Intel Begins Shipment Of Seventh Generation Core: Kaby Lake
by Brett Howse on July 20, 2016 10:55 PM EST
Intel had their Q2 earnings today, and while we’ll get to that shortly, some news came out of the earnings call that was interesting. Intel CEO Brian Krzanich stated on their earnings call that Intel is now shipping their 7th Generation Core processor, code named Kaby Lake.
Kaby Lake was not even a product not that long ago, but with Intel coming up against the laws of physics with process shrinks, they made the announcement a year ago that they would be adding more architectures per process shrink. The delays in moving to 22 nm and then 14 nm meant that they were missing the anticipated product launches for their OEMs, which left the OEMs with quarters where they would have no new products to sell. In an attempt to smooth out the timelines to a more reasonable cadence, while at the same time coming to grips with the complexity of moving to smaller and smaller processes, Intel announced Kaby Lake as a successor to Skylake, which would build on Skylake and offer additional architectural improvements.
This was big news at the time mostly because Intel’s previous Tick Tock strategy was so successful. To abandon it was certainly an important step for the company, but with Kaby Lake seemingly on-time for a fall launch this year, just a year after Skylake launched, points to the investment being the correct one.
When Intel says they are shipping, they of course mean they are shipping to their device manufacturer partners, so we should start seeing Kaby Lake based computers this fall.
Another interesting point brought up during the call was on yields. Intel has found itself in a situation where it’s inventory levels are higher than they would like them to be, and the answer to this was yields. Intel’s yields improved in Q1, and to quote Stacy J. Smith, Intel’s CFO and EVP, “Frankly, they got a lot better in Q2 as well” which is likely another reason why Kaby Lake is being delivered on-time.
We should learn more about Kaby Lake at Intel’s IDF which is coming up in mid-August.
Source: Intel Investor Call
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Asubmani - Sunday, November 6, 2016 - link
As per Intel's CPU comparision, it is a 8.6% increase in base frequency between i5-62000u and i5-72000u. APart from that the only difference is in the intel HD graphics 520 vs 620 HD graphics (non-issue if using 3rd party graphics card)tamalero - Tuesday, July 26, 2016 - link
for the game part.. Id say it means the game is video card starved, not cpu starved.user7624312 - Wednesday, August 10, 2016 - link
AVX-512? Please enlighten me how you would use that on any current Skylake processor.serendip - Thursday, July 21, 2016 - link
I've got a Core 2 Duo laptop that I've kitted out over the years with lots of RAM and a fast SSD. Still good to go :)For office and typical home users, I could see the same desktops being used for 5 years or more. Bad news for Intel then.
eddman - Thursday, July 21, 2016 - link
This might sound funny, but I'm using a Core 2 Quad Q9550 @ 3.4 GHz and it runs pretty much everything at 1920 x 1080 at 40-70 FPS.CPUs became "good enough" a long while ago.
extide - Thursday, July 21, 2016 - link
Good enough, yes, but a core 2 quad is even slower than the AMD cores on the market right now, so yeah, there is that.eddman - Thursday, July 21, 2016 - link
Um, what's your point? Obviously newer AMD chips are faster than that. I just wanted to point out that even an 8 years old CPU is able to handle current games at 1920 x 1080.ACE76 - Thursday, July 21, 2016 - link
It's true...Instead of getting rid of my old x58 system, I upgraded the RAM to 48gb, slapped a 6 core Xeon 5670 in it and use two TLC SSDs in RAID for a very capable system..I still built a Skylake system only because it had been so long and i wanted to...but older systems are more than capable of handling today's games, etc. with the right video card.Jimster480 - Sunday, July 24, 2016 - link
Depends on what you are doing, but yes you are right.And that is the reality of the fact that FX is actually more than enough for 90% of cases.
abstraction - Thursday, July 21, 2016 - link
Hello fellow Q9550 owner. Mine is overclocked at 3.9 GHz. For now I have a strange configuration, since my video card is GTX 980 Ti. Believe me or not, my PC runs recent Doom at max settings and 2560x1440 at 130-150 FPS. Yes, its Vulkan API which made CPUs even less relevant for games. DirectX 12 either, but it is still yet to come. I'll probably wait till Skylake-X comes out.