At CES 2022, Intel launched a ton of new processors. While Intel focused on the mobile market, our excitement is clearly around the T-series 35W TDP CPUs. Those are the CPUs that find their way into Project TinyMiniMicro corporate desktop PCs. Let us get to it.
12th Gen Intel Core T Series 35W TDP CPUs Launched
After launching the higher-end of the 12th gen Intel Core series, Intel is filling out the stack. Here is Intel’s notebook segment, but there is another lower-power market segment, the T-series not here.
Here is the desktop T-series lineup. The Intel Core i9-12900T is a 16 core processor with eight performance cores and eight efficient cores. In what we see is more of the mainstream TinyMiniMicro market, we get the Intel Core i5-12500T. That is a six-core, 0 efficient core part. This is a real bummer for the segment that has been stuck at 6 cores / 12 threads for several generations now. It would have been awesome to see a few efficient cores added to the mix such as a 6P + 4E core model at the Core i5-12500T line. We do get new cores, new Iris UHD 770 graphics, and more cache, but it would have been awesome to bring the big new 12th gen Core features to the mainstream market.
Another quick note is the power consumption. In years past a 1L corporate desktop PC from Lenovo, HP, or Dell would have a 35W TDP CPU and a 65W power supply. Now, the top-end Core i9-12900T will hit a maximum of 106W. The Core i5-12500T will be at 74W meaning 95W+ power supplies will be required. The CPUs also support DDR5 and DDR4.
Overall, this is a nice upgrade, but remember we already had 10x performance core designs in this class in the 10th generation as we saw in our Lenovo ThinkCentre M90q Tiny Review 10 Cores in a 1L PC piece. The video for that one is here:
We also did the 2nd generation of that in Lenovo ThinkCentre M90q Tiny Gen2 TinyMiniMicro Review and that had the 11th generation Core parts. Perhaps we will need to focus on the Core i9-12900T, Core i7-12700T, and Core i5-12500T in this generation.
Going Beyond the T-Series
For the higher-end notebook market, there is a new 12th Generation Core series processor line.
These are 45W TDP parts, higher than the 1L corporate desktop PCs.
The six P-series processors are the 28W parts.
There are six new U-series processors that are 15-55W parts.
That is a lot of SKUs, but there is not much more to say here.
Final Words
Our dreams of the E-cores coming to the TinyMiniMicro 1L corporate desktop PCs are left half-fulfilled. Most of these announcements were expected, these are not the “12th generation” Core processors without many previous generations. Still, the integration of the E-cores is perhaps the most exciting development of Alder Lake, and it would have been awesome to see them here.
Hopefully, we will get some of these TMM nodes soon to try the new processors out.
Some of those SKUs are really sweet for little server and NAS, except err, they do not provide any ECC RAM capability. Pity Intel closed ECC RAM business on i3/celeron last year. So let’s hope and pray for ADL based Xeon with ECC UDIMM support for for some low power SR-based Xeons.
Hi Patrick! Next time you talk to the other great Patrick@Intel please tell him that no ECC on i3 for me means ‘me-no-buy’. My options for low power low cost ECC capable parts that I’m interested in now are reduced to near-unobtainium level Xeon or looking elsewhere.
Writing this on my i3-9100F based ~1000€ self assembled workstation.
Many SKUs?? A thumb for every hole in the dike!
Do they really have that large a spread in their performance bins off the line?
Given the cost of mask sets these days, it looks like the knee-capper laser chip blasters
are going to be kept very busy tuning the product mix vs sku demand.