Intel remains the leading manufacturer of CPUs worldwide, but the company hasn’t had it all its own way in recent years.
The rapid growth of AMD has seen its Ryzen processors become an increasingly popular option in both laptops and desktops. Since the announcement of Apple Silicon in 2020, Apple has gradually ditched Intel CPUs on its MacBooks in favour of new M1 chips designed in-house.
These two developments have put Intel on the back foot, but the company is fighting back in 2021. Rocket Lake desktop processors arrived in March with some useful performance gains, and it looks like there’ll be more exciting developments on 12 th -gen Alder Lake chips.
They’re expected to be the headline news from Intel’s Innovation Event, which anyone can tune into live. Here’s everything you need to know.
When is the Intel Alder Lake event?
Intel Innovation is a two-day event taking place on 27-28 September. However, we’re expecting the bulk of the announcements during a keynote with CEO Pat Gelsinger on Day 1. This gets underway at 9am PT – that’s 12pm ET, 5pm BST, 6pm CEST and 9.30pm IST.
How to watch the Intel Alder Lake event live
The event will be available to watch on the Intel website, although you’ll need to create an account or sign in if you haven’t already. This is completely free, and open to everyone aged 18 or over.
We’re not expecting Intel to livestream the event on its YouTube channel or social media accounts, but official clips should be available there shortly after.
What to expect from Intel’s Alder Lake event
Intel hasn’t mentioned any specific products that will be on the agenda at the Innovation event, but all signs point to an official Alder Lake reveal. The 12 th -gen chips were previewed back at CES in January, and various leaks since give us a pretty good idea what to expect.
Alder Lake is expected to balance performance with power efficiency, shifting to a hybrid design which should benefit battery life. It’ll still use the 10nm process, but the SuperFin technology we’ve seen on previous generations is likely to be improved.
Three different types of 12th-gen chips are expected: Alder Lake-S for desktops, Alder Lake-P for laptops and Alder Lake-P for lower-powered devices. However, there are rumours we’ll be waiting a while for new CPUs to go on sale – potentially until 2022 in some cases.
It’s hard to predict what else we’ll see from Intel. AI, 5G and the Cloud are all mentioned on the livestream, but it’s not clear what any announcements will entail. Expect gaming to get a mention too, although this may just be in reference to Alder Lake.
Author: Anyron Copeman, Senior Staff Writer
As the resident expert on Windows, Senior Staff Writer Anyron’s main focus is PCs and laptops. Much of the rest of his time is split between smartphones, tablets and audio, with a particular focus on Android devices.