Intel's next-gen Arrow Lake-S CPU teased with 24 threads, no Hyper-Threading support

Intel's upcoming Arrow Lake-S processor has been spotted again, with news that it will not support Hyper-Threading.

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Intel first introduced Hyper-Threading (HT) technology with is Xeon CPU architecture back in 2002, over 20 years ago now, with simultaneous multithreading technology allowing physical cores inside of Intel CPUs to perform two tasks at the same time, effectively acting as two logical cores.

As the years went on, the first consumer-focused Core and Core 2 processors didn't support Hyper-Threading, with HT being introduced with its Core i7 "Nehalem" processors in 2008. There are changes coming for Intel's consumer and gaming-focused processors anyway, with the introduction of Performance Cores (P-Cores) and Efficient Cores (E-Cores) that we have in the 12th Gen Core, 13th Gen Core, and just-launched 14th Gen Core CPUs.

Intel has moved right into the world of multiple cores on its CPUs, with its new Core Ultra "Meteor Lake" CPUs with P-Cores, E-Cores, and a third core type with LP-Cores inside of the SoC die. E-Cores and LP-Cores don't support HT, and now it seems that the high-performance, next-gen P-Cores won't support Hyper-Threading in the future.

We're hearing about the new Arrow Lake-S processors dropping HT support from leaked slides released by YuuKi_AnS on X, where we see a mention of 8 x AI cores and 8 threads (16 threads in total). Intel will have all sorts of different SKUs of its Arrow Lake CPUs, with 8P + 16E, 6P + 16E, or 6P + 8E cores in different processors once they're released.

Another leaker, InstaLaX64, saw an Intel Arrow Lake-S processor with 24 threads, which should be an 8P + 16E core configuration, which should've shown 32 threads instead (if it featured HT). It seems that we can expect Intel's next-gen Arrow Lake-S processors, which will also be the first under the new Core Ultra branding, will be released sans Hyper-Threading.

I'm two minds about this... it feels like a step backward not to have Hyper-Threading included on a new Core Ultra "Arrow Lake-S" processor, but then there could be more concentration on single-threaded performance. This is where it really matters for gamers: the very fastest clocks with the best performance on the P-Cores are the goal.