Intel is Now Fusing Off AVX-512 support in Alder Lake CPUs

If you have already bought a 12th gen Intel Alder Lake CPU, you could be sitting on a collectors item, as according to Tom’s Hardware, Intel is now fusing off AVX-512 support in production. It’s possible this could be in preparation for the arrival of the Core “W” series of CPUs that might be replacing the Xeon-W series of processors for Intel. It should be noted that this isn’t a rumour, as Tom’s Hardware has had an official statement on the matter from Intel.

The statement reads, “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.” As to exactly when this will go into full effect isn’t clear, but according to Tom’s Hardware, they’ve already had reports of batches of non-K Alder Lake CPUs that are lacking AVX-512 support. In all fairness to Intel, the company never claimed that its Alder Lake CPUs would support AVX-512 and the support has never been guaranteed to be flawless on the chips that have shipped with it enabled. Intel has also disabled AVX-512 via a microcode update that shipped to motherboard makers in January, but at least some motherboard makers have added a toggle to allow people to re-enable AVX-512 support. It’s unlikely that this will affect many potential customers, since AVX-512 instructions aren’t widely used in consumer facing software.