TECH TALK
Rocket Lake Preparing for Launch
Jarred Walton
I FIRST STARTED WRITING for Maximum PC just before Intel launched its Broadwell desktop processors in 2015. Those were the very first 14nm chips to hit the market, and even after delays, Intel was basically two years ahead of the competition. So, it seems practically inconceivable that, nearly six years later, we’re now looking forward to the seventh Intel CPU generation to use a variant of 14nm lithography.
Intel stumbled, badly, on the transition to 10nm. Yes, we know 10nm Ice Lake processors have been shipping since 2019, and SuperFIN (10nm+) Tiger Lake CPUs launched last year. But both were confined to mobile solutions, suggesting Intel was still not ready to make bigger 10nm chips. Server-class Ice Lake-LP 10nm Xeon CPUs and desktop and mobile Alder Lake parts will change that later this year. In the interim, we have Rocket Lake. It feels a lot like this will be a repeat of what we saw with Broadwell desktop chips: Too little, too late.