10nm architecture processors have been a goal for Intel for many years. The delays were numerous, but 2019 was the year Intel finally jumped the hurdle that is 10nm and we saw the launch of the first Ice Lake laptops in the middle of the year. With mobile Ice Lake CPUs now shipping, we can look forward to as many as 35 Ice Lake laptop designs by the end of the year.
But desktop 10nm chips still seem quite distant, with Intel admitting that it has fallen years behind AMD in the race to ever smaller process technology and may now skip 10nm on desktop altogether.
Pricing and availability
Ice Lake was officially announced at CES 2019 and though it was initially given a rough release date of Holiday Season 2019, it was only a few months later that Intel began announcing mobile Ice Lake CPUs for laptops and 2-in-1s. The focus is on Y and U-series chips first. Intel says we’ll see as many as 35 laptop designs from different manufacturers by the end of the year and started shipping out the first of its Ice Lake mobile chips at the start of August.
The desktop chips, however, won’t arrive until later. PC Builders Club initially claimed that we won’t see Ice Lake hit desktops until 2021. A leaked Intel roadmap also suggested we might not see 10nm on desktop until 2022, but it might be that Intel doesn’t bother with 10nm on desktop at all. The latest news from Intel CEO Bob Swann, was that Intel would begin production on 7nm chips in 2021, potentially for a 2022 release.
Speculation on pricing for such fabled chips would be nothing but that, and with little of anything concrete to go on about core counts, clock speeds, or release dates for desktop parts, we can’t really suggest what any future Ice Lake desktop chips might cost. If they ever appear at all.
Performance and architecture
Post a Comment