Intel P-Series and U-Series Bring 'Alder Lake' Chips to Ultraportable Laptops

pcmag.com:

Intel is bringing "Alder Lake" chips to ultraportable laptops with the new 12th Generation Intel Core P-Series and U-Series laptop processors.

By harnessing the same scalable architecture Intel introduced in the enthusiast-level Core i9-12900HK to laptops that use 28, 15, or even 9 watts of power, the company promises better performance and longer battery life, along with support for a slew of new features.

Intel has more up its sleeve than just the new processor models it's launching this week. It's also revamping the Intel Evo program, which is intended to call out some of the best features and capabilities you’ll find on a modern laptop when you're trying to decide which one to buy.

The biggest changes coming to the P- and U-Series chips aren’t much of a surprise. Recent Alder Lake desktop and laptop processors feature Intel’s new Hybrid Performance architecture, a mixed-core approach that spreads processing duties across high-powered, performance-focused P-cores and lower-powered efficiency-focused E-cores, all on the same CPU.

The thinking behind this design shift is easy enough to follow. Performance-focused P-cores offer the same multi-thread capabilities that past Intel CPUs have had, delivering the expected annual bump in top performance, while background tasks and simple functions can be handled by the single-thread E-cores using significantly less battery power. The result should be enhanced performance that doesn’t sacrifice battery life.

With Intel’s sophisticated Thread Director managing the mix of processes across the multi-threaded P-Cores and single-thread E-cores, the new approach should shuffle tasks to the necessary P- and E-cores seamlessly.

But we’re still waiting to see those promises of