Hardware blogger YuuKi_AnS reveals (via Tom's Hardware) that certified samples of Intel's still unreleased Alder Lake chip, the Core i9 12900K, is available in China at the top of the Intel Alder Lake range, MSRP appears to be over $1000, but this is not indicative of MSRP, but rather of the extent to which the market can tolerate unreleased hardware.

The fact that these chips are being sold is not particularly surprising. Rather, the fact that these Qualified Samples (QS) are already out there is more important, and indicates that Alder Lake's development life is further along than some suspect.

The reason Alder Lake has attracted so much interest is that it is a very different kind of chip for desktop computing, using the so-called BIG.LITTLE hybrid design that has been well received by Arm in smartphones. Basically, Alder Lake has two different types of cores: the larger Golden Cove core is an extension of the one we use today, while the smaller, more efficient Gracemont core continues Intel's Atom lineage.

The top-of-the-line Core i9-12900K has eight cores of each type, but only the traditional cores have HyperThreading, so different core and thread counts than usual are expected, such as a 16-core, 24-thread chip. These two different types of cores may also allow for some interesting overclocking shenanigans.

Of importance for Alder Lake is the Windows scheduler, which determines which cores are used for which tasks. This is because developers need access to the hardware to make sure the chip is running optimally.

Alder Lake is generally expected to be released by the end of the year, but no one knows exactly when; some rumors suggest an October release, while others are pretty firm on November. All we know officially is that Intel is aiming for later this year.