Intel has announced that it will launch its 8th generation Core processors, codenamed 'Coffee Lake[1]', at 8:00am PDT (8:30pm IST) on August 21. The launch will be streamed to the public using Facebook Live, and has been timed to precede the much-talked-about total solar eclipse which will occur the same morning. No specifics are known yet, such as the number of models that will be launched and which market segments Intel is targeting first.
Intel's[2] teaser claims that the 8th generation Core processors will be "blazing fast", which shouldn't come as a surprise. The company has previously stated that Coffee Lake will improve upon the 7th generation Kaby Lake by 30 percent. Coffee Lake will be the fourth generation to use the 14nm manufacturing process[3], breaking the three-year Process-Architecture-Optimisation cycle[4] that Intel tried to introduce only last year. Prior to Coffee Lake and Kaby Lake, Intel's 'tick-tock' strategy dictated that the manufacturing process would shrink every alternate year.
Intel was supposed to have launched its first 10nm generation, codenamed Cannonlake, last year, but this was deferred[5], with Kaby Lake and now Coffee Lake filling in. Intel could move to a "fluid" model using both 14nm and 10nm processes for Coffee Lake processors in different segments. Rumors also point to Intel introducing six-core mainstream desktop processors with this generation, either thanks to thermal and power design improvements, or because of strong competition[6] from rival AMD[7] after years with the highly rated Ryzen[8] CPU line. It is also therefore likely that Coffee Lake will break compatibility with Intel's current motherboard socket and platform controllers which are common to Kaby Lake and Skylake[9].
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