Intel teased in a Twitter post an 8th-gen chip, another refinement to the 14nm process. Reportedly code name "Coffee Lake," this was also unveiled during Intel's annual investor meeting, wherein they promised that it will be 15 percent more powerful than the newly released "Kaby Lake."
When we already imagined that we could move on to the 10nm process, Intel wasn't done yet. The company planned 2 further refinements to the 14nm process: the first was Kaby Lake and the second being the 8th-generation processor, although it hasn't been confirmed yet that it will indeed be "Coffee Lake."
8th Gen Intel Core on the 2017 roadmap. Better every year at #Intel. pic.twitter.com/8LHH0yxqd4
— Intel Official News (@intelnews) February 9, 2017
Intel spent most of 2016 talking about its Kaby Lake, ultimately revealing it during the CES 2017. And now they are teasing us with yet another more powerful variant that is part of the 2017 roadmap for the second half of the year.
According to Digital Trends, 3 14nm+ chip families were supposed to be launched in the second half of 2017 going into the first quarter of 2018, this being Kaby Lake-X, Skylake-X, and Coffee Lake. The high-end Skylake-X and Kaby Lake-X were supposed to ride the Gamescom 2017 on August.
This leaves us with Coffee Lake. The question now is: Could this be really Coffee Lake? Coffee Lake was rumored to be a set of a 6-core mainstream processor with improved design and will include "architectural enhancements." Well, it is not "Cannon Lake," simply because its architecture was based on a 10nm process node.
Intel's 8th-gen processors will be based on the 14nm+ processing technology that was used in the 7th-gen chips. Relatively, the smaller the process, the more efficient the processor will be. This will allow you to squeeze more transistors onto the same-sized piece of Silicon.
PCMag reports that there could be 4 variants of Intel's Coffee Lake: for ultra-low power Coffee Lake-U, for mainstream desktop Coffee Lake-S, for notebooks Coffee Lake-H, and for enthusiast desktops Coffee Lake-X. But Intel wasn't willing to reveal more outside than what they have posted on Twitter.
But the product roadmap "leak" last September 2016 noted that the 8th-gen chips won't come out until February 2018. Well, it could be that the roadmap wasn't real at all or that Intel is likely making their first move as the AMD Ryzen will soon hit stores. We will have to wait for this year's conventions, Computex or CeBit, which Intel might use to showcase the teased 8th-gen chips, Coffee Lake.
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