Despite only having a 30-minute press event at this year’s annual CES fair, Intel has a lot to discuss about its plans for the next 12 months. The company addressed five major processor architectures and product segments that will dictate where much of its FY2021 will come from. This is essentially an annual ad script, without actually providing us with the script.
Carousel Image is by Greg Bryant, GM of Intel’s Client Computing Group, presenting at CES.
We received a lot of news from Intel today, which we separate into separate news posts for ease of use. This is a quick, practical guide for clicking on any of our reviews
An evening with Intel CEO Bob Swan: question and answer roundtable
Intel surprised us by offering the chance to ask questions of the responsible man, CEO Bob Swan. It is rare for Intel to offer access to its C-level executives to the tech press, and as a result, we had to think of some nail rodents to ask him that only he could answer. Our time was short and it ended up being about 15 minutes for 5/6 of us to ask and get answers, but it was nice to hear answers related to Intel’s manufacturing strategy, what Intel can do when it comes to outsourcing and if Bob considers Intel’s technical or financial position most important.
News in the press: Ice Lake Xeon now in production
Many of Intel’s recent challenges stem from its inability to direct its 10 nm process to two of the main revenue generating areas for the company: desktop and server. We expected to see Intel’s 10nm Scalable Ice Lake Xeon at the end of last year, but it passed without a peep. Today Intel is announcing that it has started production, although earlier this year Intel said it was already increasing production, and other sources tell us that Intel has already released the hardware and is shipping it to customers. Everything was very confusing.
The latest desktop in the pack: Rocket Lake’s Core i9-11900K
Intel has been teasing its next generation of Rocket Lake desktop processors for several months, with arrows pointing to PCIe 4.0 and we already know about the backward ported CPU and GPU cores. There are big questions about what this means for performance and power, and Intel answered exactly none of our questions, but decided to predict part of the game’s performance, in addition to giving us concrete numbers on frequencies. There are also the launch of many 500 series motherboards.
Laptops now have options: Tiger Lake 35W, Tiger Lake 45W
On the notebook equation side, Intel has two new product families for its OEM partners to play with. The closest to launch is the new Tiger Lake H35 series, which are Intel’s regular 15 W processors boostered to a 35 W power mode and scraping at 5.0 GHz. A little further away are the traditional series processors 45 W H, with up to eight cores. We have details about both.
Business customers matter too: Intel Tiger Lake gets vPro
Given the huge growth in notebook sales this year for the business sector, the demand for business-class notebooks is growing rapidly. These business notebooks need special security features, as well as out-of-band management, and therefore require Intel’s vPro line of hardware. Intel is addressing this need by placing the latest 15W Tiger Lake processors in its vPro line. More details about the additional features that come with the hardware, such as CET, in our coverage.
Chromebooks for Education: 10 nm Jasper Lake Comes To Life
Here is an announcement that we did not expect to get in detail, but we are happy to have done it: Intel is upgrading its line of Pentium Silver and Celeron processors with 10 nm Jasper Lake processors. What makes this an exciting launch is that they are powered by Intel’s latest generation Tremont Atom cores that make x86 a little differently than most. We can’t wait to get our hands on one, especially as they filter through Windows machines and mini-PCs. More details inside.
Lake Alder?
Mentioned briefly in our pre-show discussions under the NDA at the time, although there was no specific news about Intel’s Alder Lake platform in late 2021, CEO Bob Swan told us that it will be Intel’s most ‘scalable energy’ SoC for desktops and furniture. More details will be released later this year.
Update: Intel showed this system during the CES press conference.
Intel said it was an Alder Lake system, installed and working with Windows. Obviously, the first silicon and test plate so far, but it is a step in the right direction. The launch was confirmed in the second half of the year.