Intel’s 8P+32E “Arrow Lake Refresh” Rumored Cancelled
The “Arrow Lake Refresh” microarchitecture would have been unlike “Raptor Lake Refresh,” which was essentially the same silicon, but powering speed bumped SKUs under a newer 14th Gen Core branding, it would have been a physically larger chip, with more cores. Specifically, Intel would give the “Arrow Lake Refresh” an 8P+32E configuration, with eight “Lion Cove” performance cores, and eight “Skymont” E-core clusters for 32 efficiency cores. Intel claimed to have made huge strides with increasing the IPC of its E-cores with “Skymont,” and the 8P+32E “Arrow Lake Refresh” would have been a multithreaded performance monstrosity.
There are many reasons Intel could have cancelled the 8P+32E “Arrow Lake Refresh.” It probably finds its maxed out Core Ultra 9 285K competitive with the Ryzen 9 9950X in multithreaded productivity workloads; or it’s simply cutting costs from having a new silicon release cycle, and will probably just release speed bumps for the 8P+16E silicon, like it did with the “Raptor Lake Refresh,” regardless of how the 285K is competitive against the 9950X, or the possible 9950X3D.
Intel’s public or leaked roadmaps see the “Nova Lake-S” succeed “Arrow Lake-S” on desktop, with its introduction slated for 2026, which should mean that the upcoming “Arrow Lake-S,” and its possible refresh with an unchanged core-count, has to face AMD for at least 2 years. AMD recently released the “Zen 5” microarchitecture, which was received with mixed reviews, but could claw back with variants of the chip that feature 3D V-cache, under the Ryzen 9000X3D series. AMD confirmed that its succeeding “Zen 6” microarchitecture is on-track for a 2025 unveiling, with product launches expected either within 2025 or in 2026.
Meanwhile, Intel has bigger problems. Its underperformance in the stock markets means that the company is exposed to either amicable or hostile takeover moves, with the most recent utterance of the A-word coming from Qualcomm, according to a WSJ report.