Core Ultra 5 240F: i5-14400F’s successor in the Intel Arrow Lake-S generation
Intel is preparing a new generation of desktop CPUs for the second half of the year. After three Alder/Raptor Lake generations on LGA 1700, it will be an all-new Arrow Lake architecture, with Core Ultra CPUs and an all-new LGA 1851 socket. Information about the first models is starting to appear, beginning with the cheaper SKUs: the Core Ultra 5 240F, which should be the next-gen successor to the popular cheap Core i5 ships.
Just as a reminder, the Core Ultra naming is associated with a various technological reinvention of Intel processors. Like Meteor Lake, Arrow Lake will use an advanced manufacturing node as well as disaggregated chiplet (tile) composition, and the processor should also include an NPU for AI acceleration. This will be unprecedented in desktop form (although the socket embedded version of Meteor Lake processors already foreshadows this to some degree).
But interestingly, many things will remain the same. The Core Ultra 5 240F model, it seems, like the Core i5-14400F, will serve as an opportunity to recycle defective silicon and will use different chip(let)s left over from the production of higher-end models, just as the 12400F, 13400F and 14400F (and before them the i5-9400F and 10400F) currently have different versions made with larger or smaller chips.
Arrow Lake-S (ARL-S) for the desktop is supposed to use two different chips, or rather combinations of chiplets. The more powerful models will be based on a CPU chiplet that contains 8 big Lion Cove cores (P-Core) and 16 little/efficient Skymont cores. This configuration has a total of 24 threads (because Lion Cove no longer has Hyper-threading) and will be the maximum configuration in the most powerful Core Ultra 9 processors. Intel will have this silicon manufactured at TSMC on the 3nm node.
Read more: Arrow Lake and Lunar Lake will use TSMC’s 3nm node, not Intel 20A
Cheaper processors will use a CPU chiplet consisting of 6 Lion Cove cores and 8 little Skymont cores. What’s interesting: According to some sources, this CPU chiplet is still going to be manufactured according to Intel’s original plan, which was using the company’s in-house 2nm node (Intel 20A), which was abandoned for the more powerful version in favor of production at TSMC, which was probably cosidered better and more reliable. According to Xinoassassin1, this 2nm silicon is already circulating in revision A0/A1 and has CPUID C0662H.
According to the leaker going as Xino (xinoassassin1), there is going to be a Core Ultra 5 240F desktop processor SKU, which by the look of it will be one of the cheapest desktop processors for the LGA 1851 socket and like now it will have versions based on both variants of the CPU chiplet, so when buying it will be a bit of a toss-up which version you get.
The processor could either have 6+4 cores like the current Core i5-14400F, or possibly 6+8 cores, which would be an upgrade. The versions based on 8+16 silicon would of course be cut down, so the specs match. Judging by the F in the name, this processor will be sold without integrated graphics present (or enabled), but there will probably also be a Core Ultra 5 240 model with an iGPU available (but at a slightly higher price).
But the fact that you will be able to get both Intel’s 2nm chiplets and TSMC’s 3nm chiplets with the same specs in this processor will make for some very interesting comparisons. It probably won’t be possible to overclock these CPUs to see which process technology is capable of higher performance, but there could be measurable differences in the voltages needed to reach given clock speed levels and in power consumption and power efficiency. Unless Intel tries to camouflage or distort such differences by, for example, using unnecessarily high voltages on the competing technology.
LGA 1851 in the fall
The release of these processors may not be that far off. It is expected that they, along with the LGA 1851 platform, could be released sometime in the fall at a similar time as previous generations were released, probably sometime around September, October, or November. That means the transition from the LGA 1700 platform could be only about half a year away..
English translation and edit by Jozef Dudáš
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