Yesterday it was NVIDIA's turn with its all-powerful RTX 3000 graphics and today Intel's turn and its Tiger Lake processors. The company has presented its new processors for next-generation laptops. Tiger Lake is the 11th Generation of Intel processors and they are the first to integrate Xe architecture graphics.
This is not the first time that Intel has talked about Tiger Lake processors, but on previous occasions they had been very ambiguous. Today they have shown and given all the data regarding these processors. Improved lithography, a next-generation iGPU, a new transistor design and the latest technologies make these processors truly spectacular.
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Intel Introduces Tiger Lake Processors for Laptops
The first thing that stands out about these processors is that they are based on a refined 10nm process, which improves performance and efficiency. Furthermore, these processors are based on Intel SuperFin technology that improves performance and efficiency. Through a complete redesign we have lower work stresses and that allows us to integrate new technologies and features.
The integration of Thunderbolt 4, WiFi 6 and support for PCIe 4.0 stand out in these processors. Intel has highlighted that the Tiger Lake chips are the first on the market to support PCIe 4.0, as the Ryzen 4000Us do not support it.
The processor, according to Intel, is 20% more powerful than the previous generation, as well as more efficient. The iGPU has also improved a lot, doubling the power of the previous generation. In addition, the company highlights that in Artificial Intelligence they have multiplied the performance x5 times.
While Tiger Lake offers improved processing performance, the significant new features that are built overshadow this power upgrade. The support for next-generation connectivity and especially the iGPU of these processors stands out above all. In addition, it has been specially optimized for AI, something that adds a world of possibilities.
Beyond the frequency of the nuclei
Tiger Lake is based on Willow Cove architecture cores, an evolution of the Sunny Cove architecture cores. The new cores offer more performance than the previous generation, reaching frequencies of up to 4.8GHz. The previous generation offered up to 4.0GHz, so the improvement is around 20%. Intel in this case has not focused on frequency, but has focused on other aspects.
The improvement in frequency is due to the fact that they have been manufactured in os 10nm ++, which is an evolution of 10nm +. The change is that these new 10nm are based on the SuperFin manufacturing process, hence the change in nomenclature. SuperFin is a dual purpose manufacturing process. First, it seeks to offer more efficiency and better scalability that allows higher frequencies. Due to this the final performance of the processors is improved. In addition, they are compatible with AVX-51 and Intel's DL-Boost acceleration libraries.
These Tiger Lake processors integrate the Intel Xe-LP graphics architecture. The new graphics architecture increases the number of non-processor threads and the number of Execution Units. A new cache hierarchy and new acceleration features have been added.
We have gone from 64EU @ 110MHZ on Ice Lake to 96EU @ 1350MHz on Tiger Lake processors. Along with this improvement and other improvements implemented, the performance improvement should be twice that of Ice Lake. For IA processes, the iGPU supports DP4A instructions for INT8 interference workloads.
Gross power and adjusted consumption
The new Intel Tiger Lake processors range from 7W consumption to 28W consumption in various families.
First we have the UP3 that move between 12W and 25W and that were the old Core-U range. It has a nominal TDP of 15W that can be adjusted up or down as desired by laptop manufacturers. As a more powerful solution is the Core i7-1185G7 with 4 cores and 8 threads @ 4.8GHz and 12MB of L3 cache. As a simpler solution we have the Core i3-1115G4 with 2 cores and 4 threads with a frequency of up to 4.1GHz. All models support LPDDR4X-4266 and DDR4-3200.
We also have the UP4, simpler processors that move between 7W and 15W, which were the old Core-Y family. These processors have as their flagship the Core i7-1160G7 with 4 cores and 8 threads reaching up to 4.4GHz. While the simplest solution is the Core i3-1110G4 that reaches up to 3.9GHz.
Intel Project Athena is renamed Intel EVO
One of the great bets of the company in its day was Project Athena. This is nothing more than a certification of systems that meet certain specific characteristics. Something interesting is that Intel changes the name to Intel EVO, where artificial intelligence also plays a relevant role.
The first major benchmark that notebooks must meet to receive Intel EVO certification is to wake up in 1 second from sleep. In addition, these laptops must offer WiFi 6 and Thunderbolt 4 connectivity, supported by Intel Tiger Lake.
But there is more, much more. These new laptops must have a FullHD screen and offer autonomy in use of at least 9 hours or more. They must have M.2 NVMe SSDs to offer the highest possible performance and at least 8GB DDR4. Together with everything we will have a charging time of 30 minutes that will offer us 4 hours of autonomy.
The new Intel Iris Xe graphics
More than the number of cores or the frequency, the highlight of these processors are their renewed integrated graphics. Intel HD Graphis and Iris solutions are now replaced by Iris Xe. These new graphics offer a huge leap in performance over previous generations.
A new graphics solution that promises good graphics performance in a fairly fluid way. We can see that these new integrated graphics are more powerful than the Ryzen 4800U and a 10th Gen Intel Core processor and an NVIDIA MX350.
Intel during the presentation has said that the iGPU of the Tiger Lake can offer up to 90% more performance than laptops with dedicated graphics. We are talking about a really spectacular leap that will allow the reduction of costs in laptops. Additionally, we have seen an unspecified Tiger Lake destroy the Ryzen 7 4800U in graphics.
