AVX-512 support is reportedly coming to “future Intel Core” processors

It looks like 512-bit AVX instructions are set to make a comeback on Intel's consumer desktop CPUs. The first concrete evidence has appeared in the latest release of Intel's oneDNN library, which adds early support for AVX10.2 with its full 512-bit width. This new feature explicitly targets “future Intel Core” processors, which many believe to be the Nova Lake architecture slated for 2026.

You might remember that Intel officially removed AVX-512 support from its consumer platforms with the launch of the 12th Gen Alder Lake CPUs. The introduction of the hybrid architectures created a problem: the smaller E-cores lacked the hardware to run the wide-vector instructions. To avoid scheduling chaos and ensure software consistency, Intel chose to disable the feature across the board, even on the P-cores that could still support it. On the other hand, AMD has gone in the opposite direction. With the launch of the Ryzen 9000 series, the Zen 5 architecture now includes native, full-width 512-bit AVX-512 execution. This move has given AMD an advantage in specific high-performance and scientific workloads and has undoubtedly put pressure on Intel to respond.

Intel's answer appears to be AVX10.2, according to InstLatX64. This new, more flexible version of the instruction set is designed specifically for hybrid CPUs. It unifies the feature set and allows the same software to run across different core types by supporting 128-bit, 256-bit, and 512-bit operations. This means developers won't need to create separate code paths, solving the original problem that led to AVX-512's removal from the consumer stack.

The feature is not enabled by default in the new library and is clearly looking ahead to future hardware, which should include Intel Nova Lake and Diamond Rapids. This is the clearest sign yet that Intel is serious about bringing wide-vector processing back into the fold for its entire consumer lineup. For now, AMD holds the advantage, but it looks like that may change soon.

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KitGuru says: When you're choosing a system or CPU, is 512-bit AVX instruction support essential to you?

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