Intel intends to fuse off AVX-512 on Alder Lake products
Regarding the support of the AVX-512 instruction set by Intel’s 12th-generation Core processors, it is actually quite confusing. There are Golden Cove and Gracemont cores in the Alder Lake processor, of which Golden Cove supports AVX-512 in hardware, although Intel officials have always denied that Alder Lake supports AVX-512. However, the solution given in the developer guide is that AVX-512 will be disabled after E-Core is turned on, and the switch of AVX-512 will be left to the board factory to decide how to deal with it.
The result is that all Z690s from board manufacturers can turn on AVX-512 by turning off E-Core. This obviously makes Intel very dissatisfied, they have disabled AVX-512 in the new firmware, in fact, many B660 can’t enable AVX-512 now. But for the Z690, users can bypass this limitation by flashing the old BIOS. To completely solve this problem, Intel decided to start with the hardware. “Although AVX-512 was not fuse-disabled on certain early Alder Lake desktop products, Intel plans to fuse off AVX-512 on Alder Lake products going forward.” -Intel Spokesperson to Tom’s Hardware.
If it is cut from the hardware, no matter what method the board manufacturer wants to use to circumvent the limitation of the firmware, AVX-512 can no longer be enabled. If you want to use the latest Intel processors and enable AVX-512, you can only choose the expensive Xeon. Interestingly, AMD is rumored to be adding support for AVX-512 on the Zen 4 architecture, but Intel has removed this instruction from its own processors, which is an interesting phenomenon.
If it is cut from the hardware, no matter what method the board manufacturer wants to use to circumvent the limitation of the firmware, AVX-512 can no longer be enabled. If you want to use the latest Intel processors and enable AVX-512, you can only choose the expensive Xeon. Interestingly, AMD is rumored to be adding support for AVX-512 on the Zen 4 architecture, but Intel has removed this instruction from its own processors, which is an interesting phenomenon.
