On March 24th, leaks from the renowned insider MLID revealed the first glimpse of Intel's upcoming Arrow Lake processor, showcasing a bare, unencased engineering sample (QS).

The Arrow Lake processor marks Intel's renewed foray into both desktop and laptop markets, with the desktop variant sporting a new interface, LGA1851. Additionally, there's a low-power variant dubbed Lunar Lake, both utilizing the 20A fabrication process and featuring a novel CPU/GPU architecture. However, unlike its predecessors, this processor variant won't include hyper-threading technology.

MLID reveals that, just like the current Meteor Lake, the Arrow Lake processors will continue to utilize a disaggregated modular architecture, comprising Compute, GPU, SoC, and IOE modules. There are also some purely placeholder dummy modules, just to maintain a standard square shape overall.

In terms of specs, at least this version has 24 cores, which means 8 Performance (P) cores and 16 Efficiency (E) cores, similar to the current 13th and 14th gen Core series. But it's almost certain that they won't support hyper-threading, turning 24 cores and 32 threads into 24 cores and 24 threads. Moreover, at least the desktop version won't have Low Power Efficiency (LPE) small cores.

It's said that a subsequent upgraded version, Arrow Lake Refresh, might double the number of E cores to 32, while keeping the P cores unchanged, thus offering 40 cores and 40 threads.

According to Intel, both Arrow Lake and Lunar Lake are set to release later this year. However, now that only the QS (Qualification Sample) versions are out, there's speculation they might not make it in time.