Intel's short-term reaction to AMD's 3rd generation Ryzen processor family is the 10th generation Core "Comet Lake." These processors are based on existing "Skylake" cores, but have core-counts increased at the top-end, and HyperThreading enabled across the entire lineup. The Core i3 series are now 4-core/8-thread; the Core i5 series a 6-core/12-thread, the Core i7 series are 8-core/16-thread, and the new Core i9 series are 10-core/20-thread. Besides core-counts, Intel has given its 14 nanometer node one last step of refinement to come up with the new 14 nm+++ nodelet. This enables Intel to significantly dial up clock speeds across the board. These processors come in the new LGA1159 package, and are not backwards-compatible with LGA1151 motherboards. These chips also appear to feature an on-package PCH, instead of chipset on the motherboard.

Leading the pack is the Core i9-10900KF, a 10-core/20-thread chip clocked at 4.60 GHz with 5.20 GHz Turbo Boost, 20 MB of shared L3 cache, native support for DDR4-3200, and a TDP of 105 W. Intel's new 10-core die appears to physically lack an iGPU, since none of the other Core i9 10-core models offer integrated graphics. For this reason, all three processor models have the "F" brand extension denoting lack of integrated graphics. The i9-10900KF is closely followed by the i9-10900F clocked at 4.40/5.20 GHz, the lack of an unlocked multiplier, and 95 W TDP rating. The most affordable 10-core part is the i9-10800F, clocked at 4.20 GHz with 5.00 GHz boost, and a TDP of just 65 W. Intel has set ambitious prices for these chips. The i9-10900KF is priced at $499, followed by the i9-10900F at $449, and the i9-10800F at $409.

Data extracted from Intel's latest Server Chipset Driver (10.1.18010.8141) mentions support for new chipsets, which will bring about compatibility for the company's upcoming Comet Lake chips. Comet Lake, if you remember, is Intel's latest gasp in the 14 nm process for CPUs, and should bring up to 10 cores to the consumer segment. The increase in maximum number of cores will naturally be Intel's justification for the need for new chipsets and sockets, due to "electrical incompatibilities" and increased requirements in the power delivery subsystem.

If you're looking for the latest and greatest changes to Intel's architecture and manufacturing process, you'll have to wait for Ice Lake, for which the 495 series chipset brings compatibility. But for that one, you'll have to wait until 2020. Let's see what AMD's Ryzen 2 brings to the table against Intel's current (and up to 10 nm Comet Lake) offerings. Even excluding platform longevity, AMD's architecture and core density really has been giving Intel a run for its money.

Intel's semiconductor manufacturing business has had a terrible past 5 years as it struggled to execute its 10 nanometer roadmap forcing the company's processor designers to re-hash the "Skylake" microarchitecture for 5 generations of Core processors, including the upcoming "Comet Lake." Its truly next-generation microarchitecture, codenamed "Ice Lake," which features a new CPU core design called "Sunny Cove," comes out toward the end of 2019, with desktop rollouts expected 2020. It turns out that the 10 nm process it's designed for, will have a rather short reign at Intel's fabs. Speaking at an investor's summit on Wednesday, Intel put out its silicon fabrication roadmap that sees an accelerated roll-out of Intel's own 7 nm process.

When it goes live and fit for mass production some time in 2021, Intel's 7 nm process will be a staggering 3 years behind TSMC, which fired up its 7 nm node in 2018. AMD is already mass-producing CPUs and GPUs on this node. Unlike TSMC, Intel will implement EUV (extreme ultraviolet) lithography straightaway. TSMC began 7 nm with DUV (deep ultraviolet) in 2018, and its EUV node went live in March. Samsung's 7 nm EUV node went up last October. Intel's roadmap doesn't show a leap from its current 10 nm node to 7 nm EUV, though. Intel will refine the 10 nm node to squeeze out energy-efficiency, with a refreshed 10 nm+ node that goes live some time in 2020.

Intel put out interesting details about its upcoming 10 nanometer "Ice Lake" CPU microarchitecture rollout in its recent quarterly financial results call. The company has started qualification of its 10 nm "Ice Lake" processors. This involves sending engineering samples to OEMs, system integrators and other relevant industry partners, and getting the chips approved for their future product designs. The first implementation of "Ice Lake" will not be a desktop processor, but rather a low-power mobile SoC designed for ultraportables, codenamed "Ice Lake-U." This SoC packs a 4-core/8-thread CPU based on the "Sunny Cove" core design, and Gen11 GT2 integrated graphics with 64 execution units and nearly 1 TFLOP/s compute power. This SoC will also support WiFi 6 and LPDDR4X memory.

Intel CEO Bob Swan also remarked that the company has doubled its 10 nm yield expectations. "On the [10 nm] process technology front, our teams executed well in Q1 and our velocity is increasing," he said, adding "We remain on track to have volume client systems on shelves for the holiday selling season. And over the past four months, the organization drove a nearly 2X improvement in the rate at which 10nm products move through our factories." Intel is prioritizing enterprise over desktop, as "Ice Lake-U" will be followed by "Ice Lake-SP" Xeon rollout in 2020. There was no mention of desktop implementations such as "Ice Lake-S." Intel is rumored to be preparing a stopgap microarchitecture for the desktop platform to compete with AMD "Matisse" Zen 2 AM4 processors, codenamed "Comet Lake." This is essentially a Skylake 10-core die fabbed on existing 14 nm++ node. AMD in its CES keynote announced an achievement of per-core performance parity with Intel, so it could be interesting to see how Intel hopes 10 "Skylake" cores match up to 12-16 "Zen 2" cores.

Intel is rumored to refresh its high-end desktop (HEDT) platforms this Summer with new products based on the "Cascade Lake" microarchitecture. Intel now has two HEDT platforms, LGA2066 and LGA3647. The new "Cascade Lake-X" silicon will target the LGA2066 platform, and could see the light of the day by June, on the sidelines of Computex 2019. A higher core-count model with 6-channel memory, will be launched for the LGA3647 socket as early as April. So if you've very recently fronted $3,000 on a Xeon W-3175X, here's a bucket of remorse. Both chips will be built on existing 14 nm process, and will bring innovations such as Optane Persistent Memory support, Intel Deep Learning Boost (DLBOOST) extensions with VNNI instruction-set, and hardware mitigation against more variants of "Meltdown" and "Spectre."

Elsewhere in the industry, and sticking with Intel, we've known since November 2018 of the existence of "Comet Lake," which is a 10-core silicon for the LGA1151 platform, and which is yet another "Skylake" derivative built on existing 14 nm process. This chip is real, and will be Intel's last line of defense against AMD's first 7 nm "Zen 2" socket AM4 processors, with core-counts of 12-16.

In a development that could explain why Intel is frantically stitching together 10 cores with the "Comet Lake" silicon, a slide leaked from a private event hosted by motherboard major GIGABYTE reveals that AMD's third generation Ryzen desktop platform could launch as early as Computex 2019 (June). The platform will include AMD's first client-segment processor based on its "Zen 2" microarchitecture, codenamed "Matisse," and its companion chipset, the AMD X570.

3rd generation Ryzen with X570 is expected to be the world's first mainstream desktop platform to feature PCI-Express gen 4.0. AMD could maintain the processor's backwards compatibility with older 300-series and 400-series chipset motherboards by shaping its PCI-Express implementation to use external re-drivers based on the motherboard. This could make 500-series motherboards slightly pricier than current AM4 motherboards. Backwards compatibility could mean that unless you really need PCIe gen 4.0, you should be able to save money by opting for older motherboards.

If Intel's now-defunct "tick-tock" product development cadence held its ground, the 14 nm silicon fabrication node should have seen just two micro-architectures, "Broadwell" and "Skylake," with "Broadwell" being an incrementally improved optical shrink of 22 nm "Haswell," and "Skylake" being a newer micro-architecture built on a then more matured 14 nm node. Intel's silicon fabrication node advancement went off the rails in 2015-16, and 14 nm would go on to be the base for three more "generations," including the 7th generation "Kaby Lake," the 8th generation "Coffee Lake," and 9th generation "Coffee Lake Refresh." The latter two saw Intel increase core-counts after AMD broke its slumber. It turns out that Intel won't let the 8-core "Coffee Lake Refresh" die pull the weight of Intel's competitiveness and prestige through 2019, and is planning yet another stopgap, codenamed "Comet Lake."

Intel's next silicon fabrication node, 10 nm, takes off only toward the end of 2019, and AMD is expected to launch its 7 nm "Zen 2" architecture much sooner than that (debuts in December 2018). Intel probably fears AMD could launch client-segment "Zen 2" processors before Intel's first 10 nm client-segment products, to cash in on its competitive edge. Intel is looking to blunt that with "Comet Lake." Designed for the LGA115x mainstream-desktop platform, "Comet Lake" is a 10-core processor die built on 14 nm, and could be the foundation of the 10th generation Core processor family. It's unlikely that the underlying core design is changed from "Skylake" (circa 2016). It could retain the same cache hierarchy, with 256 KB per core L2 cache, and 20 MB shared L3 cache. All is not rosy in the AMD camp. The first AMD 7 nm processors will target the enterprise segment and not client, and CEO Lisa Su in her quarterly financial results calls has been evasive about when the first 7 nm client-segment products could come out. There was some chatter in September of a "Zen+" based 10-core socket AM4 product leading up to them.