Intel CEO confirms that SMT (Hyper-Threading) will return to future-generation CPUs

Intel will be reintroducing SMT or Hyper-Threading to future-generation CPUs says its new CEO Lip-Bu Tan, in the middle of laying off 15% of its overall staff and 50% of its management layers.

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We don't know if the return of SMT will be for data center CPUs, but it would be nice to see the reintroduction of Hyper-Threading to consumer gaming processors to increase its competitiveness against CPU rival AMD. Intel began moving away from Hyper-Threading (or SMT) with its 12th Gen Core CPUs, as it started moving toward asymmetrical CPU designs.

Intel first enabled SMT on P-Cores and then after a while, completely eliminated Hyper-Threading on its 15th Gen Core CPUs. Intel's next-gen Nova Lake CPUs will NOT feature SMT, or even the generation after that, with rumors that we'll see "Unified Cores" with its future-gen Titan Lake CPUs.

We might see Intel reintroduce SMT to its data center processors first, but I'm sure that with enough nagging from the community (and its downward spiral against AMD) that the reintroduction of Hyper-Threading will happen on consumer CPUs in the future.

Lip-Bu Tan wrote to Intel employees explaining:

Revitalize the Intel x86 Ecosystem

"We will focus on growing share in our core client and server segments. To that end, I am working closely with our product and engineering teams to strengthen our roadmap. In client, Panther Lake is our top priority as it will reinforce our strength in notebooks across consumer and enterprise. We also must drive continued progress on Nova Lake to close gaps in the high-end desktop space".

"In data center, we are focused on regaining share as we ramp Granite Rapids while also improving our capabilities for hyperscale workloads. To support this, we are reintroducing simultaneous multi-threading (SMT). Moving away from SMT put us at a competitive disadvantage. Bringing it back will help us close performance gaps. We are also making good progress in our search for a permanent leader of our data center business, and I plan to share more on that this quarter".

"Across client and data center, I've directed our teams to define next-generation product families with clean and simple architectures, better cost structures and simplified SKU stacks. In addition, I have instituted a policy where every major chip design is reviewed".