Intel to Announce 8th Generation Core Processors on August 21st
by Ryan Smith on August 8, 2017 10:00 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
- Intel
- Core
- Coffee Lake
Today Intel has revealed that the company will be announcing their 8th generation Core processors and associated architecture on August 21st. This announcement of an announcement comes as the company is in the middle of launching the rest of the Core i9 Skylake-X processors, with the announcement essentially set to fill out the rest of the year for the company’s CPU product portfolio.
Intel has in recent times settled into a fairly consistent and roughly yearly release cadence for the Core processor family. Other than Broadwell’s delay, Intel has typically launched a new processor in the summer/fall timeframe for the past half-decade. And as early as an investor meeting in February, the company revealed that we should expect the 8th generation processors in the second half of this year.
Officially, Intel has not published any Core architecture roadmaps in some time, but what is widely expected to be revealed on the 21st is Intel’s Coffee Lake processors. Coffee Lake is a further evolution of Skylake and Kaby Lake, and like its predecessors, the company has already been confirmed that these 8th generation processors will also be made on their 14nm process. Meanwhile back at Computex Intel was talking up a sizable 30% performance gain in SYSmark, though based on Intel’s associated demonstration it looks like that claim is primarily about laptops. Otherwise, what little we know of Coffee Lake is that it will require a new chipset, and desktop processors will not work in existing 200-series motherboards.
The big question, besides official specifications, will be around what launches when. Whether Intel will lead with mobile, lead with desktop, or even launch both at the same time. Intel has traditionally led with mobile, and as a recently as 7th generation Core (Kaby Lake) that was still the case. On the other hand (and rumors aside), the fact that we’ve already seen motherboard manufacturers accidentally confirm information about desktop processors solidly points to desktop parts sooner than later, an interesting turn of events given the still-ongoing Skylake-X launch.
Otherwise, this launch may give us a hint of what to expect for the structure of future Intel processor launches. An announcement like this would normally be made at IDF, which would have taken place the week of August 14th had Intel not discontinued it this year. Intel is plenty capable of launching products outside of IDF (see: Skylake-X and Kaby Lake-X), but the loss of IDF changes things significantly. On the one hand, they're no longer under the gun to present something big to the amassed press, investors, and developers. On the other hand, they don't have those same masses conveniently gathered in one location. So it will be interesting to see how Intel handles this launch now that it's a lower-key event.
Finally, given this timing, it remains to be seen how Intel will work their forthcoming first generation 10nm Cannonlake parts into the rotation. Cannonlake was originally expected this year, though it’s anything but clear if that’s still going to happen. However even an early 2018 launch would come only a handful of months after Coffee Lake, and with initial 10nm yields pushing a practical need to start on small die products (e.g. U/Y processors), it’ll be interesting to see how Intel structures their product lineup for these back-to-back transitions.
Source: Intel
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Lolimaster - Wednesday, August 9, 2017 - link
Maybe a bit of your lack of "read behind line".Jim Keller went back to AMD in 2012 till 2015. Jim Keller, the god of cpu's. If you knew that, pain was coming, and investing in stock when AMD reached low levels was a brilliant idea.
Runiteshark - Wednesday, August 9, 2017 - link
I've been following it for the past two decades. AMD sucked for the past 8 years. I know Jim went back, and I also invested way back in '12, and have off and on traded it since 04. I'm really hoping on the server side of things these take off, because as a consumer of these server grade chips, it has been frustrating seeing the pathetic improvements in the v1-v4 e5 xeons over the years. The only thing you were able to do is go one SKU down at best for your midrange servers which was a savings of about 100-200. Nothing spectacular.As for you Hurr Durr, first this isn't /g/, and second practically the entire semiconductor industry collaborated on the 7nm process node. Samsung, IBM and TSMC have thrown their weight and investments into the process because they all plan on using it for their products, which means Samsung SSDs to AMD CPUs and GPUs. With this being said, I wouldn't plan on it being a dud. Intel has having significant problems bringing up yields on their 10nm nodes and here we are with 14nm+++. Honestly, I originally thought AMD spinning off their fab would be disasterous but it seems that it was a smart move instead because they ended up collaborating with the rest of the industry.
All this said, supposedly this 14nm node they are on was set for 3ghz clockspeeds, so if their new 7nm shrink actually does run at the 5ghz like it's said, then we could be seeing the first consumer CPUs that regularly hit 6ghz overclocks. Wouldn't that be nice? With all this being said, it remains to be seen if AMD can stop screwing up everything else and continue to innovate rather than being one hit wonders. With how much money Intel throws into R&D there will have to be more than just clockspeed and core scaling with their modular architecture. Hopefully their IPC also improves.
FreckledTrout - Wednesday, August 9, 2017 - link
The 7nm node does look very good on paper, better than Intel 10nm but of course have to wait and see. However if the 7nm node does work out well, Zen2 should be a really good CPU to compete with Ice Lake. I do believe Intel's 10nm issues are like getting a flat tire they choose not to fix, they are milking 14nm due to no competition as they simply have been at 10nm way to long for any other answer.Intel has been sitting on 10nm and Ice Lake and is going to fight back hard over the next 12 months.
AMD has a pretty awesome 7nm process coming up from GLOFO that could be better than Intel's 10nm which will be a first.
I have my popcorn ready.
Hurr Durr - Wednesday, August 9, 2017 - link
Every node ever has to look better than what intel operates on at the moment at least on paper, because intel is for all intents and purposes a benchmark here.Who would even get excited if you came out and said something like "we really threw down and produced this marvel of technology, which ekes out a 5% yield/power improvement over meh TSMC process"?
FreckledTrout - Wednesday, August 9, 2017 - link
I wanted to add AMD's next gen GPU, Navi, if you read up on it, its is a beast of a concept the devil is in the execution. You will see why Vega's design has some compromises so AMD didn't have to do a full redesign for Navi. Using the Infinity fabric tying GPU's together sharing low latency HBM2 will be Zen all over fighting against Nvidia monolithic cores.Hurr Durr - Wednesday, August 9, 2017 - link
They always somehow forget to mention that Keller left AMD again...for Tesla! Really shows you how bad things must have been.And IBM has been dead for a while already.
jospoortvliet - Thursday, August 10, 2017 - link
Right just like he left Apple and things went to shit. Oh, wait, apple still beats everybody else...Jim built a team and a basic design, then left the finishing touches to others. Just as planned.
Hurr Durr - Wednesday, August 9, 2017 - link
>incoming IBM processAny IBM process at this point in time is a guaranteed dud. So AMD will be stuck with their new pedestrian architecture for ten years again.
FreckledTrout - Wednesday, August 9, 2017 - link
Intel's new core design is Ice Lake on 10nm and was expected in 2019 but I'm pretty sure they had this tape in ready for a while so expect it to hit in second half of 2018. I hope they do start announcing 2018 dates might get AMD to push GLOFLO harder on 7nm. Should make for a fun couple years.lefty2 - Wednesday, August 9, 2017 - link
There is a lot of confusion with Intel's code names. Coffee lake refers to all 8th generation CPUs, but 8th generation is both 14nm++ *and* 10nm. The 14nm++ CPUs are the ones released this year, under the code name "Kaby Lake refresh" and the 10nm ones are "CannonLake". All clear? Coffee Lake = Kaby Lake refresh + CannonLake.Oh, and by the way, 14nm++ performs better than the first iteration of 10nm (according to slides from Intel's manufacturing day)