Intel’s Next-Gen Efficiency: N250 Series Leaked

Since the launch of its 12th-generation Core processors in 2021, Intel has equipped most of its products with both Performance Cores (P-Cores) and Efficiency Cores (E-Cores). In January of the previous year, Intel unveiled the Alder Lake-N, a chipset that exclusively features Efficiency Cores, with up to eight cores divided into two clusters, each configured with 2MB of L2 cache and shared L3 cache. It also includes an Xe-LP architecture-based GPU with up to 32 Execution Units, boasting the latest encoding and decoding capabilities.

Recently, insiders have revealed that Intel is preparing a processor series codenamed “Twin Lake,” designated as the N250 series to succeed the Alder Lake-N’s N200 series. The new series is likely to maintain the same maximum of eight Efficiency Cores. It may upgrade from the Gracemont core architecture to Skymont, aligning with the upcoming Arrow Lake and Lunar Lake, with rumors suggesting that the IPC is nearing that of the Willow Cove architecture used in Tiger Lake. Additionally, Twin Lake may employ a more advanced manufacturing process.

News about Twin Lake first emerged in September of the previous year, but to this date, information remains sparse.

Last year, Intel also revised its branding strategy for mobile processors, transitioning from the long-established names “Pentium” and “Celeron” to “Intel Processor.” This new nomenclature encompasses some models of the Alder Lake-N chips, including certain Core i3 variants, and Twin Lake will likely follow this naming convention.