Quote:“TGL” is the juicy Tiger Lake. The successor to the imminent Ice Lake, Tiger Lake will be the mainstream architecture for late 2020 using 10nm. The driver lists eight models employing Gen12 Xe graphics, though in a low-power configuration.

Quote:What appears to be a quad-core Tiger Lake (TGL) 10nm processor has been discovered in the UserBenchmark database, marking the upcoming CPU's first big leak.
...
According to the UserBenchmark entry, we're looking at a Y-series chip, so this is essentially an ultra-low-powered Tiger Lake part designed for very compact and svelte devices, such as 2-in-1s or Ultrabooks. The presence of the Gen12 LP (low-powered) graphics engine and the use of LPDDR4x memory support this theory.
...
Reports have claimed that that Tiger Lake will be bound to Y-and U-series chips maxed at four cores.

Quote:In this merge request, Francisco Jerez, member of Intel's open source Linux graphics team, stated the following:
...
Planned for release sometime around 2020/2021 (with Tiger Lake), Gen12 graphics features a complete overhaul of Execution Unit in a way we haven't seen since i965 debut. There will be less hardware logic that checks data for coherency, possibly resulting in lower latency and higher performance. That workload will shift from logic built into hardware, to compilers for them to figure out if data is correct or not, resulting in less wasted GPU clock cycles dedicated to that function.

Quote:Finally, there’s Tiger Lake, Intel’s upcoming CPU built on the 10nm++ process and expected later in 2020. Intel has talked about Tiger Lake as a successor to Ice Lake in mobile and the CPU is believed to use the Willow Cove architecture. Intel has confirmed that TGL will use Xe graphics for its integrated GPU and that the platform will offer 3 “AI engines” for superior performance. More details on Tiger Lake are expected at CES this week. It’s not clear when we’ll see 10nm CPUs for desktop; the Tiger Lake parts we’ve heard about thus far are supposed to be quad cores, but Intel may simply be launching on mobile first before bringing the architecture into other segments.

Quote:News outlet FanlessTech has tweeted an alleged Intel roadmap that reveals the potential specifications for the chipmaker's forthcoming NUC 11 products.

The NUC 11 Extreme (codename Phantom Canyon) and NUC 11 Performance (codename Panther Canyon) will seemingly exploit Intel's future 11th Generation Core Tiger Lake-U (TGL-U) processors. If the information is accurate, the first will only be available with Core i7 and Core i5 parts, while the latter will stretch to the Core i3 SKUs.

As a quick recap, Tiger Lake is expected to be manufactured on an improved 10nm++ process and feature a combination of Willow Cove cores and Gen12 Xe graphics. Besides the obvious upgrade to Gen12 graphics, Tiger Lake purportedly packs up to 50% more L3 cache in comparison to Ice Lake.

Quote:Intel released its quarterly earnings today with an unexpected bit of good news for the chipmaker: It plans to release its 10nm+ Tiger Lake chips in the middle of 2020. The company also weathered the opening stages of the coronavirus pandemic with surprisingly robust results as it notched another blowout quarter.

Quote:Intel spoke of a "double digit percentage performance growth generation on generation" at its product reveal for "Tiger Lake" along the sidelines of its CES event. We now have a theory as to how they arrived at that. The company's 11th generation Core "Tiger Lake" processor, scheduled to launch sometime mid-2020, could bring about big gains in per-core performance for the ultraportable segment. PC enthusiast MebiuW, who has had a high hit-rate with Intel leaks, revealed that the flagship "Tiger Lake" part, the Core i7-1185G7, could ship with a CPU Turbo Boost speed of 4.70 GHz, a steep increase from the 3.90 GHz of the top current "Ice Lake" part, the i7-1065G7. The increased clock speeds, coupled with the more advanced "Willow Cove" CPU cores appear to be the 11th generation chip's value proposition.

Quote:Intel Xe graphics architecture makes its commercial debut as an iGPU solution in the company's upcoming "Tiger Lake" mobile processors. The iGPU can be configured along three tiers, with GT1 featuring 48 execution units (EUs), GT2 80 EUs, and GT3 leading the pack with 96 EUs, all within a 15 W envelope (for the total chip). There's a higher tier still of GT3 that comes with higher boost frequencies, tapping into the chip's overall increased 28 W TDP, but this variant of "Tiger Lake" could likely be an Apple-exclusive like its "Ice Lake" based predecessor.

NotebookCheck compiled a 3DMark FireStrike comparison between the various tiers of the Xe iGPU, and compared it to the Gen11 iGPU found with current-generation "Ice Lake-U" processors. The graph doesn't put out scores, but relative performance. Apparently, the 48 EU version of Gen12 Xe is a little over twice as fast as Gen11 GT1, and faster than even the 64 EU Gen11 GT2. The Gen12 GT2 with 80 EUs is around 1.7x faster than the Gen11 GT2 (64 EU). The 96 EU GT3 trim is over twice as fast, and its 28 W variant faster still. These performance give Gen12 a shot against AMD's Radeon Vega-based iGPU solution found in "Renoir." AMD has slimmed the number of CUs down to 8 (512 SP) with "Renoir," down from 11 CUs in the previous generation, compensating for it with higher GPU engine clocks.

Quote:Thanks to the popular hardware leaker Rogame, we have evidence that the gains from 10 nm+ manufacturing process are real and that Tiger Lake will show us an amazing boost frequency of 5 GHz. In the benchmark, an unknown OEM laptop was spotted running the benchmark with a Tiger Lake CPU. This CPU is a 4 core, 8 threaded model with a base frequency of 2.3 GHz and a surprising boost frequency of 5 GHz. This information should, of course, be taken with a grain of salt until we get more information about the Tiger Lake lineup and their specifications.

Quote:One of Intel's unreleased NUC 11 Extreme devices has popped up in 3DMark's database. HardwareLeaks spotted one model that packs a quad-core Tiger Lake-U processor in conjunction with Nvidia's GeForce GTX 1660 Ti graphics card and 8GB of memory.

Intel will reportedly divide the NUC 11 family into two branches: the NUC 11 Extreme (Phantom Canyon) for enthusiasts and gamers, and the NUC 11 Performance (Panther Canyon) for mainstream users. Predictably, the former will employ the more powerful Tiger Lake-U chips and also come with discrete graphics card options. As a quick reminder, Tiger Lake leverages Willow Cove cores, and Intel produces these new processors on the 10nm+ process node. It's not official yet, but Tiger Lake should adopt the 11th Generation branding.

3DMark identifies the Tiger Lake-U chip inside the NUC 11 Extreme as a quad-core, eight-thread design. This Tiger Lake-U silicon appears to have a 2.3 GHz base clock and 4.4 GHz boost clock, which is quite decent for an engineering sample (ES) and better than the maximum 4.1 GHz boost found with its Ice Lake predecessors. Being unreleased silicon, many of its parameters aren't available and could be subject to change. However, if the leaked PowerPoint slide from last year is genuine, the Tiger Lake-U chip could have a 28W TDP (thermal design power). The slide also alluded to PCIe 4.0 support.
...
All the information thus far puts the NUC 11 Extreme inside a 1.35-liter case, placing the footprint in the same territory as the next-generation consoles, such as the PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X. The GeForce GTX 1660 Ti might not be enough to really compete with the consoles, though. Both the PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X use AMD's Navi 2x GPUs, which are good for up to 10.3 TFLOPS and 12.1 TFLOPS, respectively. The GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Mobile only delivers 4.8 TFLOPS of FP32 performance. The NUC 11 Extreme would need at least a GeForce RTX 2080 Super Mobile to match the consoles' performance — that is, of course, assuming that Intel wants the NUC 11 Extreme to compete against the new consoles.

Quote:Intel is planning to introduce its first NUC (next unit of computing) device based on the 11th generation Core "Tiger Lake" processor by the end of 2020, according to leaked company roadmaps covering NUCs. These point to Intel refreshing its "Hades Canyon" performance-segment NUC mini-PC with a "Tiger Lake-U" processor, a 3rd party discrete GPU, and slightly bigger device size (1.35 L vs. 1.2 L of the original "Hades Canyon"). At the very top, the "Ghost Canyon" NUC 9 Extreme with "Coffee Lake-HR" processors will continue to hold the fort into 2021.

The mainstream NUC mini-PC lineup will continue to be "Frost Canyon," powered by "Comet Lake-U" 10th generation Core processors. Q2-Q3 2020 will see Intel launch significant updates to its NUC Compute Element lineup, with "West Cove," "Ghost Canyon," and "Quartz Canyon" holding the mainstream, performance-segment, and professional segment, respectively; while are likely based on "Comet Lake-H" processors; and "Austin Beach" low-power compute element based on "Comet Lake-U."

Quote:Intel announced today that an upcoming CPU security technology, Control-Flow Enforcement (CET), will deploy for the first time on Tiger Lake CPUs, expected later this year. The new capability may include some ability to protect against attacks like Spectre and Meltdown, though Intel doesn’t directly mention it in any of the briefing material for today. We’ll touch more on that later in this article.
...
One of the most common statements I’ve seen from end-users in the wake of Spectre, Meltdown, and all of the attacks that have followed is that Intel needs to start designing its chips with security in mind, first and foremost. CET wasn’t created in response to Spectre and Meltdown — Intel has been working on it for longer than those flaws have been known to exist — but it’s an example of how the company is improving its overall x86 security position. We’ll see if Rocket or Alder Lake build on what Tiger Lake brings to the table when those architectures become available over the next 18-24 months.

Quote:Intel's 11th Generation Tiger Lake 10nm mobile processors look like they're almost ready to come out of the oven, according to product listings on Centralpoint (via IThome). The Dutch retailer recently added two fresh Tiger Lake-powered Acer Swift 5 laptops with an expected stock date of July 27.

Quote:Dramatically improved GPU performance is a big change for Intel, a traditionally CPU-focused company. Based on what we've seen of Battlefield V, Tiger Lake's GPU looks to be about 80% faster than the fastest Ice Lake GPU—provided both aren't limited by a 15W TDP, naturally. If that relative increase holds across other games, the upcoming integrated solutions could be pretty decent. And by that, we mean 'original Xbox One GPU performance,' but that's still a big improvement over UHD 630.

Dedicated GPUs will still reign as the fastest gaming solution, of course, but moving forward, 'budget' dedicated GPUs are going to have to step up their game. Generally speaking, we want to see at least double the integrated GPU performance from a discrete graphics card, whether it's in a laptop or a desktop. With Xe Graphics and Renoir APUs set to pass the 2 TFLOPS mark, that means GTX 1660 and RX 5500 are basically the minimum we want from a dedicated graphics card. We'll probably still see lesser solutions, at least for a little while. Still, it's hard to imagine a laptop going to the trouble of adding a second graphics card unless it has serious benefits, considering the higher power use and increased complexity of the overall design.

Intel isn't stopping with integrated Xe Graphics either. It will have dedicated Xe HP graphics cards, delivering potentially 5-8 times the performance of the integrated solution based on rumored specs. It's also planning Xe HPC solutions for the data center that could potentially deliver another 8X improvement over Xe HP (at a massive price, but let's not worry about that).

Right now, Ice Lake laptops feel constrained by the 4-core CPU design and very limited TDP. We're not sure how far Tiger Lake will push things, but the CPU side is probably okay if it gets more thermal headroom. Combine a 28W Tiger Lake processor with Xe Graphics, and even modest laptops could become serviceable gaming PCs—no dedicated GPU required. The next-gen Razer Blade Stealth will certainly be interesting.

Quote:Spotted by Tum_Apisak, the device's ID string reads "Intel® Iris® Xe Graphics (768SP 96C 1.3GHz, 1024kB L2, 6.3GB)." That tells us the offering comprises 96 execution units, which translates to 768 ALUs (Intel's CUDA core or stream processor equivalent) that run at 1.3 GHz. Aboard the GPU is 1MB of L2 cache, and it's wired to 6.3GB of memory.

The string also tells us is that this product falls under the Iris graphics branding. Iris is the marketing name Intel has used for its top graphics hardware since 2013, so it makes sense for that to continue. Intel ditching its Iris branding at this point would be akin to Nvidia ditching GeForce branding.

The listing also states that this Iris Xe graphics is part of the Tiger Lake-U platform, which is set to be Intel's successor to the current-generation Ice Lake-U mobile CPUs. Tiger Lake-U is expected to have both an updated CPU architecture and Xe graphics, so we're very curious what performance they'll bring.

Quote:Intel's post results call also revealed a handful interesting tentative dates. For starters, "Tiger Lake" is shipping in "a matter of weeks," indicating an imminent launch ahead of the "Back to School" shopping season.

Quote:Intel is getting ready to release Tiger Lake from its cage; however, the rowdy Core i7-1165G7 has already started flaunting its prowess in a SiSoftware benchmark.
...
The Core i7-1065G7 processor reached a score of 378.63 Mpix/s on the processor multimedia test. With a score of 564.87 Mpix/s, the Core i7-1165G7 is up to 49.2% faster than the Ice Lake chip. As impressive as the Core i7-1165G7 looks, the quad-core Tiger lake processor is no match for the Ryzen 7 4800U.

The Ryzen 7 4800U is another example of AMD's proven combination of the Zen 2 microarchitecture and TSMC's 7nm FinFET node. It's hard for Intel to compete when the Ryzen 7 4800U brings eight cores and 16 threads to the table. The design helps push the Renoir APU ahead of the Tiger Lake part by up to 31.8%. Some might argue that the margin is underwhelming when you consider the fact that the Ryzen 7 4800U has double the number of CPU cores as the Core i7-1065G7.
...
Intel has scheduled a virtual event for the press on September 2. The chipmaker didn't share the program, but we expect announcements on Tiger Lake and, perhaps, the Xe Graphics DG1, Intel's forthcoming discrete mobile GPU.

Quote:In what is possibly the first taste of Intel's Gen12 Xe iGPU running a AAA game, Ryan Shrout, chief performance strategist at Intel, showed off a prototype notebook running a "Tiger Lake" processor that is playing "Battlefield V" by itself (without discrete graphics). "Perks of the job! Took a prototype Tiger Lake system for a spin on Battlefield V to stretch its legs. Impressive thin and light gaming perf with Xe graphics! Early drivers/sw, but it's the first time I've seen this game run like this on integrated gfx. More later this year!," said Shrout.

The gameplay video (linked as source below), shows a playable experience for "Battlefield V" with Gen12 Xe, with 1080p at around 30 Hz. It only serves to appetize us for what would come next, when Intel scales up this IP to discrete GPUs. The Gen12 Xe iGPU appears capable of e-sports gaming with the right settings, and could spell serious trouble for cheap dGPU solutions such as the GeForce MX series or Radeon RX 530 series.

Quote:Twitter user Coelacanth's Dream has stumbled upon a HP Pavilion x360 Convertible laptop that houses an unannounced Tiger Lake processor. The Intel Pentium Gold 7505 appears to be a dual-core chip that's designed for the entry-level mobile devices.
...
Geekbench 5 has the Pentium Gold 7505 as a dual-core processor with four threads. The 10nm chip reportedly features a 2 GHz base clock and 3.48 GHz boost clock. The Pentium Gold 7505 is equipped with 1.25MB of L2 cache per core, which confirms its validity as a Tiger Lake part. The processor is member of the U-series family, meaning its TDP (thermal design power) should be 15W.

Given its attributes, the Pentium Gold 7505 will have to compete with AMD's 7nm Ryzen 3 4300U. The latter is a four-core, four-thread 15W processor that flexes a 2.7 GHz base clock and 3.7 GHz boost clock.

Regardless of the clockspeed handicap, the Pentium Gold 7505's single-core performance is in the same alley as the Ryzen 3 4300U, according go the Geekbench 5 results for the AMD chip. Ultimately, the Ryzen 3 4300U comes out on top in multi-core performance, and it's hard not to considering that the 7nm part has twice the cores of the Pentium Gold 7505.

Quote:Things are getting hot in the laptop space. Is it time to upgrade our laptops along with our CPUs, GPUs, and game consoles this fall? Intel unveiled its 11th-Gen Tiger Lake platform yesterday with some pretty appealing specs.

The CPU giant has 9 new chips on the way, and it says the Tiger Lake platform is the “best CPU for thin-&-light laptops,” taking direct aim at AMD’s Ryzen 4000 mobile chips.

The fastest of the chips is the Intel Core i7-1185G7, which features 4 cores and 8 threads onboard. It has a 3.0 GHz base clock and turbos on a single core up to 4.8 GHz (4.3 GHz on all cores). The chip has Intel’s Iris Xe graphics onboard with 96 Execution Units (EUs), and runs at between 12 and 28 watts. At the bottom is the Core i3-1110G4. This CPU has 2 cores and 4 threads, 1.8 GHz base clock (3.9 boost on one or all cores), and uses Intel UHD graphics.

These chips are built on Intel’s 10nm SuperFin process, which the company says offers improved performance for reduced power draw. Intel offers some vague numbers to back this up, saying that these chips are 20% faster at performing “office tasks” but with 20% increase in “system level power,” amounting to more than an hour of extra battery life. That sounds great, but it offers us almost nothing objective to go off of.

Quote:Intel's slow trickle of information on its Tiger Lake processors recently turned into a veritable flood as the company shared information about its first salvo of 10nm SuperFin chips, but one detail was missing: Any official disclosures of chips with more than four cores. That changed in a decidedly low-key way, as a blog post from Intel fellow Boyd Phelps on Medium reveals that the company will introduce eight-core models soon, saying:

"We also added a 3MB non-inclusive last-level-cache (LLC) per core slice. A single core workload has access to 12MB of LLC in the 4-core die or up to 24MB in the 8-core die configuration (more detail on 8-core products at a later date)."
...
Intel has no plans to bring Tiger Lake to its lineup of desktop chips, but we have already seen the first new Tiger Lake NUCs emerge from ASRock. Naturally, eight-core Tiger Lake models will also work their way into the NUC lineups. Given their pairing with the Xe graphics engine, they could prove to pack a decent performance punch for compact desktop PCs.

Quote:There's an unannounced Iris Xe Max iGPU in Intel's "A Wonderful New Look" promotional YouTube video, as spotted by PC World. Although a specific time frame wasn't given, an Intel representative confirmed to the publication that Intel will release more details on Iris Xe Max in the future.
...
The Core i7-1185G7 is the current flagship processor for Intel's 10nm SuperFin-manufactured Tiger Lake family. We say "current" because the sudden emergence of the Iris Xe Max logo suggests that more powerful Tiger Lake chips might be on the horizon. For the time being, the Core i7-1185G7 is the highest clocked part in both the processing and graphics departments.

The Core i7-1185G7 comes equipped with four Willow Cove CPU cores that operate with a 3 GHz base clock speed and 4.8 GHz boost clock. The Xe LP iGPU inside the quad-core processor has 96 EUs that feature a maximum graphics frequency peaking at 1.35 GHz.

The Core i7-1185G7's iGPU specifications are pretty surprising. The iGPU had previously surfaced with a 1.55 GHz boost clock speed, which we know now was overclocked. Furthermore, an Iris Xe iGPU with 96 EUs and hitting 1.65 GHz was recently reportedly discovered by hardware detective @TUM_APISAK.

Tiger Lake's Xe LP (Gen12) graphics span up to 96 EUs at 1.35 GHz. The configuration is a tremendous jump up from Ice Lake's Gen11 solution that was limited to 64 EUs at 1.1 GHz. However, the overclocked benchmark submission show that Gen12 surely still has a lot left in its tank. The recent sighting of the Iris Xe Max suggests that Intel knows that too.

The other possibility is that Intel is preparing the Iris Xe Max for the Tiger Lake-H parts. The chipmaker has already confirmed that Tiger Lake-H processors will top out at eight cores. The problem is that Intel will have to cut down the number of EUs to make room for the extra core, meaning the iGPU could have less than 96 EUs. It wouldn't make sense to market it as the Iris Xe Max though if it's less powerful than the one current Tiger Lake offerings.

Quote:It’s hard to get the full view of how Tiger Lake will perform in OEM laptops. After all, our preview had some conditions attached to it that limited the scope of our testing, and we’ve yet to see the final designs that people will actually be able to buy.

But we do, however, see an idea of how things will be. Tiger Lake’s 10nm SuperFin technology appears to be competitive with AMD’s top-end Ryzen 7 4800U at 15W, and, at 28W and with Dynamic Tuning, even better, at least when it comes to single-core workloads. With multi-core workloads, AMD still has the advantage on its top-end part, with double the cores and threads.

With the i7-1185 G7, Intel has finally caught up in boost speed to its 14nm process node on Comet Lake-U, but only at the 28W setting. It will be interesting to see how OEMs configure the chip to get the most performance out of it, and what that means for battery life, especially if Intel promises similar performance on battery to when it’s plugged in.

There’s still support for AVX-512, which should allow increases in performance in programs coded to take advantage of the instructions.

But the big addition is Iris Xe graphics, which, on the reference system, got us to 1080p at 30 fps in low settings on most tests. We’ll see what comes when laptop manufacturers drop their systems. Still, we’re getting closer to the point where you could reasonably squeeze in a short gaming session on an ultrathin notebook at the expense of fidelity.

Mobile chips always come as part of laptops, though, so if you’re looking for the final verdict, you’ll have to wait for the first Tiger Lake systems to hit our labs this fall.

Quote:When Intel unveiled Tiger Lake last month, the company promised a chip that delivered uncompromising performance on both CPU and GPU. Today, it’s clear they weren’t kidding. Intel’s Tiger Lake is proof that the company still knows how to build performant CPUs.

Incidentally, it’s also the best APU — though of course, Intel doesn’t use that term — anyone has ever shipped. That’s according to the extensive data published by our sister site PCMag. While I haven’t tested the system myself, I trust the work they’ve done to be accurate.

Over the past 12 months, Intel and AMD have engaged a rapid-fire series of mobile chips. First, Intel launched Ice Lake, with better GPU performance and higher efficiency, but relatively flat CPU performance compared with 14nm CPUs. Then, AMD countered with its Ryzen 4000 mobile processors. These chips gave AMD a decisive lead in the mobile industry for the first time in years, and they’ll remain excellent CPUs after Tiger Lake is widely available, but Intel has decisively reclaimed per-core leadership in CPU performance as well as overall GPU performance leadership.
...
Are there workloads where AMD retains an advantage? Absolutely. The eight Ryzen CPU cores are quite powerful in absolute terms and rendering benchmarks like Cinebench as well as encoding tests like Handbrake both shine on Ryzen. Anywhere AMD can leverage its core count, it performs well. In multiple applications like the Adobe suites, Tiger Lake is faster than Renoir.

Interestingly, Tiger Lake’s 15W configuration often outperforms AMD’s 25W configuration, according to PCMag’s testing. With Ice Lake, Intel could only cleanly beat its 15W systems with 25W hardware. That’s not the case any longer; Tiger Lake 15W systems outperform Ice Lake 25W configurations. Any way you slice it, TGL is an impressive outing for Intel.

AMD will debut its Zen 3 architecture for desktops before too much longer, so we’ll get a chance to see what the platform offers in that venue — and likely some idea of what to expect from the eventual APUs as well. Both Nvidia and Intel have come out swinging this fall. It’s going to be an interesting year, as AMD responds to its primary opponents in both markets.

Quote:It looks like Intel is ready to bring higher watt Tiger Lake SKUs to market next year: Courtesy of @APISAK on Twitter, two new Tiger Lake CPUs were spotted on Geekbench and are known as the Core i7-11370H and Core i5-11300H. Both the Core i5 and Core i7 are quad-core hyperthreaded parts, with screaming fast clock speeds to match. These are unverified Geekbench scores and as such they should be taken with a grain of salt until official is released.

This is the first time we'll be seeing Intel's new 10nm SuperFin architecture being used in CPUs geared towards pure performance rather than maximum power efficiency, like in Intel's current lineup of 15W Tiger Lake parts. Due to both the Core i5 and i7 being 'H' SKUs we can expect a 35W TDP if history repeats itself. The 10nm SuperFin architecture can already yield a 20% performance boost to the core architecture, so add in a much higher TDP and we should be seeing some excellent performance results.
...
In Geekbench 5, the Core i7-11370H scored 1566 points in the single-core test and 5084 points in the multi-core test. The Core i5-11300H scored 1436 single-core and 4912 multi-core.

These scores are vastly superior to Intel's previous generation parts like the Core i5-10300H, the single-threaded scores alone --for both the i5 and i7, close in around the Ryzen 9 5900HX (AMD's flagship mobile CPU) and the desktop Ryzen 7 5800X. That is very remarkable coming from a mobile CPU and the high clock speeds should allow excellent gaming performance; on the multi-core side of things, performance is still quite good. Both Tiger Lake chips managed to beat out the Zen 2 based Ryzen 5 4600H with six cores by just 100-200 points. That is quite impressive given the Intel units are working with just four cores.

But that is just AMD's baseline CPU, once you start looking at the scores for AMD's next-gen Zen-3 based parts, the Tiger Lake SKUs quickly fall behind in the multi-core scores.

Luckily this is just the beginning, we do expect higher core counts from Intel to be coming soon to counter AMD's new Zen 3 based parts, so expect really good processors for gaming and content creation to be coming to notebooks next year.

Quote:Intel at its recent 2021 International CES call confirmed the existence of an 8-core version of its 11th Gen Core "Tiger Lake" processor, and held the chip for the camera. The visibly bigger chip will be slated in Intel's H-segment (35 W to 45 W TDP), meaning it will only power gaming notebooks and mobile workstations; while the mainstream mobility segment will still be in the hands of its 4-core "Tiger Lake-H35" silicon. The 8-core "Tiger Lake-H" processor will also receive reasonably high clock-speeds, boosting up to 5.00 GHz.

Assuming the cache hierarchy and uncore/iGPU setup is unchanged between the 8-core and 4-core dies, we're looking at 24 MB of shared L3 cache, and 1.25 MB of dedicated L2 cache per core. These alone take up a big slice of the die-area. Add to this, the uncore features a PCI-Express Gen 4 root-complex and memory controllers that support dual-channel DDR4 and LPDDR4x memory types. The iGPU is expected to be based on the same Gen12 Xe-LP architecture as the 4-core die; although its execution unit count remains to be seen. In all likelihood, the 8-core "Tiger Lake-H" silicon is based on the same 10 nm SuperFin node.

Quote:In November 2020, Apple announced M1. By the end of the year, it announced three devices — the MacBook Air, 13-inch MacBook Pro, and the Mac Mini — that ditched Intel's processors.

Those devices received largely positive reviews based on benchmark performance and battery life. But Intel has also released its 11th Gen "Tiger Lake" processors, and after several months of silence, now it's firing back at Apple. Slides from the Santa Clara, Calif.-based chipmaker shows how it tested, and why it thinks Windows 10 laptops can beat back Apple's ARM-based solution.

Below, we are publishing the slides in full (minus a title slide, be sure to look through the galleries), as well as our analysis. Intel shared benchmarks for the chips, but as with all vendor-provided benchmarks, take them with a grain of salt.
...
Intel included these, so we're including them here for the sake of transparency.

The company makes some good points about the current state of Apple's chip initiative, especially if you demand a specialized form factor or play games casually.

Intel's performance claims need to be taken with a certain grain of salt, as they're in Intel-created tests and not industry-standard benchmarks. The fact that it switched out between the Pro and the Air for battery life (as well as the Core i7-1185G7 and Core i7-1165G7) also shows an incomplete picture.

Intel’s thoughts on software and compatibility get a bit tricky. Early adopters may feel a bit of a sting, but it's been rapidly improving, and much of the software that doesn't work at all may be counteracted with Apple software.

The slides paint two pictures: Yes, Apple has work to do in this transition, and the touchscreen, multi-display support, and limited port selection need to be fixed. But the fact that Intel went through putting these slides together also shows that it sees a formidable opponent worth comparing its chips against, suggesting a competitive future for notebooks.