It seems that we might not have long to wait for the launch of Intel's new 7-nanometer Alder Lake desktop processors. Rumours have been circling for a while now and we're also starting to hear rumblings from the company itself. 

During the Intel Accelerated event earlier this week Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger made a throwaway comment about the upcoming Intel Innovation event in October. He commented saying that "...this event will be fully hybrid" perhaps hinting that the company will be showing off its hybrid processor architecture coming in the form of Alder Lake. 

The Alder Lake processors are the first to be crafted using the company's 7-nanometer manufacturing process. These processors are said to be interesting for a number of reasons including a hybrid architecture design. That design includes the inclusion of eight Golden Cove high-performance cores alongside eight Gracemont high-efficiency cores. 

For the consumer, these CPUs will also be potentially more exciting thanks to the compatibility with DDR5 and PCI-Express 5.0 memory. Meaning even more speed! 

It has been suggested by some sources that Intel's launch of Alder Lake will start with the high-end "K" and "KF" models initially. This might happen in late October and November with more affordable consumer CPUs coming in 2022. 

Se we're expecting the Intel Core i9-12900K to be available first and others to follow. This lines up with various leaks on the new CPUs including people selling samples for extortionate rates. Qualifying samples have also already been benchmarked and show significant improvements over AMD's Ryzen 5940X CPU so we're expecting good things from the next launch. 

The Intel Core i9-12900K is rumoured to have 16 cores and 24 threads with a boost clock speed of up to 5.3GHz. Offering performance that's not to be sniffed at. 

Of course, we'll have to wait for the official word to find out more.