For any named product (such as Raptor Lake) intel only make 1-3 unique silicon dies. Any product in the
Alder Lake only had two dies, 8P+8E and 6P+0E [1]. Every single SKU comes from those two dies, if it has E cores, it's the 8P+8E die. Which means Alder Lake-N is actually the 8P+8E dies with all the P cores disabled.
The laptop versions, Alder Lake-P (20w) and Alder Lake-U (9 and 15w) are also the 8P+8E die, they couldn't use the 6P+0E die, because it has no E cores at all.
Raptor Lake is only one die with 8 P cores and 16 E cores, which they sell as every i9 and i7, along with the two top i5 designs. In the 13th generation, the remaining i5s are the Alder Lake 8P+8E die and the i3s are all Alder Lake 6P+0E dies.
The manufacturing defects aren't binary, it's not a simple pass/fail. It's all very analog: Some dies are simply able to reach higher clock speeds, or use more or less power. They test every single die and bin it based on its capabilities. The ones with the best power consumption go to the P and U SKUs. The ones which can reach the highest clock speeds are labeled as 13900KS, dies which just miss that get sold as 13900K, the rest get spread over all remaining SKUs based on their capabilities.
Intel couldn't decide to exclusively make 13900KS dies if they wanted to, because they are simply the top 0.1% of dies. They are forced to make 1000 dies, use the best one and sell the rest as lower SKUs.
For any named product (such as Raptor Lake) intel only make 1-3 unique silicon dies. Any product in the Alder Lake only had two dies, 8P+8E and 6P+0E [1]. Every single SKU comes from those two dies, if it has E cores, it's the 8P+8E die. Which means Alder Lake-N is actually the 8P+8E dies with all the P cores disabled.
The laptop versions, Alder Lake-P (20w) and Alder Lake-U (9 and 15w) are also the 8P+8E die, they couldn't use the 6P+0E die, because it has no E cores at all.
Raptor Lake is only one die with 8 P cores and 16 E cores, which they sell as every i9 and i7, along with the two top i5 designs. In the 13th generation, the remaining i5s are the Alder Lake 8P+8E die and the i3s are all Alder Lake 6P+0E dies.
The manufacturing defects aren't binary, it's not a simple pass/fail. It's all very analog: Some dies are simply able to reach higher clock speeds, or use more or less power. They test every single die and bin it based on its capabilities. The ones with the best power consumption go to the P and U SKUs. The ones which can reach the highest clock speeds are labeled as 13900KS, dies which just miss that get sold as 13900K, the rest get spread over all remaining SKUs based on their capabilities.
Intel couldn't decide to exclusively make 13900KS dies if they wanted to, because they are simply the top 0.1% of dies. They are forced to make 1000 dies, use the best one and sell the rest as lower SKUs.
[1] Wikichip has photos of the two dies: https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/intel/microarchitectures/alder_...