Intel 14nm Core i7-8000 series promises over 15 percent performance gain in 2H 2017

Intel had its annual Investor Meeting and discussed not only its financials but also its outlook for the future. One of the interesting things in the slide set is that Intel provided some details about the performance of its upcoming 8th generation Core processors.

Intel's Murthy Renduchintala said the 8th generation Core processors will be the fourth generation on the 14nm process. The architecture wasn't named but we know with a great deal of certainty that Cannonlake is 10nm so this looks like the rumored Coffee Lake.

The 8th gen Core processors are expected to arrive in the second half of 2017 and promise a performance gain "in excess of 15 percent" versus the current Kaby Lake generation. Intel used SYSmark 2014's Windows Desktop Productivity Performance test for this performance comparison.

A lot of enthusiasts were disappointed by the small to non-existing performance gain between the Skylake and Kaby Lake generation, so it seems the next generation may not be that exciting either. Perhaps Intel will surprise us, but I wouldn't bet on it.

The chip giant also stressed that in the future, datacenter products will be launched on smaller nodes before consumer products.



As a bonus, here's a slide with Intel's prediction about the cost per transistor for its future 10nm and 7nm nodes.