Laptops and other devices released this year-end may come fitted with Intel’s new generation chipsets. These are the Intel 10th Generation ‘Ice Lake’ processors built on the 10nm platform. The company made the announcements at the Computex 2019. There have been 11 different models of the CPUs unveiled by Intel covering their range of Core 13, Core i5 and Core i7 CPUs.
The company has not disclosed the detailed specifications for these chipsets. It has however been made clear that thin and light laptops manufacturers are being targeted.
In addition to the ‘Ice Lake’ CPUs, Intel is pushing two other products into the market; one is an integrated GPU called Iris Plus and another one is an AI functionality that Intel calls Deep Learning Boost. It has been clarified that possibly, the issues Intel had with mass production of the 10nm chipsets are no longer there and they are now able to make bulk shipments to OEMs. These shipments may commence from the month of June itself.
Intel claims the Iris Plus iGPU has 1 Teraflop of bandwidth for inference workloads. This means the gaming laptops manufacturers may prefer these GPUs on the devices. The Ice Lake CPUs in their new avatar have Wi-Fi 6 integrated in them as well as Thunderbolt 3.
Intel used the occasion to showcase the next generation laptops that are 5G ready and these are part of what is known as Project Athena. Manufacturers like Dell, HP, Lenovo and Acer are associated with Intel in this project and their upcoming products were demonstrated at Computex. The key element highlighted was the extended battery life of these new generation laptops. Intel claims they can be used for 9 hours on normal everyday usage, while for video playback, where no streaming is involved, it can last a whole of 16 hours.
Intel is willing to support the OEMs interested in making the Project Athena laptops.