Intel Kaby Lake Refresh for laptops coming in second half of 2017 (and another rumor)

Posted on Tuesday, December 27 2016 @ 18:56 CET by Thomas De Maesschalck
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A new report by Asian tech site BenchLife claims Intel has dumped its 18W TDP Kaby Lake-H series in favor of a Kaby Lake-R(efresh) lineup in the second half of 2017.

Interestingly, the Intel slide mentions that the Kaby Lake-R chips will be part of the 8th Gen Core processors, meaning it will share the Core ix-8xxx naming scheme with the future Coffee Lake based processors. As revealed by earlier leaks, Coffee Lake will be a fourth 14nm generation from Intel, which will be on the market alongside the 10nm Cannonlake.

Kaby Lake-R is a BGA chip for laptops, it has a die size of 123mm² and will be part of the U-series. Kaby Lake-R will consist of quad-core models with GT2 integrated graphics. No details are shared about the TDP of the Kaby Lake-R, presumably it's the same 15W as the current U-series.

Intel Kaby Lake Refresh

There's also a rumor making the rounds today that Intel is in the early stages of replacing its x86 architecture by 2020. If this rumor is correct, the chip giant is developing a leaner x86 architecture that will get rid of legacy SIMD and other hardware features that are rarely used these days. The benefit is we'd get smaller dies and better performance per Watt, but the downside is it will break backwards compatibility so some old software will require emulation. As I'm not confident enough about the source, I will not be posting this in a separate news post.


About the Author

Thomas De Maesschalck

Thomas has been messing with computer since early childhood and firmly believes the Internet is the best thing since sliced bread. Enjoys playing with new tech, is fascinated by science, and passionate about financial markets. When not behind a computer, he can be found with running shoes on or lifting heavy weights in the weight room.



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