Intel's desktop Core roadmap is clear after Meteor Lake's official announcement, a 7nm EUV processor in 2023.
Launched in the middle of this month, the 11-gen Core Rocket Lake-S will be available on the 30th of this month. The 14-nm Core Rocket Lake-S has eight cores and 16 threads and is an upgrade to the Cypress Cove core, the Sunny Cove derivative.
12 generation of Core Alder Lake-S will be available in September at the earliest. The 10nm ESF enhanced version technology introduces the large and small core architecture, supporting eight large and eight small cores, a total of 16 cores and 24 threads.
The 13th generation of Core Raptor Lake is the optimized version of Alder Lake, with significant technology and architecture changes. In contrast, the 14th generation of Core is a Meteor Lake, starting to enter the 7nm node, and the architecture will be significantly upgraded, but there is no detailed data yet.
Another area of the X86 desktop market that has been stagnating for the past two years is the Hedt platform. Since the launch of Cascade Lake-X, the Core i9-10980XE has been stuck on the 14nm 18 core, and this year it has not been active. In any case, the current product cannot compete with the 64-core Ryyron TR 3990X.
Later this year, Intel will release its 10nm Sapphire Rapids, the fourth generation XXON scalable processor, upgraded to 10nm ESF Enhanced Edition with support for DDR5, PCIe 5.0 and LGA4667.
The most mysterious thing about Sapphire Rapids is its architecture. I also realized that a native multi-core design is not as complicated as AMD's Epyc, so Sapphire Rapids will also use a smaller chip design and be more technical.
Previously stolen information showed that Sapphire Rapids had integrated four small chips, two sets of CPU cores, 1 set of HBM memory, and 1 XE architecture core.
The number of CPU cores has not been confirmed yet. Currently, there are two versions. One is 56 cores and 112 threads composed of 4 CPU modules, each group of 15 seats.
Another claim goes even further, claiming that the Sapphire Rapids can achieve up to 72 cores with only two CPU modules. After all, a 10nm Ikelake-SP processor can theoretically achieve 72 bodies.
The Sapphire Rapids server is not a big deal, but there will be a desktop counterpart, codenamed Emerald Rapids, circulating since last year as the next-generation HEDT platform.
The Emerald Rapids processor has also been leaked on Intel's website, which means the Heat platform is still in the game and is not expected to ship until 2022. Core X is also likely to have a 56-core CPU this time around, which is more powerful than AMD's 64-core Ryydragon TR.
