Since the advent of Intel’s big.LITTLE vision for desktop processors, one theme has become predominant over all the rest. That theme being Intel promising to deliver better and better generational performance with better and better overall value. For example, the Core i7-12700K and i5-12600K were released in 2021 and had a (launch day) MSRP of $409 and $289 respectively. Today’s Core Ultra 200S Plus 7 & 5 have a launch day MSRP of $299 and $199. Five years. One pandemic. Multiple supply chain crises. Multiple “midlife crises” for Intel… and the difference is negative 90 to 110 Freedom Bucks. In that same timeframe processing power has indeed scaled nicely via the use of 8 to 12 e-Cores backstopping 6 to 8 p-Cores. Certainly not to the levels that Doctor Moore and his “Moore’s Law” would like, but Intel were proving that they were trying to keep the faith. Trying to keep their promises of not only getting back to their Engineer-First roots… but eliminating the taint of the whole “reduce, reuse, recycle” Marketing-First Philosophy that led to “tick++++++++” memes.
Which leads to an interesting Gedankenexperiment. Namely: “What if Intel could do… Moore?” What if they could grab people’s attention in way that would prove that the very last remnants of “nu-Intel” was never coming back? With 13th/14th early death syndrome still fresh in a lot of buyer’s minds that is indeed a laudable… but arguably impossible to achieve goal. That is if Intel were sticking to their grand plan that kicked off big.LITTLE back in the early days of the 20’s.
They have not. Radical times require radical measures. Not incremental, Kaizen-style half measures. Gone is the whole idea of Tick/Tock. Gone is the whole idea of trying to get developers to use Hardware-based profile-guided optimization (“HWGPO”) in order to optimize real world performance on Intel based systems. Gone is the idea of needing to upsell buyers on opting for “9-class” CPU’s in order to get overkill levels of performance. Gone is even the idea of needing to buy a new generation’s “KS” just to get a small unCore and frequency bump that will not risk null and voiding your warranty.
Does the idea of getting all that in one (or two) neat and tidy package(s) grab your attention? It certainly did ours when we started reading the briefing material… and Intel then had our full, undivided attention during the various pre-launch conference calls where they laid out their take on Radicalism. That is because “Plus” is not just some one-off / one & done / stopgap measure until the upcoming “Tock” Core Ultra 300 design was fully baked. No. It represents a pivot. A pivot that leads Intel further away from the penny pinching corpo greed that made nu-Intel “famous” and back towards Intel’s roots. Back when their engineer’s had pride in their work and were allowed by “the suits” to fully implement it.
So buckle up and get ready as the Intel Plus concept is not just some rebadge or desperate measure. It represents a radical departure in Intel’s underlying philosophy and has massive implications for the future of the desktop industry.
