Intel Alder Lake Desktop CPUs Could Launch With Next-Gen 'Windows 11' OS In October
Intel might end up launching Alder Lake a little bit sooner than expected. Previous rumors pegged the launch as happening in November, but a new one claims desktop Alder Lake processors with unlocked multipliers will arrive in October, around the same time as Microsoft's upcoming Windows refresh. The timing is also said to not be a coincidence.
Every passing rumor seems to make Alder Lake all the more intriguing. Not that it even needs more intrigue—the fact that Intel is embracing a hybrid architecture that pairs high performance cores with power efficient cores in the same package is interesting enough, and like everyone else, we are immensely curious to see how this plays out.
Beyond that, however, Alder Lake is notable for bringing newer technologies to the table, such as support for DDR5 memory and PCI Express 5.0, and a new LGA 1700 socket that might not be compatible with existing CPU coolers. And then of course there are the handful of supposed benchmark leaks that have cropped up.
Now on top of it all, leaker Moore's Law Is Dead claims Intel's Alder Lake K-series (125W) "could be released a spooky time of the year," that being an obvious reference to Halloween. That is the same general time frame as the big update to Windows 10.
Regarding the OS, Microsoft will hold a live-streamed press event on June 24 at 11:00 am EST, with invites that say, "Join us to see what's next for Windows." The general consensus is that Microsoft will talk about its upcoming Sun Valley update for Windows 10, but some have surmised that it could be a whole new version of Windows (like Windows 11, or simply Windows). We shall see.
Whatever is in store for Windows, it could have some kind of indirect tie-in to Alder Lake.
"The next Windows version comes with massive scheduling upgrades, and it seems to be coming out around Alder Lake K's launch. Not a coincidence people...," the same leaker stated in a separate tweet. "And yes - Microsoft will unveil 'Windows 11' (or whatever they call it) June 24th. It's a new Windows."
It's very possible (and we'd say likely, even) that Intel has been working closely with Microsoft to ensure that Windows will take full advantage of Alder Lake's hybrid architecture. And the expectations are high—supposedly leaked slides indicates Intel is promising Alder Lake will deliver a 20 percent improvement in single-threaded performance, and twice the multi-threaded performance.
AMD is also rumored to be embracing a hybrid model, for its Zen 5-based Strix Point CPUs that will be built on a 3-nanometer node. So, it would serve Microsoft well to ensure Windows is suitably primed to tap into heterogeneous CPU architectures.
Stay tuned and buckle up folks, the ride is just getting started.
