Intel's Arrow Lake Halo CPU rumor: beefed-up Arrow Lake CPU would battle AMD Strix Halo APU

Intel will be revealing its next-gen Core Ultra 200V series "Lunar Lake" laptop CPUs next week, while cooking its next-gen Core Ultra 200 series "Arrow Lake" desktop CPUs later this year... and now rumors of "Arrow Lake Halo" are emerging.

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First, AMD has just pushed out its new Ryzen AI 300 series "Strix Point" APUs while rumor has it we're going to see "Strix Halo" later this year offering heavy, heavy upgrades in CPU and GPU power (over double the GPU performance) as well as much higher TDPs. Strix Halo, will be battling against the newly-rumored "Arrow Lake Halo" processor.

In a new shipping manifest spotted by NBD.LTD, an early sample of Intel's new Arrow Lake Halo CPU has been teased for an enthusiast mobile workstation system. The chip in question was tested on the "CEDARLHX5SO1DPC1" which is an RVP (Reference Evaluation Platform) which is used to test the chip internally before it's sent out. The CPU was recently sent, and produced on the 34th week of 2023, meaning it's close to a year old now.

Intel will launch Arrow Lake-S for desktops as well as Arrow Lake-HX/H/U processors for laptops, but it seems that the Arrow Lake Halo CPU is coming into play. Arrow Lake Halo was mentioend all the way back by leaker AdoredTV in 2022, labeled then as "Arrow Lake-P (Halo)".

• Read more: AMD to unveil its beefed-up Strix Halo and Kraken APUs at CES 2025 in January

In those 2022 rumors, the Intel Arrow Lake Halo processor SKU was listed as ARL-P 6C+8A+GT3 "Halo" and mentioned to hit production in week 33 of 2023, aligning with the production date of the new shipping manifest. These processors were designed for Apple's new 14-inch premium laptop designs, and would introduce Lion Cove P-Cores and Skymont E-Cores (which debut inside of Lunar Lake next month) and fabbed on TSMC's new 3nm process node.

This chip (made by Intel, for Apple) would've feature a far bigger GT3-tier integrated GPU with ADM cache that would've been used as L4 cache for the integrated GPU. This chip would've featured five tiles in total: CPU, SoC, IOE, GT3 GPU, and ADM.

The funny thing is, Intel's purported Arrow Lake Halo CPU was planned before AMD's upcoming Strix Halo, so as Wccftech says it pushed AMD to make their own "Halo" tier SKU after looking at those leaked plans from Intel nearly two years ago now.

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The rumors pegged Intel's new Arrow Lake Halo CPU to feature 14 cores and use a bigger GT3 GPU with 320 Execution Units and a dedicated Adamantine L4 cache that would've provided some big performance boosts. The integrated GPU would've used the Alchemist Xe-LPG (+) graphics, and woud've acted as a fantastic laptop processor for new thin-and-light designs.

Since then, plans have changed.

Alchemist is almost hot garbage, but the new Xe2 "Battlemage" GPU is coming and debuting inside of Lunar Lake next month offering 50% more performance in gaming. If we can see a similar beefed-up Arrow Lake Halo CPU with Battlemage-based integrated graphics, more CPU cores, and a higher TDP, we'll see the battle of a (halo) lifetime in 2025.

What to expect from AMD's new Strix Halo APU:

• 12C/24T to 16C/32T of Zen 5 in an APU: AMD's current Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 "Strix Point" APU features 12 cores and 24 threads of Zen 5 processing power, but Strix Halo bumps that up to 16 cores and 32 threads (and probably at higher CPU boost speeds, too).
• HEAVILY upgraded RDNA 3.5 integrated GPU: Strix Point features an upgraded RDNA 3.5 GPU with 16 compute units, but Strix Halo puts the pedal to the metal with a huge 40 compute units that will deliver at least twice the gaming performance than Strix Point. We should expect 60FPS+ in AAA titles, and 120FPS+ out of mainstream esports gaming on Strix Halo.
• Up to 128GB of RAM supported: Intel's next-gen Lunar Lake mobile processors will ship with nifty on-package memory (sitting next to the CPU, GPU, and NPU on Lunar Lake) but they'll be limited to just two options in all Lunar Lake CPUs: 16GB or 32GB of RAM. Strix Poiint supports 64GB+ of RAM, while Strix Halo supports up to a huge 128GB of RAM.
• 55W, 80W, and 120W variants: Strix Point ships in varying TDP levels, but Strix Halo really takes into the skies with higher 55W default, 80W mainstream, and 120W enthusiast TDPs. A future laptop powered by an AMD Strix Halo APU with full 120W TDP would be a banger laptop in 2025.

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What to expect from Intel's new Core Ultra 200 series "Arrow Lake" desktop CPUs:

• New LGA 1851 socket, 800-series chipset: Intel will debut its new LGA 1851 socket for Arrow Lake, leaving behind the current LGA 1700 socket. WIth the new socket includes a new chipset, with the 800-series being introduced to support Core Ultra 200 series "Arrow Lake" CPUs, with the flagship Z890 leading the charge.
• New branding to Core Ultra from Core i3, etc: Intel's current fleet of desktop CPUs are still branded as "Core" CPUs like the Core i3, Core i5, etc. Arrow Lake's introduction is seeing Intel change its desktop CPU branding system to align with its mobile offerings, so the new Arrow Lake CPUs fall under the "Core Ultra 200 series" brand. The new flagship CPU is the Core Ultra 9 285K versus the Core i9-14900K now.
• DDR5 memory ONLY with new Arrow Lake CPUs: The last few generations of Intel Core CPUs have supported DDR5, but they've also supported DDR4 memory with different motherboards offering DDR4 memory support. From here on out, Intel is only supporting DDR5 with Arrow Lake, so you'll need a new CPU, new motherboard, and if you don't already have DDR5, you'll need new DDR5 memory.
• New Lion Core P-Cores, Skymont E-Cores: Arrow Lake will use the same upgraded P-Cores and E-Core architectures as Lunar Lake: new Lion Core P-Cores and Skymont E-Cores will deliver IPC improvements to both Performance and Efficiency cores.

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• No Hyper-Threading support: Intel is completely dropping Hyper-Threading from Arrow Lake, shipping with no HT support whatsover. P-Cores, E-Cores, no HT.
• Thunderbolt 5 support: Intel will debut Thunderbolt 5 to the desktop with its new Arrow Lake CPUs, enabling up to 120Gbps of bandwidth, up to 240W charging, support for 540Hz displays, support for 3 x 4K displays all at 144Hz, and so much more.
• Slower boost CPU clocks: Intel pushes 6.2GHz (6200MHz) on its flagship Core i9-14900KS processor, but we'll see IPC improvements from the new Lion Cove P-Cores that will help it deliver high performance, but at slower frequencies of around 5.8GHz (5800MHz).

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Intel Arrow Lake-S desktop CPU features and support:

• LGA 1851 Socket Longevity Planned Uptill 2026
• DDR5 Only Compatibility, No DDR4 Support
• Kicks off With 800-Series Motherboards
• Support For Up To DDR5-6400 Memory (Native JEDEC)
• Increased PCIe Gen 5.0 Lanes Through CPU & PCH
• Arrow Lake-S First Desktop Family Supported (DIY)
• Arrow Lake-S CPUs feature 3 MB L2 Cache Per P-Core
• Arrow Lake-S CPUs feature Alchemist iGPUs
• Arrow Lake-S CPUs feature 8+16, 6+8 CPU SKUs
• Arrow Lake-S 8+16 (24 Cores)
• Arrow Lake-S 6+8 (14 Cores)
• No Hyper-Threading Support
• Launching In 2H 2024