Intel is restricting the distribution of its upcoming Nova Lake processors, specifically targeting the DS-designated models. According to industry reports, these chips are being provided to a significantly smaller group of testers compared to the rest of the product lineup.
The DS-designated processors feature two compute tiles and are expected to be among the first to hit the market. These units carry the BFC suffix, which is associated with the company's implementation of a larger big last-level cache. A notable example is the Core Ultra 9 4970K BFC, which includes 28 cores consisting of eight P-cores, 16 E-cores, and four LPE cores.
The limited availability of these samples is attributed to Intel's internal sampling policy rather than production constraints. By restricting access to a select group, the company prevents these chips from entering the standard qualification pipeline. Consequently, no public benchmark scores or hardware detections have surfaced ahead of the official launch, which is scheduled to begin in December.
