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Rumored Intel ‘Royal Core’ might beat AMD and Apple by 2025

Intel has already shared quiet a bit about its road map through 2025, and recent leaks revealed even more information. Now, a new rumor from YouTuber Moore’s Law is Dead (MLID) provides some more context regarding Intel’s plans through 2025. And those plans all lead to a new series of CPUs called Royal Core.

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Core was a microarchitecture Intel introduced in 2006, and Intel has used the “Core” branding on its consumer processors since. Royal Core, according to the leaker, is the code name for a set of architectures that will carry Intel into the future. The reported goal to ensure that Intel can beat ARM and Apple in terms of efficiency “for the foreseeable future.”

Intel is the the process of building toward Royal Core right now, according to the leak. Alder Lake, which is a hybrid CPU architecture set to launch later this year, is the first step in that process. The idea behind a hybrid architecture is that you can piece together multiple components — like a high-performance and high-efficiency core — to increase performance and efficiency. Intel is already working with this design, and the leaker says once the company is good enough at it, Royal Core will be released.

One of MLID’s sources says that it will mark the biggest leap in performance since Intel introduced the Core series. This architecture will reportedly come in either Lunar or Nova Lake, which are rumored to launch in 2024 and 2025, respectively. That lines up with a previously leaked road map, which claimed this change would bring up to a 50% performance improvement over the previous generation.

Claims about Intel Royal Core.
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Right now, the only generation Intel has announced is Alder Lake, and we know a little bit about its successor Meteor Lake. Beyond that, rumors claim Intel will introduce Arrow Lake, Lunar Lake, and Nova Lake in 2023, 2024, and 2025, respectively. These generations all reportedly build on the hybrid architecture Intel is using in Alder Lake.

The leaker claims that Royal Core is planned to roll out in 2024 with Lunar Lake, but the full version shouldn’t arrive until Nova Lake launches in 2025. Lunar Lake will reportedly offer up to a 30% gain in single-core performance over Meteor Lake, though the leaker says that this is subject to change.

Beyond the road map, MLID also revealed some details about what Intel could be planning for these upcoming chips. This hasn’t been verified, and even MLID wasn’t sure about sharing the details, so don’t take this information as a certainty. The video (above) claims that Intel could be working toward four-way hyperthreading and support for DDR5-7400 memory by 2026.

Short of Alder Lake, none of this information has been announced, confirmed, or even vaguely hinted at by Intel. At this point, we’re talking about multiple product launches spanning multiple years, so even if the information is accurate, it’s subject to change. These are rumors for now, so you should treat them as such.

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Jacob Roach
Senior Staff Writer, Computing
Jacob Roach is a writer covering computing and gaming at Digital Trends. After realizing Crysis wouldn't run on a laptop, he…
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