It seems that Intel would be developing a technology similar to ARM big.LITTLE, which will be called Lakefield and will combine high-performance Ice Lake cores and energy-efficient cores, such as the Tremont.
Innovation in the technology market is constant and fundamental for companies. ARM recently presented an innovative design for the smartphone segment, called big.LITTLE, a system combined with high-performance processors and highly energy-efficient processors, in a single processor, to speed up and improve the performance of these. Intel wants to copy this system with a multi-core design, but in this case for the x86 architecture.
Currently, in the mobile market, we can find processors that use, for example, two high-performance cores, four medium-performance cores and another four low-power cores. The most common configuration is four high-performance Cortex-A73s and four other Cortex-A53 cores, much more energy efficient. This configuration is developed to extend the life of the batteries and be more efficient. Intel plans to do something similar with x86 processors.
For smartphones, the Cortex-A73, operate when heavy applications are loaded, such as games, while for notifications, messaging and other simple utilities, the Cortex-A53, with lower consumption, work. If heavy tasks are to be performed, all eight cores enter at the same time, thus speeding up operations.
Lakefield, Intel's utility, would be based on high-performance Ice Lake cores combined with other more energy efficient cores, such as Tremont. The Ice Lake will be the tenth generation of Intel processors, being the replacement for the Cannon Lake, while Tremont will be the replacement for Goldmont Plus.
These processors will be destined for laptops, convertibles and tablets, allowing the autonomy of the batteries to be extended, something very important in these devices and for office automation tasks, high power is not needed, or when we are watching a movie or surfing the net. If you are going to perform heavier tasks or multiple tasks, the more powerful cores will already be entering, as a backup. The Lakefields wouldn't hit the market until 2019, at the earliest.
Source: TPU
