40% Faster: Intel Announces Impressive New Core Chips

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Intel just announced their eighth generation Core chips – although the company chose to stick with Kaby Lake architecture to produce the chips, they boast a surprising 40 percent increase in performance over their predecessors. It may be hard to imagine what this 40 percent increase means in terms of user interaction with cell phones, but estimates state that it will double the speed of a five-year-old device.

Intel hopes to push the envelope with their systems with this announcement, and is working harder than even their own previous estimates. At Computex in May, the company promised a 30 percent boost in performance – the resulting 40 percent increase is an impressive boost for a single generation of devices.

It is interesting to note that the eighth generation processors use the same Intel Graphics 630 graphics cores as Kaby Lake processors, but the eighth generation version is prefixed with “UHD” as opposed to “HD.” Historically speaking, Intel’s Core processor updates have always upgraded the graphics core, but not the CPU architecture. With the new eighth generation chips, the tradition of CPU updates (or a lack thereof) will be broken. The new generation of processors will include three different architectures – 14nm “Kaby Lake refresh,” and “Coffee Lake” processors built on a more refined 14nm process, and “Cannon Lake” chips designed with next-generation 10nm technology.

In addition to these new CPU architectures, Intel will also offer two new Core i5s and two new Core i7s in the U-Series mobile processor range. All of them will include four cores, and will feature Hyper-threading. In previous Intel generations, two and four core threads with less processing power were the only models available, and the new generation will help with a variety of tasks such as video editing, gaming, and streaming high-definition video.

In terms of differences between the Core i5 and i7, the amount of cache differs slightly, with the i7 offering more. The i5 and i7 also differ in terms of frequency – the Core i5-8250U has a base frequency of 1.6GHz, while the i7-8560 U boasts a base frequency of 1.9GHz. In addition to this, Intel also plans on boosting core counts across their range of processors. High-end desktop platforms will offer 12, 14, 16, and whopping 18-core processors, while rumors of a widely available six-core system have been floating around. Intel went live on Facebook this morning to disseminate more information about the eighth generation of Core chips.