Cannon Lake is going be Intel’s next die shrink moving from 14nm process technology to 10nm. During their CES press conference Intel has shown a working 10nm Cannon Lake CPU for the first time.


The first working prototype of an upcoming Cannon Lake CPU was enclosed in a 2-in-1 convertible. Therefore it was a low power notebook CPU that was displayed during Intel’s CES press conference.

According to Intel-CEO Brian Krzanich the first Cannon Lake CPUs are supposed to be introduced to the market by the very end of this year. What’s not sure yet is whether a first wave of Cannon Lake processors will only be available for notebooks or the launch will be similar to Kaby Lake.

In the latter case Intel would be launching a new set of mainstream desktop processors. Believing the latest rumors Intel is going to launch their Y and U series processors first. These chips feature a TDP between 4.5 and 28 Watts. This would mean that Intel might launch the notebook chips before bringing the more powerful desktop parts to market.

If this really was the case it could be that Intel might want to avoid the situation they faced when launching Skylake. That generation of CPUs got delayed several times due to yield issues related to the manufacturing process. Launching notebook parts first, which usually don’t feature the same complex design as high-end mainstream parts, would give them some additional time to optimize the manufacturing process before releasing parts with more cores.

Another theory could be that Intel might be considering to add more cores to the high-end mainstream processors than what we have today. In such a scenario it would be most likely that they need some more time to fine-tune the manufacturing process.

Apparently most of this has only been speculation and therefore time will tell what is really going to happen.




Source: Computerbase