Nothing lasts forever, especially when it comes to PC hardware. Even if the devices continue to work for decades, at some point, the manufacturer will pull the plug on supporting them. In the case of Intel's 12th Gen Core processors, the end officially started at the beginning of 2026, with January 22, 2027 being the final date for the shipment of any 12th Gen chips.
The fact that I am only writing about this now suggests that PC enthusiasts are perhaps not all that interested in these CPUs, but they should be and for good reasons. First of all, the Alder Lake architecture marked Intel's first attempt at implementing a hybrid core design in desktop processors (it had done so previously with mobile-only Lakefield in 2020).
