Intel's Bartlett Lake-S desktop CPUs may be coming as the architecture starts to gain support in Linux and other applications. In addition to the Arrow Lake announcement, Intel alsoAnnouncing the new Bartlett Lake-S desktop series,Designed for industrial applications, specifically AI workloads, media processing, and AI analytics.
We were previously told that the range wouldn't be available to general consumers, but this launch seems to have other plans. Given the disappointing performance of ARL-S in the desktop market, it's likely that Intel will surprise us with a consumer version of Bartlett Lake-S, although that's not yet clear.
According to Phoronix, Intel Linux engineers have begun providing support for Bartlett Lake processors. There is currently a "one-line" patch in the Linux kernel that mentions the upcoming product line. Interestingly, the nature of the patch means Intel's decision to release Bartlett Lake for the consumer market alongside its professional-grade products was "emergency," meaning plans were changed at short notice. Additionally, MSI overclocking tool "Toppc" also mentioned Bartlett Lake when highlighting its support for the latest AIDA64 patch.
From what we know about Bartlett Lake-S, it will be the first line to feature an all-"P-core" configuration. The series is expected to cover three power segments of 125W, 65W and 45W, and include SKUs of 12 Core 9 P cores, 10 Core 7 P cores and 8 Core 5 P cores. Since BTL-S is targeted at the high-performance market rather than industrial and IoT applications, the series is not expected to include Core 3 series SKUs. Initially, a consumer version of BTL-S was expected to be released alongside ARL-S, but Intel seems to have other plans.
Interestingly, Bartlett Lake-S will be based on the LGA 1700 platform and support existing 600-series and 700-series motherboards, meaning regular consumers can easily switch to the newer product line. Given the competition Intel faces from AMD and its CPU products, it is absolutely necessary for the company to come up with more attractive products as Intel's market share is already declining in mainstream markets like China.