Core Ultra 5 240F: A cheap processor on Intel’s next-gen desktop platform will be a lottery again

Intel is preparing a new generation of desktop processors for the second half of the year. After three generations of Alder Lake and Raptor Lake on LGA 1700, it will be the all-new Arrow Lake architecture, in which CPUs will already be labeled as Core Ultra, and the all-new LGA 1851 platform. It looks like information about the first models is already starting to emerge, starting from the cheaper ones: from the Core Ultra 5 240F, which should be the next-gen successor to the popular i5-13400F and the like.

Core Ultra 5 240F

As a reminder – the Core Ultra marking is associated with a certain technological transformation of Intel processors. Arrow Lake, like Meteor Lake, will use an advanced manufacturing process as well as a chiplet (tile) composition, the processor should also include an NPU for artificial intelligence acceleration. It will be something never seen before in a desktop version (although the socket embedded version of Meteor Lake processors already foreshadows it).

But interestingly, many things remain the same. The Core Ultra 5 240F model, it seems, like the Core i5-14400F, will serve as an opportunity to recycle faulty silicon and use different types of chip(lets) left over from the production of higher models, just as the 12400F models now have, 13400F and 14400F (and before them i5-9400F and 10400F) versions with a larger or smaller chip.

Arrow Lake-S (ARL-S) for the desktop is supposed to use two different chips, or rather a combination of chiplets. The more powerful models will be based on a CPU chiplet that includes 8 large cores (P-Core) Lion Cove and 16 small/efficient Skymont cores. So this configuration has a total of 24 threads (since Lion Cove no longer has Hyper-threading) and will be the maximum configuration in the most powerful Core Ultra 9 processors. This silicon will be manufactured by Intel at TSMC on a 3nm process.

Cheaper processors will use a CPU chiplet consisting of 6 Lion Cove cores and 8 small Skymont cores. What is interesting: this CPU chiplet is apparently to be produced according to the original plan by Intel’s 2nm process (Intel 20A), which was abandoned for the more powerful version in favor of probably better and more reliable production at TSMC. According to Xinoassassin1, this 2nm silicon is already circulating in revision A0/A1 and has CPUID C0662H.

The Core Ultra 5 240F for desktop according to leaker Xino (xinoassassin1) will be one of the cheapest desktop CPUs for the LGA 1851 socket, and as of now, it will be able to have both variants, so it will be a bit of a coincidence when you buy which version you get.

The processor could either have 6+4 cores like the current Core i5-14400F, or 6+8 cores, which would be an upgrade. The 8+16 silicon based versions would of course be truncated so the specs won’t differ. According to the letter F in the name, this processor will be without integrated graphics, but there will probably also be a Core Ultra 5 240 model with graphics (but at a slightly higher price).

But the fact that it will be possible to get both Intel’s 2nm chiplet and TSMC’s 3nm chiplet with the same specifications in this processor will allow for very interesting comparisons. It will probably not be possible to overclock this CPU and find out which technology is capable of higher performance, but there could be measurable differences in the voltages needed to achieve a certain clock and in consumption and energy efficiency. That is, if Intel does not try to somehow camouflage or distort the differences, for example by using unnecessarily high voltages in competing technology.

LGA 1851 in the fall

The release of these processors may not be so far away. It is expected that they could be released, together with the LGA 1851 platform, sometime in the fall at a similar time as the previous generations were released, i.e. sometime around September, October, or November. So the transition from the LGA 1700 platform could only be about half a year away.

Sources: ITHome, WCCFtech