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A year after kicking off its 8th Generation Core lineup, Intel has made the unusual move of announcing a second family of CPUs based on a refreshed architecture, but under the same 8th Gen umbrella.
The new CPUs will fill out Intel's 15W portfolio for Ultrabooks, internally known as the U-series. There's also a new 5W Y-series portfolio for tablets & extremely thin & light 2-in-1s.
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Intel’s main goal
- Intel is focusing on connectivity & battery life rather than core performance with this new launch, although the company does also promise significant speed improvements.
- The main features for the new U-series are integrated support for USB 3.1 (Gen 2) & Gigabit Wi-Fi through a new platform controller; an improved audio DSP for voice assistants & up to 16 hours of battery life per charge.
- Real-world performance will of course depend on how laptop manufacturers decide to implement these new processors. New or refreshed laptops from all major brands are expected to be unveiled at the annual IFA consumer electronics trade show in Berlin & come to market in time for the US holiday shopping season.
There will be 3 new U-series CPU models
- All based on an architecture with the new codename 'Whiskey Lake'. The Core i3-8145U has two cores with Hyper-Threading & runs at between 2.1GHz & 3.9GHz, with a 4MB cache.
- The Core i5-8265U has four cores with Hyper-Threading and has base and boost speeds of 1.6GHz and 3.9GHz respectively, with a 6MB cache.
- The top-end Core i7-8565U also has four cores and eight threads, and will run at between 1.8GHz and 4.6GHz, with an 8MB cache.
The other part of this announcement concerns new 'Amber Lake' Y-series CPUs
- It will be the first 5W models within the 8th Gen Core family, owing to repeated delays with Intel's beleaguered 10nm Cannonlake CPUs which were originally scheduled for release in 2016. The extremely low-power Y-series has therefore not been refreshed since Intel's 7th Gen 'Kaby Lake' parts launched in late 2016.
- All Whiskey Lake and Amber Lake processors have been manufactured using the latest version of Intel's 14nm process.
- All Y-series parts announced today have two cores with Hyper-Threading, and 4MB caches. The Core m3-8100Y continues with Intel's Core m branding and has base and boost speeds of 1.1GHz and 3.4GHz. The former runs at between 1.3GHz and 3.9GHz, while the latter has base & boost speeds rated at 1.5GHz and 4.2GHz.
Intel is still expected to kick off its 9th Gen Core rollout very soon, with the widely leaked octa-core Core i9-9900K & Core i7-9700K models, a six-core Core i5-9660K, and a refreshed Z390 platform controller.
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