Intel has ‘something big to share’ early September

Intel’s raising the hype for an upcoming announcement on September 2, in which it invites everyone to stop by. The teaser likely refers to a digital presentation the company intends to host, but the email was null on details. 

There’s plenty of reason to suspect it has something to do with the release of Intel’s 11th generation mobile CPUs. Dubbed Tiger Lake, the latest mobile architecture from Intel is paired with a 10nm process for improved performance and efficiency gains. Tiger Lake was first shown off at CES back in January, and shown to crush the benchmarks of its 10th generation predecessors. 

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While this is just speculation, the timing seems right. Intel initially planned to reveal more about Tiger Lake at Computex 2020, but it was canceled due to health concerns. Intel’s CEO Bob Swan even went on record about his confidence in delivering Tiger Lake in 2020.

Intel’s Tiger Lake lineup will also be the first to use the Xe graphics architecture, which was announced way back in 2017. Xe is of particular interest, as it will be used in both integrated and dedicated GPU applications moving forward. It’s expected to set a new standard in integrated graphics, and put Intel back in the game of dedicated GPUs. 

To be frank, there’s still little data on the actual abilities of Xe. It may be designed for purposes like AI deep learning rather than gaming. Intel did however make some basic claims about it. The promise of Xe is to deliver double-digit performance gains, massive AI improvements, a huge leap in graphics performance, and 4x the throughput of USB 3 with the new integrated Thunderbolt 4.

The chief engineer behind Xe recently showed samples of the new hardware powering the architecture too. For this reason and its relation to Tiger Lake, Xe could very well be another topic discussed on September 2. 

The introduction of Tiger Lake is sorely needed by Intel as AMD continues to gain market share. Intel’s 10th generation desktop CPUs are still on 14nm, while only a few mobile devices use the 10nm Ice Lake CPUs. Meanwhile, AMD has access to 7nm designs via TSMC, and likely 5nm planned for Zen 4. Drop by Intel’s website on September 2 to see if it finally transitions to the powerful Tiger Lake/Xe lineup.