P series, the subset of the new CPUs that Intel designed for performance-optimized laptops. CPUs in the second product line, the U series, feature fewer processing cores: each U series chip includes two performance cores and four to eight efficiency cores.

“Following our launch of the fastest mobile processor for gaming, we’re now expanding our 12th Gen Intel Core processor family to deliver a massive leap forward in performance for thin-and-light laptops,” said Chris Walker, corporate vice president and general manager of Intel’s Mobility Client Platforms business. “From the ultrathin form factors to enthusiast-grade performance in a sleek design, we’re providing consumers and businesses with leadership performance and cutting-edge technologies.”

The performance and efficiency cores in Intel’s Intel’s Alder Lake architecture are based on two separate chip designs. 

The performance core is based on a design dubbed Golden Cove that was described at the time of its introduction as the most significant microarchitectural upgrade in a decade for the product family. It can manage 19% more instructions per cycle, a measure of CPU performance, than its predecessor.

The efficiency core, in turn, is based on Intel’s Gracemont design, which is also described as a major upgrade over its predecessor. Gracemont cores can match the performance of Intel’s previous-generation silicon using just 40% of the electricity. Intel makes both the performance and efficiency cores using its latest 10-nanometer manufacturing technology, which is known as the Intel 7 process. 

Intel claims that the new Alder Lake laptop chips announced today can provide up to 70% higher multithread performance than its earlier processors. In practice, the company says, CPUs’ increased speed translates into an up to twofold performance improvement for certain graphic design applications.

Intel expects the first laptops based on the new Alder Lake chips to arrive next month. The company’s hardware partners are set to incorporate the processors into a total of more than 250 laptops by year’s end. 

Image: Intel