Intel revealed its latest generation of processors named, Kaby Lake. And this time, Intel has taken a priority towards ensuring laptops are given their due when it comes to efficiency and performance with their new series of chips.
As with all the previous ranges, the Kaby Lake will be available in different sub-ranges depending on the system, from tablets and laptops, to desktops. The Y series will power the 2-in-1 devices like tablet PCs, the U series will be exclusively made for laptops. The variants will also be available for mini-PCs as well.
Kaby Lake was officially announced as the 7th generation Intel Core processor.
Intel has also upped the ante on the graphics front, boasting 4K content to stream like a breeze on systems without much load, keeping processing efficiency and battery life in check. This comes as an update for the 9th generation of graphics that one will see coming from Intel.
There’s also a special boosting feature now enabled on the chips, where the processor automatically increases the performance of the CPU depending on the load. This feature was also enabled in Skylake, called ‘Speed Shift’. Kaby Lake will feature an updated, more efficient version of this in the form of the Speed Shift v2.
Getting into the technicalities and the architecture of the new processors, the 14nm+ process provides a 12% increase in performance over Skylake. DMI 3.0 now allows PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe drives from the integrated PCH. This means that the CPU can boost its frequency without increasing power to the chip.
Intel did put up some numbers regarding what it expects to see for Kaby Lake in the coming months. Some 100+ Kaby Lake system designs are expected to be produced across the consumer channel by the fourth quarter, specifically 120+ designs from Thunderbolt 3, 100+ designs using Windows Hello, 50+ designs that focus on 4K picture and 25+ designs for contact enabled pens or styluses.
The new range of Intel processors show promising numbers for performance and adaptiveness, since there are separate versions of the processor made for tablets and laptops. It will be interesting to see how real-world performance will affect either systems. The market is growing and slowly, 2-in-1s are becoming just as good, if not more functional than ultrabooks. If Intel can pull up integrated graphics solutions that can rival the GPUs, then these will be products of choice for the next generation of consumers heading into the PC market.