IT’S BEEN a while since Intel had something properly new and shiny to boast about. Now it does: Tiger Lake has finally arrived. It’s a family of 11th-gen mobile processors using the Willow Cove microarchitecture coupled to the new Xe graphics engine. It replaces Ice Lake, which used Sunny Cove cores (the first proper new microarchitecture design from Intel since 2015’s Skylake). Before we get too excited, Intel has started at the bottom- the first wave of Tiger Lake processors is all the U series, aimed at low-power mobile devices of up to 28W. Tiger Lake uses a 10nm SuperFin process, essentially a new name for the 10nm+ process. Let’s hope Intel continues to stop adding “+” to the end of things for good: 14nm++++ just looks ridiculous.
The basic technical specifications make good reading. Along with higher clock speeds, we have integrated PCIe 4.0 and Thunderbolt 4 support, and LPDDR4 or LPDDR5 memory. We also have hardware video decoding, up to four displays, support for 8K, ultra-wide 12-bit color, and prodigious video and imageprocessing support. There are two packages: A larger UP3 for devices up to 28W, and a smaller UP4 package (formally Y series) for devices under 15W.
Tiger Lake introduces us to the Willow Cove core and the Xe graphics engine, both of which we’ll see more of in the next couple of years.
© INTEL