Published , by Chris Jarrard
Published , by Chris Jarrard
After existing only on production roadmaps and spoken about as rumor for several years, Intel finally showed off new hardware based on its 10nm fabrication process. The new mobile processors, arriving this year under the codename Ice Lake, are the first parts Intel will sell to the public that were produced on this process.
Originally believed to be releasing back in 2016, Intel’s new 10nm processors will hit the market as mobile solutions. The company has experienced many delays and setbacks while trying to shrink transistors in an effort to reduce the physical size of the silicon dies as well as their power consumption and heat generation. There were reports last year that Intel might be abandoning the 10nm process entirely and shifting focus to 7nm.
During its CES 2019 keynote speech in Las Vegas this week, Intel gave the public its first glance at the 10nm Ice Lake mobile CPUs that are built on its Sunny Cove architecture. Intel claims that these new parts offer up to a 2x performance boost over it predecessors and will be powerful enough for light gaming duty. The exact graphical settings and frame rates for the game shown at CES were not made public, though.
The Ice Lake mobile processors will also be the company’s first products to have integrated Thunderbolt 3 controllers, Wi-Fi connectivity, and Gen-2 graphics. Intel claims that these chips will be able to drive 4K displays at 60Hz natively. The previous generation of their CPUs could only offer 30Hz output at 4K.
While no exact release dates were provided for the new CPUs, expect a wide range of high-performance ultrabooks from companies like HP, Dell, Lenovo, Acer, ASUS, and Toshiba using the Ice Lake processors to be on store shelves before the end of 2019.