Irrespective of Intel’s a great number of plans to kill AVX-512 on Alder Lake CPUs, older chips can nonetheless choose gain of the AVX-512 instruction set less than the proper disorders. Zingaburga on GitHub recently posted an post detailing how to check which Alder Lake CPU has AVX-512 compatibility for buyers who want to use the instruction set on Alder Lake.
To verify for AVX-512 compatibility, Zingaburga states you are going to need to have to verify the batch range on your Alder Lake CPU or the chip you are likely getting. Batch figures with V149 or X149 or lessen will have the AVX-512 instruction established enabled on the silicon. When codes setting up with V150 or X150 via V201 or X201 could perhaps aid AVX-512, it’s not confirmed.
Codes V202 or X202 or larger will be newer Alder Lake chips with the AVX-512 instruction established fused off, so these chips will not have AVX-512 compatibility of any kind.
But there are still a few other points you will need to be informed of to guarantee AVX-512 will purpose. The 1st is CPU microcode assist which needs to be edition 0x16 or earlier to empower AVX-512. If you have anything at all newer, AVX-512 will not likely do the job. You can look at this by operating components monitoring applications this kind of as HWInfo64, which will inform you what microcode edition your process is managing at (HWInfo64 lists it as MCU).
Following is BIOS compatibility, which can range noticeably dependent on the vendor. In accordance to Zingaburga, MSI is the only reliable vendor that seems to be supporting AVX-512 as a entire. For Z690 motherboards, BIOS version 1.1 or later supports AVX-512, whilst BIOS model 1.2 involves a CPU microcode toggle to retain AVX-512 support if you require it.
The exact seems to be genuine for MSI’s B660 lineup nonetheless, this has not been entirely confirmed.
With other sellers, it really is more of a hit or miss which BIOS’s assist AVX-512. So you’ll have to analysis the board you are hunting at (or previously have) to see which supports AVX-512.
Alder Lake’s AVX-512 Story
Check out out our preceding coverage listed here for a complete rundown story of Alder Lake’s tale with AVX-512. In short, early manufacturing units of Alder Lake chips experienced their AVX-512 instruction sets intact from the factory, but Intel failed to want it enabled for mysterious reasons. Motherboard manufacturer’s caught wind of this and established a swap to permit AVX-512 suitable from the BIOS.
Intel countered this with new microcode updates to quit AVX-512 enablement, but even that was countered by the fact that older BIOS microcodes even now existed, and users could change to those variations at any time. Not to mention MSI’s outstanding method of developing a microcode switcher into more recent BIOS’s created the course of action less complicated for buyers.
Finally, Intel put an conclude to all of this by completely fusing off the AVX-512 module in newer production versions of all Alder Lake processors.