Intel has been building up this year to its eventual release of its first widely available consumer 10nm Core processor, codenamed "Ice Lake". The new SoC has an improved CPU core, a lot more die area dedicated to graphics, and is designed to be found in premium notebooks from major partners by the end of 2019, just in time for Christmas. With the new CPU core, Sunny Cove, Intel is promoting a clock-for-clock 18% performance improvement over the original Skylake design, and its Gen11 graphics is the first 1 teraFLOP single SoC graphics design. Intel spent some time with us to talk about what’s new in Ice Lake, as well as the product's direction.

The Core of Core: 10th Gen Core

Intel’s first batch of 10nm Ice Lake processors are being given the official brand name of ‘Intel 10th Generation Core’, and will feature up to four cores with hyperthreading and up to 64 execution units of Gen11 graphics. The aim of this first round of parts will be the thin-and-light mobile market in the form of the Ice Lake-U and Ice Lake-Y processors. Intel uses these designation for anything from 5W to 28W TDP, which covers all the mobile ultra-premium devices.

The cores inside Ice Lake-U are based on the ‘Sunny Cove’ microarchitecture, and are a further extension of the overall Core microarchitecture design. The new core affords several security benefits towards Spectre and Meltdown, and Intel is promoting a very healthy 18% IPC increase from its Skylake microarchitecture, which was initially launched as a 6th Gen Core part in 2015 (more on this later).

Asides from the core design, and the increased graphics performance, Intel is also putting a lot of effort into the rest of the design of the SoC. This includes AVX-512 extensions to help with deep learning and inference (applying pre-trained neural networks to new situations), integrated Thunderbolt 3 support for up to four full-bandwidth ports, CNVi support for Wi-Fi 6, and a range of platform designs under the umbrella of Intel’s new Project Athena initiative, which Intel hopes to spur on the next generation of premium devices and experiences in this market.

The Processors

Despite Intel continually talking about upcoming devices, and very general top down specifications, we have not seen a full, official CPU list from the company about what frequencies and what performance metrics the new Ice Lake processors will have. At an event a couple of months back, Intel showed this slide:

This slide states that we should expect to see i3, i5, and i7 versions of Ice Lake, with TDPs ranging from 9W to 28W, however the key value in there would be 15W. The processors will be up to four cores (so expect to see some dual cores), with a turbo frequency up to 4.1 GHz. Graphics will be available up to 64 execution units and up to 1.1 GHz, with certain platforms enabling four Thunderbolt 3 ports. Memory gets a healthy boost compared to previous platforms, with support being up to LPDDR4X-3733 (32 GB) or DDR4-3200 (64 GB). Each CPU has 16 PCIe 3.0 lanes for external use, although there are actually 32 in the design but 16 of these are tied up with Thunderbolt support.

Without a specific CPU list, it becomes a little worrying that the company hasn’t actually decided where the binning of these processors is going to fall. It also speaks to the fact that we are still several months away from having these processors in the market, so Intel is trying to find that balance of performance and yield. What we did discover at Computex earlier this year is that some vendors which are planning to have Ice Lake systems available, did disclose some CPU data:

There are of course some unconfirmed specification lists floating around the internet as well.

Ice Lake Design Wins, and Project Athena

At Computex, Intel showed off a number of systems it says will be the leading designs for Ice Lake in Q4. These included a very impressive Dell XPS 13 system, a HP design with a wooden finish, and an Acer Swift model aiming to be the lightest Ice Lake laptop to come to market.


The Dell XPS 13

All of these devices come under Intel’s new Project Athena initiative.

Project Athena borrows inspiration from Intel’s previous initiatives, such as Centrino and the Ultrabook. The goal here is to promote an ecosystem of Intel’s partners to design the next wave of devices and form factors that spurs on a good deal of innovation. This means that Project Athena has some very strict design targets that Intel’s partners have to follow and achieve in order to get the Athena designation/certification.

This means a lot of the following:

  • Modern Connected Standby
  • Biometric Login
  • Wake from Sleep in <1 sec
  • Core i5 or better
  • >8GB DRAM in dual channel
  • >256GB NVMe SSD, or Optane
  • OpenVINO and WinML support
  • 16+ hours of video playback
  • 9+ hours of wireless web browsing
  • Charge 4+hrs in 30 mins
  • Thunderbolt 3, Wi-Fi 6, Gigabit LTE (optional)
  • 2-in-1 or Clamshell,
  • 12-15.6 inch, minimum resolution 1080p, touch display, narrow bezel on 3 sides
  • Backlit keyboard, precision touchpad, pen support

Truth be told, supporting all of these means that the laptop should be a good buy with a decent user experience. These are a great set of goals to have for a mobile device, and it looks set that devices with the Athena designation should be very good.

However something to keep in mind is that in order to enable some of these technologies, it requires the OEMs to invest into Intel’s component ecosystem. Battery life, for example, helps if OEMs use the sub-1W panels that Intel has designated suitable for these devices. To implement Thunderbolt 3 and Wi-Fi 6 in a system is easy if a vendor uses an Ice Lake CPU, which also means that OEMs have to buy Intel’s AX200 chips (or a Killer AX1650, which is an AX200 underneath) to get Wi-Fi 6 to work. For Thunderbolt 3, re-timers are needed to support Type-C, and Intel makes those. The only other way to implement these features requires add-in cards which are higher power, and using those makes hitting the battery life targets, or the form factor requirements, difficult. Ultimately, to get the best of the Project Athena targets, the only way to do so is to buy more components from Intel or Intel approved component suppliers. Some may argue that programs like Project Athena end up cutting competition in this regard.

It should be noted that Ice Lake isn’t a requirement for Athena. But at this point it really, really, helps.

Intel will give the final Athena certification with a verification platform. This certification is built around what Intel says are ‘Key Experience Indicators’, such as the device being ready-to-go at a moment’s notice, providing enough worry-free battery life for common office tasks, and maintaining consistent responsiveness regardless of the state of the system.

Expect to see Athena devices in the market in Q4.

This Article

In this article, we’ll be going over Intel’s disclosures on Ice Lake, its new core Sunny Cove, as well as the new supported features and technologies within. We also comment on each of the new implemented items, with respect to user experience and realistic market/industry responses.

Combining 10nm CPU + 14nm Chipset
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  • Billy Tallis - Wednesday, July 31, 2019 - link

    A lot of the chemicals used in wafer processing are quite nasty. A bare wafer itself is pretty harmless unless you grind it up and inhale it. Solid elemental silicon or silicon dioxide is safe to handle.
  • repoman27 - Tuesday, July 30, 2019 - link

    I understand that there are embargos which must be respected and that Anandtech does not like to trade in unsubstantiated rumors, but much of what is presented regarding packaging and power seems a bit wishy-washy.

    Wikichip has had photos of both sides of the Ice Lake U and Y packages posted for some time now. Furthermore, Intel's product briefs are very clear on the power for each series:

    Ice Lake Y: Nominal TDP 9 W, cTDP Down 8 W on Core i3 only, cTDP Up 12 W but N/A on Core i3,
    Ice Lake U: Nominal TDP 15 W, cTDP Down 12 W (13 W for some UHD parts), cTDP Up 25 W
    AFAIK, no 28 W Ice Lake-U parts have been announced by Intel yet, but they most likely are in the works.

    And you can cite whatever reasons you care to, but by all reports Intel was initially targeting a 5.2 W TDP for Ice Lake-Y 4+2, and that entire platform has been solidly shifted into the 8-12 W range.

    Also, it should be noted that the 14nm 300 Series chipsets that Intel has been shipping for some time now are all Cannon Point, which was originally designed to complement Cannon Lake, and are almost identical in terms of capabilities to the 400 Series. And the particular designation for the Ice Lake PCH-LP according to Intel is "495 Series".
  • James5mith - Tuesday, July 30, 2019 - link

    Ian,

    You either have your graph or your paragraph about the store/load performance increases reversed.

    Graph says 72 -> 128 stores, 56 -> 72 loads. The paragraph below it says 72-128 loads, 56-> 72 stores.
  • ksec - Tuesday, July 30, 2019 - link

    While I do enjoy and mostly want to read Dr Ian Cutress article, I seriously don't want to read Intel's marketing hype. Action and Results speaks louder than Powerpoint slides. Ship it, let Anandtech test it. And we make an opinion on it.
  • Targon - Tuesday, July 30, 2019 - link

    The Ryzen 7 3700U is a Zen+ part on 12nm, without the big IPC plus clock speed improvements seen with the desktop CPUs. As a result, Intel is doing a comparison against the previous generation products for laptops.

    In laptops, getting max turbo or boost for more than one second is rare. Yea, Intel can put a laptop chip on a board on a bench without any enclosure to show the chip, but real world speeds will be quite a bit lower. That is true for both AMD as well as Intel, and it is up to the OEMs to come up with a design to keep the chips cool enough to run faster than the competition.

    AMD knows what is going on, so if I am correct, AMD will move up the release of the next generation of laptop chips to November. If AMD does the right thing, AMD will call the new chips the 3250U, 3400U, 3600U, and 3800U to bring consistency with desktop naming conventions. These new chips would be 7nm with either Vega or Navi, for an APU it is less important than going 7nm for both.
  • Drumsticks - Tuesday, July 30, 2019 - link

    Keep in mind, the only comparison they did with Ryzen (I think) was Graphics, not CPU. I'd imagine the Icelake chips have a solid CPU lead against quad core Ryzen based on Zen/Zen+. Zen 2 will certainly help close that gap, but it should still be roughly 15-20% behind Icelake in IPC, and I certainly won't be ahead that much on frequency.
  • Fulljack - Wednesday, July 31, 2019 - link

    I think in Q4 19 they'd release Ryzen 4000 series (based on Zen 2) and call it day, like last year or two year ago.

    they'll be 4300U, 4500U, and 4700U for U-series and 4350H, 4550H, and 4750H for high-performance part with integrated graphics based on Navi.

    but since Zen 2 has 8 cores now on each CCX, they'd probably also sell 6-core and 8-core part, but I don't know if they'll release it on U-series, though.
  • Apple Worshipper - Tuesday, July 30, 2019 - link

    Thanks Ian ! So how does Ice Lake purportedly stand next to Apple’s A12x in iPad Pro based on the Spec scores ?
  • PeachNCream - Tuesday, July 30, 2019 - link

    More importantly, how does Ice Lake taste?
  • HStewart - Tuesday, July 30, 2019 - link

    I have seen anything that was successfully comparing x86 based cpus with AEM based cpus

    But one things - that makes all this MacBook ARM stuff meaningless to me is one sheer fact - Apple has yet to release development tools for iOS on actual iOS. It might be Apple trying force Macs for development but Apples own development tools don't run on iOS

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