Intel kills Alder Lake AVX-512 support for good
The on-and-off saga of 12th Gen AVX-512 support appears to be off for good this time. According to Tom's Hardware, an Intel spokesperson said: «Although AVX-512 was not fuse-disabled on certain early Alder Lake desktop products, Intel plans to fuse off AVX-512 on Alder Lake products going forward.»
When Intel launched its 12th Gen range back in November, we were told that AVX-512 wasn't enabled. Most of the tech press accepted that. Intel said it wasn't enabled due to the inclusion of two different architectures. The E cores didn't support it, even if the P cores did.
Motherboard manufacturers used this bit of knowledge to cheekily allow users to enable AVX-512 after disabling the E cores. Intel obviously didn't like that and so it issued new BIOS microcode to close off this loophole. However, that wasn't the end of it, as MSI released a BIOS that got around the block. That leads us to Intel's decision to fuse off AVX-512 in silicon.
It's the nuclear option, and it means no more workarounds to enable AVX-512 support. You'll still have the option if you're using an earlier batch 12th Gen CPU and don't update your BIOS, but in a month or two or three from now, all 12th Gen stock will have AVX-512 blocked off completely.
Best CPU for gaming: The top chips from Intel and AMDBest gaming motherboard: The right boardsBest graphics card: Your perfect pixel-pusher awaitsBest SSD for gaming: Get into the game ahead of the rest
AVX-512 instructions aren’t really relevant to gamers but in certain applications, it can result in dramatic performance gains. Some, like Linux creator Linus Torvalds, hate it. Its use leads to excessive power consumption and heat generation, and perhaps Intel decided that the PR hit from nuclear
Read more on pcgamer.com
