Intel Begins Commercial Shipments of 10nm Ice Lake CPUs to OEMs
by Anton Shilov on July 26, 2019 5:30 PM EST
Intel has begun shipments of its 10th generation Core "Ice Lake" processors as of the second quarter, according to the company in an earnings call this week. Made using Intel’s 10nm process technology, these laptop CPUs were qualified by OEMs earlier in 2019 and are on track to reach the market inside mobile PCs by the holiday season.
As reported, Intel began to produce Ice Lake processors in the first quarter in a bid to build up inventory to support a high-volume launch in the second half of the year. The processors passed qualification by PC makers in Q1 – Q2, and then Intel started to ship them for revenue later in the quarter, which was a little bit earlier than anticipated by various market observers. Keeping in mind the lead-time required to get assembled PCs on to store shelves, Ice Lake-powered PCs are well on track to hit the market in Q4 with some machines possibly reaching retailers earlier than that.
Bob Swan, CEO of Intel, stated the following:
- “We began shipping Ice Lake client [CPUs] in the second quarter supporting systems on the shelf for the holiday selling season.”
Intel formally introduced its laptop-focused Ice Lake-U and Ice Lake-Y CPUs, which are based on the Sunny Cove microarchitecture, in late May. Officially called ‘Intel 10th Generation Core’ processors, the family includes 11 chips (ranging from Core i3 to Core i7) featuring two or four general-purpose CPU cores as well as various GPU configurations and coming to market with 9W, 15W, and 28W TDP variants.
On the CPU side of things, Intel promises an average 18% raw clock-for-clock performance uplift compared to the Skylake core released in 2016 (which has been used with small tweaks since then) along with VNNI and Cryptographic ISA instructions. On the GPU side of matters, Ice Lake CPUs will integrate Intel’s Gen11 graphics core with up to 64 execution units, with Intel promising significant performance improvements as well. The updated iGPU will also natively support DisplayPort 1.4 and HDMI 2.0b outputs as well as HDCP 2.2 technology.
As is traditional for Intel’s lower-power mobile parts, the new Ice Lake processors will come with on-package chipsets. The new 300-series chipsets for ICL will natively support USB 3.1 Gen 2, Wi-Fi 6 MAC (RF module will be sold separately), PCIe 3.0, and other features.
Overall, Intel’s road to high-volume production of 10nm CPUs has been long and bumpy; but it looks like the company is finally turning a corner in time for their Q4 launch.
Related Reading:
- Intel Unveils 10th Gen Core Ice Lake-U & Ice Lake-Y Mobile CPUs: 10nm Sunny Cove Later This Year
- Intel Starts Qualification of Ice Lake CPUs, Raises 10nm Volume Expectation for 2019
- Intel Teases Ice Lake-U Integrated Graphics Performance
Source: Intel
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
115 Comments
View All Comments
Gondalf - Sunday, July 28, 2019 - link
I fully understand you. The resurgence of AMD have badly cancelled any ARM hopes to penetrate the very lucrative Laptop segment and absolutely destroyed the so much hyped server adventure of this RISC ISA.Funny enough AMD is best Intel Friend. Who is ARM outside phones.....nothing.
Meteor2 - Sunday, July 28, 2019 - link
Yet.stockolicious - Monday, July 29, 2019 - link
@Gondalf i think your right and IBM Power also takes a hitname99 - Wednesday, July 31, 2019 - link
There are multiple issues here.First is the difference between those of us looking forward and those people looking backward or wanting to buy something today.
Second (and this is SO important) is the issue of what people like you would count as an "ARM laptop". Apple will (probably) be shipping these soon, (probably) by end of 2020. But would you count that as an "ARM laptop"?
For anyone apart from Apple, there are basic issues:
- an OS is needed. So who provides that?
+MS, the company that has NEVER been able to figure out its OS strategy since at least .NET, still has no clue exactly what it wants. Does it want x86 to be "real" Windows and ARM to be "protected Windows"? Or is ARM supposed to be "consumer Windows"? Or is ARM supposed to be "Windows that never pisses of Intel"?
+ how about Linux? Oh, you mean we'll FINALLY see the year of the Linux desktop? There's a reason no-one plans to get rich selling Linux desktops, and that ain't gonna change.
+ Android? Well Android or ChromeOS? Just like MS, WTF knows what Google's OS strategy is long-term?
And of course in all these cases, what do YOU, the complainers, ACTUALLY want. Half the time you seem to want a super-cheap chromebook like ARM laptop. Then, when those are available, you complain that they don't have the nice screen, touchpad, battery, flash, etc of an Apple device, suggesting you want a ~$1000_ ultrabook...
I don't think ANYONE apart from Apple can provide anything useful in this space.
Which means we wait for Apple to ship, then see how excited the market is about the results compared to current MacBooks. (Noticeably faster? Noticeably longer battery life? Noticeably innovative features?) Then we wait for MS and/or Google to slowly pivot to copy all that.
The other dark horse would be a Chinese company creating a very cheap ChromeBook like thing. But once again there is the OS problem which doesn't just go away because China. Sure, they can slap some horrible Android-kludge on it which never gets updated again, and the result might even be desirable and useful for the poorest parts of the world, better than nothing. But that doesn't provide what people like you mean when you ask for an ARM laptop.
So yeah, for the next five years, it's basically Apple (hopefully in a year!) or nothing...
repoman27 - Friday, July 26, 2019 - link
“The new 300-series chipsets for ICL will natively support Thunderbolt 3...”Actually, Thunderbolt 3 is integrated directly into the ICL CPU die, not the PCH, so it’s not really a chipset feature per se.
nevcairiel - Saturday, July 27, 2019 - link
Mobile chips have a on-die chipset, so in this case its really quite the same.... :)repoman27 - Saturday, July 27, 2019 - link
U and Y series have an on-package PCH, not on-die (the CPU and PCH dies are discrete but part of a multi-chip package). And H series is still mobile but the PCH is a separate package. So not the same at all.The point being that Intel did not integrate the Thunderbolt controller into the PCH die, but into the CPU die itself.
Ian Cutress - Saturday, July 27, 2019 - link
You're correct. Unfortunately Intel's own diagrams from this info (which Anton was working from) are themselves incorrect in this case, compared to the ones from Intel's one SoC deep dive event.Khilos - Friday, July 26, 2019 - link
I understand the concept of managing inventory, but if Intel needs to start shipping CPUs in Q1 in order to stock up for a holiday Q4 launch, something seems off. Are yields that low or production capacity that limited that such a long lead time is needed ?eastcoast_pete - Friday, July 26, 2019 - link
No, chips have to be shipped several months before the launch so that people can buy the actual products (fully assembled laptops ready for sale) on the official launch day.