It has been a long time coming, but today, Intel finally lifted the veil from their new 10-Nanometer CPU range, Ice Lake, that looks to power your next laptop.
After months of teasing, Intel is finally making their new Ice Lake CPU range avalable to PC manufacturers. After teasing the chips first at CES 2019, and then in Taipai at Computex, Intel is finally ready to make the leap to 10-Nanometer, and it could not come soon enough. The 10-Nanometer dream has been a while in the making. There are many chip makers at 10, and Apple and AMD are now working with a 7-Nanometer process. But with Intel powering most of the laptops currently on the market (including Apples full Macbook lineup), this move is an exciting step forward for mobile computing.
The new 10-Nanometer chips are looking to improve three main areas. Intel is not one to be left out of major industry trends, so Ice Lake was built with AI in mind. 10th Gen CPU’s will also come with a “dedicated instruction set” for neural networks, and it will also include a dedicated engine for background workloads on the CPU.
Intel has never been known for graphics. While they are normally serviceable for light gaming (Fortnite works quite well), it could never compete with a proper discrete graphics option. While it still has a ways to go, Intel has improved the graphics with Ice Lake, now offering “double the performance” when compared to last years offering. This should allow for 1080P gaming, 4K video editing, and rendering when needed.
Finally, further improving on the last set of mobile chips, the 10th gen will offer compliance with the Wifi 6 standard and will allow PC builders to have up to four USB-C Thunderbolt 3 ports on laptops.
There is slated to be 11 variants of the new chips when they start hitting this year’s Laptop ranges. Intel has yet to give exact dates when consumers will start being able to purchase laptops with Ice Lake, but they should start being able to buy them the holiday 2019. While few exact models are known to support 10th Gen Intel CPU’s, at Computex, Ice Lake was shown in the Acer Swift 5, Dell XPS 13-inch 2-in-1, HP Envy 13, and Lenovo S940.
We will have a better idea of how Ice Lake fairs under real-world testing when we get our hands on a few of these new laptops and put them through their paces. Although for now, it looks to be a great step forward for Intel, and will ultimately lead to more powerful and useful laptops for consumers this fall.