Willow Cove
CPU microarchitecture by Intel
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Willow Cove is a codename for a CPU microarchitecture developed by Intel and released in September 2020. Willow Cove is the successor to the Sunny Cove microarchitecture, and is fabricated using Intel's enhanced 10 nm process node called 10 nm SuperFin (10SF).[1] The microarchitecture powers 11th-generation Intel Core mobile processors (codenamed "Tiger Lake").[1][2]
- Intel
(32 KB instructions + 48 KB data)
| General information | |
|---|---|
| Launched | September 12, 2020 |
| Designed by | Intel |
| Common manufacturer |
|
| Cache | |
| L1 cache | 80 KB per core: (32 KB instructions + 48 KB data) |
| Architecture and classification | |
| Technology node | Intel 10 nm SuperFin (10SF) |
| Instruction set | x86-64 |
| Extensions | |
| Products, models, variants | |
| Product code name | |
| History | |
| Predecessor | Sunny Cove |
| Successor | Golden Cove |
The Willow Cove microarchitecture was succeeded by Golden Cove.[3]
Features
Intel first described Tiger Lake and Willow Cove during their Architecture Day in 2020.[4] Willow Cove is almost identical to the previous microarchitecture but introduces new security features, a redesigned cache subsystem, and higher clock speeds.[4] Intel claims that these changes, in addition to the new 10SF process node, give an additional 10–20% performance increase from Sunny Cove.[1]
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 instruction: Vector Pair Intersection to a Pair of Mask Registers, VP2INTERSECT[5][6]
- Control Flow Enforcement Technology to prevent return-oriented programming and jump-oriented programming exploitation techniques[7]
- Full memory (RAM) encryption[8]
- Indirect branch tracking and shadow stack
- Intel Key Locker[9][10]
- AVX/AVX2 instructions support for Pentium Gold and Celeron processors has been unlocked[6]