A Meteor Lake mobility processor has been spotted with an unusual configuration. The 9W/15W Core Ultra CPU features only 2 P-cores and 10 E-cores. The 13th Gen Raptor Lake U series packs up to 2 P-cores and (up to) 8 E-cores. This increase in the E-core count on the Core Ultra U series chips can be attributed to the additional E-core pair included on the SoC die for the lowest power workloads.
As reported in the past, the Crestmont “E-cores” on the SoC die are architecturally identical to the E-cores on the compute die. The difference lies in their power/performance profiles. The E-cores on the compute die have been fine-tuned for higher performance and multi-threaded workloads, while the LPE cores on the SoC die are optimized for lightly threaded low-power tasks.
The two Redwood Cove “P-cores” on the Core Ultra 5 135U have a maximum boost clock of 4.4GHz. They pack 2MB of L2 cache per P-core and 12MB of shared L3 cache. Performance-wise, they offer roughly the same single-threaded performance as the 13th Gen Core i5-1335U but have a leg up in multi-threaded workloads.
The higher L1I and L2 cache on Redwood Cove should translate to healthy gains in latency-sensitive workloads such as gaming and other 3D applications. Other than that, the Core Ultra 5 135U should offer notably higher power efficiency than the 1335U. A recent leak claimed that the 1st Gen Core Ultra CPUs have a TDP sweet spot for heavy loads between 65W and 95W. That’s up to half as much as the 13th Gen Raptor Lake family (120W to 145W).
Source: Benchleaks.
