Officially, Intel Core 12s do not support AVX-512, although cores with P-Core or Golden Cove architecture do. The instructions, registers, and threads for executing these kinds of instructions are found in the high performance cores, which will be used by Intel Xeon with the Sapphire Rapids architecture. In the current Intel Core 12 this is as easy as disabling the BIOS E-Cores and leaving only the P-Cores to access these instructions from any CPU with the Alder Lake-S architecture .
The end of the AVX-512 on Intel Core 12
Well, those of Pat Gelsinger have a very clear idea with the AVX-512, They are intended for Xeons and not current desktop processors
And how do you plan to do it? Technically, they won’t turn them off from the processor, but remember that you need to do some BIOS work on the Z690 motherboards to be able to enable use of these instructions. Well a firmware update for motherboards with Z690 chipset this will remove the possibility of activating the AVX-512 from the BIOS. Likewise, motherboards with H670, B660 and H610 chipsets should come with this modification as standard.
However, all is not lost in the face of the AVX-512 in the Intel Core 12, as projects appear which seek to inject the old BIOS into the Z690 chipsets, however, it must be remembered that there are still a very high risk when using BIOS without official support. We will see what the response of the different motherboard manufacturers will be and without it they will offer support in their chipsets for Alder Lake-S or, failing that, they will succumb to the demands.
Energy efficiency and AVX drives
AVX units are a problem for both Intel and AMD, they are SIMD units that move a large amount of data because they have the ability to execute the same instruction in multiple blocks of information at the same time. This means that for example Intel limits the maximum clock speed that we can achieve with the AVX2 with overclock.
It is documented that the i9-12900K when it needs to execute an AVX2 instruction, remember that this is a 256 bit SIMD unit, so it lowers the clock speed to 5.1 GHz due to because it limits the multiplier. Interestingly, the AVX-512 unit which should consume more power is much more efficient in the P-Cores of the Intel Core 12 than the AVX2, which has not undergone any internal changes in its upgrade. implemented compared to previous generations. Let’s not forget that despite the name, the AVX-512’s instructions are different from the AVX2’s and use a different set of instructions.
