Willow Cove is a

codename A code name, call sign or cryptonym is a code word or name used, sometimes clandestinely, to refer to another name, word, project, or person. Code names are often used for military purposes, or in espionage. They may also be used in industrial c ...

for a

CPU A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor or just processor, is the electronic circuitry that executes instructions comprising a computer program. The CPU performs basic arithmetic, logic, controlling, and ...

microarchitecture In computer engineering, microarchitecture, also called computer organization and sometimes abbreviated as µarch or uarch, is the way a given instruction set architecture (ISA) is implemented in a particular processor. A given ISA may be imp ...

developed by

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the devel ...

and released in September 2020. Willow Cove is the successor to the

Sunny Cove Sunny Cove is a codename for a CPU microarchitecture developed by Intel, first released in September 2019. It succeeds the Palm Cove microarchitecture and is fabricated using Intel's 10 nm process node. The microarchitecture is implemented ...

microarchitecture, and is fabricated using Intel's enhanced

10 nm The following are examples of orders of magnitude for different lengths. __TOC__ Overview Detailed list To help compare different orders of magnitude, the following list describes various lengths between 1.6 \times 10^ metres and 10 ...

process node called 10 nm SuperFin (10SF). The microarchitecture powers 11th-generation

Intel Core Intel Core is a line of streamlined midrange consumer, workstation and enthusiast computer central processing units (CPUs) marketed by Intel Corporation. These processors displaced the existing mid- to high-end Pentium processors at the time ...

mobile processors (codenamed " Tiger Lake"). The Willow Cove microarchitecture was succeeded by

Golden Cove Golden Cove is a codename for a CPU microarchitecture developed by Intel and released in November 2021. It succeeds four microarchitectures: Sunny Cove, Skylake, Willow Cove, and Cypress Cove. It is fabricated using Intel's Intel 7 process node ...

Features

Intel first described Tiger Lake and Willow Cove during their Architecture Day in 2020. Willow Cove is almost identical to the previous microarchitecture but introduces new security features, a redesigned cache subsystem, and higher clock speeds. Intel claims that these changes, in addition to the new 10SF process node, give an additional 10–20% performance increase from Sunny Cove.

Improvements

* Larger L2 caches (1.25 MB per core from 512 KB per core) * Larger L3 caches (3 MB per core from 2 MB per core) * A new

AVX-512 AVX-512 are 512-bit extensions to the 256-bit Advanced Vector Extensions SIMD instructions for x86 instruction set architecture (ISA) proposed by Intel in July 2013, and implemented in Intel's Xeon Phi x200 (Knights Landing) and Skylake-X CPUs; ...

instruction: Vector Pair Intersection to a Pair of Mask Registers, VP2INTERSECT * Control Flow Enforcement Technology to prevent return-oriented programming and jump-oriented programming exploitation techniques * Full memory ( RAM) encryption * Indirect branch tracking and

shadow stack A shadow is a dark area where light from a light source is blocked by an opaque object. It occupies all of the three-dimensional volume behind an object with light in front of it. The cross section of a shadow is a two-dimensional silhouette, o ...

* Intel Key Locker * AVX/

AVX2 Advanced Vector Extensions (AVX) are extensions to the x86 instruction set architecture for microprocessors from Intel and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). They were proposed by Intel in March 2008 and first supported by Intel with the Sandy Bridg ...

instructions support for Pentium Gold and Celeron processors has been unlocked

Products

Willow Cove powers Intel's 11th-generation Intel Core mobile processors (codenamed ''Tiger Lake''). Tiger Lake-U processors were released on September 2, 2020, while Tiger Lake-H35 were released on January 11, 2021. Tiger Lake-H processors were launched on May 11, 2021.

References

{{Intel processors X86 microarchitectures Intel Intel microarchitectures