Alleged Intel 13th Gen Core i9-13900K Raptor Lake Leak Confirms Chunky Cache Upgrade
We saw similar effects with the move from Zen+ to Zen 2, which introduced the concept of "GameCache". Perhaps that reality is what prompted Intel to subtly bump the cache allocations of its upcoming 13th-generation Raptor Lake processors. We heard that Raptor Lake would see an increase in cache capacity back in January when known-good Twitter leaker OneRaichu commented that Raptor Lake's 68MB of cache was "interesting."
Image: @OneRaichu on Twitter
Now, OneRaichu has tweeted a CPU-Z screenshot that they claim is confirmation of the earlier information. In the screenshot (above), we can see that L2 cache has increased from 1.25 MB per P-core and 2MB per E-core cluster in Alder Lake to 2MB of L2 cache per P-core and 4MB per cluster of E-cores in Raptor Lake. L3 cache allotment remains the same on a per-object basis, although the total L3 cache is increased to 36MB (from 30MB on ADL) due to the addition of two more clusters of Gracemont E-cores.
Image: @OneRaichu on Twitter
OneRaichu also presents a graph showing a comparison of cache latency (in cycles) between Alder Lake and the 13th-generation Raptor Lake part. Despite the addition of significant amounts of cache, it looks like latency remains the same on Raptor Lake in the best cases, and is significantly superior as block sizes start to ramp up, particularly in the 2MB range. That's exactly what we'd expect from the enlarged caches, and will probably play a major part in RPL's performance uplift from ADL.
Notably, RPL may be Intel's last CPU generation to be fully-monolithic. It's well-established by this point that 14th-gen Meteor Lake and 15th-gen Arrow Lake will be "disaggregated" designs, in Intel terms. In other words, they'll be chiplet-based processors that use multiple discrete pieces of silicon to do their job. Of course, that's all in the distant future at this point; Raptor Lake will come first.
