Intel introduced the big.LITTLE approach to x86 CPU design with its 12th generation Alder Lake CPU. This similar form of Arm CPU vendors has been doing for some time, and Alder Lake combines larger performance cores (P-cores) with smaller, efficient cores (E-cores). Intel calls this approach "performance mixing, or Big-Bigger."
Intel has also made specific optimizations so that the Windows 11 scheduler works well with this new architecture through its new threading supervisor mechanism.
Robert Hallock, AMD's director of technology marketing, recently explained in an interview with KitGuru why Intel needs to take this CPU design route, while AMD is still content with the conventional practice of only stacking large cores.
According to Hallock, Intel, which has been using iterations of its Skylake core design in subsequent generations of CPU architecture, faces size limitations because the core itself is quite large compared to AMD's Zen, which is inherently much smaller overall. Therefore, the Intel team found it difficult to increase the kernel, update the instruction set, and so on with only large cores.
Hallock added that AMD's Zen is the other way around, which is extremely scalable, a result of the path the company took when it began working on Zen nearly a decade ago. To help achieve this, AMD has also adopted a modular approach using small chips, although Intel poured cold water on them as early as 2017, calling it a "glue core."
While AMD doesn't need to take a hybrid-sized approach right now, the patent shows that the company is definitely working on such a design, though it's not known when or if the Zen series itself will be part of this approach.