Microsoft and Intel confirm Windows 11 is optimized for the big.LITTLE design of Alder Lake chips

In the framework of the annual Architecture Day 2021 event that just took place, Intel has shared a lot of details related to the CPU and GPU platforms that the company is developing, as well as planning to launch in the near future.

In addition to the revelations regarding the all-new Arc-branded discrete graphics cards and accompanying features. Information about another upcoming product line that is also receiving a lot of attention from the community is the Alder Lake processor, which is expected to be released later this year.

According to the information known to date, the Intel Alder Lake desktop CPU product family and the Z690 platform are expected to launch on October 27 this year. This will be Intel's first mainstream commercial processor platform to use PCIe5.0 and DDR5 technologies, along with a new "hybrid" architecture, which has been optimized by Microsoft with the Windows 11 operating system.

Specifically, Alder Lake CPU models will be developed based on a new 'Big-Bigger' hybrid approach that Intel calls 'Performance Hybrid' architecture, which promises to bring many notable improvements. In fact, on the Architecture Day 2021 stage, Intel has also officially confirmed that Windows 11 is optimized to work really well (highly compatible) with Alder Lake CPUs. And this is an important part of the cooperation agreement between the two giants in the semiconductor and software fields.

On the opposite side, Mehmet Iyigun, Partner Development Manager at Microsoft, also said:

Throughout the Windows 11 development cycle, our engineers worked actively and closely with their colleagues at Intel, to find common ground in optimizing the Windows operating system platform. We aim to take full advantage of the advantages of Performance Hybrid architecture and Thread Director in particular. With Thread Director feedback, for example, the Windows 11 thread scheduler has become much smarter in automatically selecting the appropriate core of CPUs rely on workloads for optimal power and performance.

If you don't know, Thread Director is basically a new technology in Alder Lake. It is responsible for providing feedback to the operating system, thereby helping the Windows 11 scheduler to assign workloads more efficiently. The main purpose here is to help more complex workloads, such as vector instructions, correctly transfer to the CPU's high-performance cores (P-cores). While the scalar instructions are lighter and background tasks are sent to the power saving core (E-core). Everything is automated with high precision.

Of course, it will still have to wait until commercial Alder Lake processors come out before we get the most accurate view. But statements from Microsoft and Intel show that things still seem to be moving in the right direction. Let's wait and see!

David Pac

Update 20 August 2021