Intel's upcoming 11th Generation Core "Tiger Lake" processors introduce the company's first major refinement of its 10 nanometer silicon fabrication node, dubbed 10 nm+. The node introduces two key features that work to improve the power characteristics of the silicon, allowing Intel to yield more performance without raising power/thermals over the previous generation. VideoCardz scored a major scoop on 10 nm+, including the introduction of the new SuperFin transistor, and SuperMIM capacitor.

SuperFin is a redesigned FinFET, a nanoscale transistor, which offers increased gate pitch, yielding higher drive current, improved channel mobility, and an improved source/drain, yielding in lower resistance. The other key component of 10 nm+ is SuperMIM, delivering a 5 times increase in metal-insulator-metal capacitance. Intel is yet to put out energy efficiency gain numbers for the process, but promises a "dramatic increase in frequency" over the previous generation, which lines up with leaks of the Core i7-1185G7 shipping with significantly higher clock speeds.In related news, the "Willow Cove" CPU cores powering "Tiger Lake" reportedly features 1280 KB of L2 cache per core, a dramatic increase over the 512 KB of the "Sunny Cove" core, and 256 KB of the "Skylake" core (in ringbus-based dies). It also features a host of silicon level hardening against return/jump-based side-channel attacks. Its integrated memory controller supports LPDDR5-5400, LPDDR4X-4767, and dual-channel DDR4-3200 memory. The top trim of the Xe Gen12 iGPU solution features 96 execution units, and a dedicated 3840 KB L3 cache.

Intel technology chief architect and SVP Raja Koduri is expected to detail all of the innovations that go into "Tiger Lake," at a virtual press-event on August 13.