Intel's Entry-Level "Core Ultra 3" Desktop CPUs won't be featured in the Arrow Lake-S family but rather in an existing lineup.
Intel Core Ultra 3 "Core i3-Successor" Likely To Be Based on Raptor Lake-S Than Arrow Lake-S Family Architecture
Update [7/8/2024] - The leaker believes that the Intel Redwood Cove core, featured on Meteor Lake CPUs, is more likely a candidate to be featured on the entry-level Core / Core Ultra 3 SKUs instead of being another Raptor Lake Refresh.
Based on the latest information shared by @Jaykihn, the Intel Arrow Lake-S family will not include an entry-level Core Ultra 3 SKU. We know that the lineup is expected to include Core Ultra 9, Core Ultra 7, and Core Ultra 5 SKUs under the "Core Ultra 200" banner but entry-level users might have to stick with existing architectures.
With that said, it's not like there won't be a Core i3 successor at all. We might see a Core Ultra 3 or a standard Core 3 series but it won't be using the same architecture as the Arrow Lake family but will rather be based on an existing architecture. Raptor Lake seems to be the most likely candidate so it will likely be a refresh of a refresh.
There is no ARL-S Intel Core Ultra 3 sku lineup this generation.
Note that this does not mean there won’t be a desktop Core Ultra 3 sku lineup this generation.
It just means that, if there is one, it won’t be on the Arrow Lake architecture.Full ARL-S lineup details soon.
— Jaykihn (@jaykihn0) July 6, 2024
Looking at the existing Intel Core i3 lineup, the family has been stagnant for the last couple of years now. Starting with the 12th Gen and moving up to 13th/14th Gen Core i3 chips have only featured 4 P-Cores with HT. Arrow Lake is expected to remove HT support so if you take that out, you are only left with 4 P-Cores and no E-Cores. The chips have also seen a 200 MHz clock increment each generation, going up to 4.7 GHz in the most recent Core i3-14100 SKU.
- Core i3-12100 (Alder Lake) - 4 Cores / 8 Threads / 12 MB L3 / 4.30 GHz Boost / 89W MTP
- Core i3-13100 (Raptor Lake) - 4 Cores / 8 Threads / 12 MB L3 / 4.50 GHz Boost / 110W MTP
- Core i3-11100 (Raptor Lake) - 4 Cores / 8 Threads / 12 MB L3 / 4.70 GHz Boost / 110W MTP
Intel's first Gen Core Ultra series came in two categories, the Core Ultra chips which were part of the Meteor Lake family, and the Non-Core Ultra chips which were part of the Raptor Lake-Refresh family. We might also see this happening on the entry-level SKUs based in the Raptor Lake family but it will also mean that Raptor Lake will come in some form on the LGA 1851 socket which will be rather interesting.
Arrow Lake -S and -HX codec specifications.
No dedicated transcoding API.
Hardware codec for H264 SVC is not supported.
There is HW acceleration for video processing, depending on the graphics driver.
The expected performance is more than 16 simultaneous FHD decode streams. pic.twitter.com/oxWP1gAuNW
— Jaykihn (@jaykihn0) July 6, 2024
In addition to this, Jaykihn has also shared the codec specifications for Arrow Lake-S & Arrow Lake-HX CPUs. The chips won't feature dedicated transcoding API and Hardware codec for H264 SVC is also not supported but you do get HW acceleration for video processing (depending on the driver for the GPU) and these chips also support 16 simultaneous FHD decode streams. Nothing is confirmed yet but we will be hearing more about the Arrow Lake and Core Ultra 200 family in the coming months so stay tuned.
