Yesterday, Intel officially announced the 13th generation of Raptor Lake desktop processors, with the top-of-the-line Core i9-13900KS featuring a hybrid 8P+16E (24C/32T) core architecture. However, according to Tom’s Hardware, it seems that the company is also working on a processor with 34 high-performance Raptor Cove cores.
(From: Tom’s Hardware)
Clues come from a Raptor Lake wafer set up by Tom’s Hardware at the Intel Innovation Event booth.
The sharp-eyed front editor noticed the bare wafer on the wafer, which appears to have up to 34 core cuts.
What makes this even more puzzling is that the cores are all the same size, making one wonder if they are 34 full Raptor Cove high-performance cores.
Given that other Raptor Lake processors use a traditional ring bus, Paul Alcorn speculates that the 34-core version uses a mesh interconnect.
Curious, he looked at the back label of the wafer package and finally confirmed that this was a 34-core Raptor Lake-S desktop processor.
Considering Intel has been absent from the HEDT high-end desktop platform for years, expect the Blue Factory to make a comeback to AMD’s Threadripper at some point.
We’ll have to wait for Intel’s official announcement on what’s really going on.
