New rumors about Intel’s future Nova Lake processors are surfacing, this time from a well-known leaker. We learn that Intel is planning four potential references with massive amounts of cache memory, since we’re talking about capacities of up to 288 MB with a total of 52 cores. To be continued, as this contradicts other rumours.
Nova Lake: configurations too big to be true?
Well, according to this leaker, Intel is planning to launch four references, two with two compute tiles and two others with a single compute tile. So, for the highest-end references, we’ll find 2x 8P/16E and 2x 8P/12E configurations for processors with up to 52 cores, if we count the LPE cores ( Low Power Efficiency Core). But the real kicker comes when we learn that each compute tile would then have a 144 MB bLLC cache. This would mean processors with 288 MB of cache for the most ambitious configurations. Finally, as you may have guessed, the last two CPUs would feature 8P/16E and 8P/12E configurations with a single 144 MB bLLC.
However, this clashes with estimates put forward by another leaker that bLLC would only be found in more reasonable processors. According to him, there would be no flagship with 52 cores and 288 MB of cache, only processors in the Ultra 5 and Ultra 7 ranges.
Of course, we’ll take all this with a pinch of salt. From our point of view, offering a 52-core CPU with so much cache memory seems somewhat disproportionate for the consumer sector, and particularly for video game use. Nevertheless, things may soon change. Meanwhile, on the AMD side too, we’re hearing some ambitious rumors, notably concerning a hypothetical Ryzen 9 9950X3D2.
