Intel announces its ‘Comet Lake’ series of 10th Generation Processors

  

I know what you are thinking? Won’t Intel’s use of 10nm and 14nm in their 10th Generation confuse consumers? Yes, it will, but Intel has given us the slide below to help us differentiate the company’s 10nm and 14nm products. 

10nm Ice Lake products will use Intel’s new product naming scheme, while 14nm Comet Lake CPUs will continue to use Intel’s classic Y/U series names/branding. 

Intel’s 10nm Ice Lake processors will offer users a stronger integrated graphics component (Gen 11), Sunny Cove cores and support for specialised AI compute hardware, while Intel’s 14nm products will use Comet Lake (Coffee Lake) cores, Gen 9.5 graphics and lack Intel’s new AI compute enhancements. 

  

Unlike Intel’s last-generation U-series processors, Comet Lake will offer users up to six cores and twelve threads. In addition to this, LPDDR4 memory is now supported alongside WiFi 6. Faster DDR4 memory speeds are also supported, enabling higher performance in some workloads. 

With Comet Lake, Intel hopes to push its new H10 hybrid Optane/QLC SSDs as well as Thunderbolt 3, options which are currently rare on competing notebook designs. This is how Intel hopes to stay ahead of its competition. 

  

When comparing Comet Lake and Ice Lake, it is clear that Comet Lake supports higher clock speeds, though Ice Lake has the advantage of supporting Thunderbolt 3 on its CPU die, rather than through an additional chip. Ice Lake also only supports up to 4 cores, while Comet Lake supports up to six cores at the same TDP. 

Ice Lake will offer more performance per clock thanks to Intel’s architectural enhancements, but this will be outweighed by Comet Lake’s higher clock speeds in many cases. Regardless, Ice Lake will feature the strongest graphics component and feature support for higher speed memory out of the box. 

  

Please go to the next page for more in-depth Comet Lake Specifications

Intel 10th Generation ‘Comet Lake’ Specifications and Project Athena

This generation, there will be some major differences between Intel’s U-series and Y-series parts, with the Y-series of low-TDP components lacking support for DDR4 and LPDDR4 memory. With Y-series Comet Lake CPUs, only LPDDR3 is supported. The U-series will be much more versatile, supporting DDR4, LPDDR3 and LPDDR4X. It will be up to notebook makers what individual notebooks support. 

Intel has confirmed that none of these platforms will support PCIe 4.0, which means that only PCIe 3.0 will be supported. Intel has not revealed when they plan to release PCIe 4.0 compliant hardware. 

With Comet Lake Intel promises up to 16% better overall performance and up to 41% more productivity performance than their last-generation U-series parts. We will include Intel’s performance disclaimers below to show how Intel created this data. 

 

    Up To 16% Better Performance Vs. Previous Gen as measured by SYSmark2018 Overall Score. Intel Preproduction Processor: Intel® Coreâ„¢ i7 -10710U (CML-U 6+2) PL1=25W, 6C12T, Turbo up to 4.7GHz, Memory: 2x16GB DDR4-2667 2Rx8, Storage: Intel® 760p M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD with AHCI Microsoft driver, Display Resolution: 3840×2160 eDP Panel 12.5”, OS: Windows* 10 19H1-18362.ent.rx64-Appx59. Power policy set to AC/Balanced mode for all benchmarks except SYSmark2014 SE which is measured in AC/BAPCo mode for Performance. Power policy set to DC/Balanced mode for power. All benchmarks run in Admin mode & Tamper Protection Disabled / Defender Disabled, Graphics driver: PROD-HC-RELEASES-GFX-DRIVER-CI-MASTER-2334-REVENUE-PR-1006952-WHQl. vs Processor: Intel® Coreâ„¢ i7-8565U (WHL-U4+2) PL1=15W TDP, 4C8T, Turbo up to 4.6GHz, Memory: 2x16GB DDR4-2400 2Rx8, Storage: Intel® 760p m.2 PCIe NVMe SSD with AHCI Microsoft driver, Display Resolution: 3840×2160 eDP Panel 12.5”, OS: Windows* 10 19H118362.ent.rx64-Appx59. Power policy set to AC/Balanced mode for all benchmarks except SYSmark2014 SE which is measured in AC/BAPCo mode for Performance. Power policy set to DC/Balanced mode for power with UX Slider set to Better Performance. All benchmarks run in Admin mode & Tamper Protection Disabled / Defender Disabled, Graphics driver: 2019-1006577-WHQL.

2. 41% Better Productivity on Office 365 as measured by the time it takes Microsoft Office to perform 3 tasks in a multitasking scenario (export PowerPoint file to video, export word doc to pdf and excel calculation). Intel Preproduction Processor: Intel® Coreâ„¢ i7 -10710U (CML-U 6+2) PL1=25W, 6C12T, Turbo up to 4.7GHz, Memory: 2x16GB DDR4-2667 2Rx8, Storage: Intel® 760p M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD with AHCI Microsoft driver, Display Resolution: 3840×2160 eDP Panel 12.5”, OS: Windows* 10 19H1-18362.ent.rx64-Appx59. Power policy set to AC/Balanced mode for all benchmarks except SYSmark2014 SE which is measured in AC/BAPCo mode for Performance. Power policy set to DC/Balanced mode for power. All benchmarks run in Admin mode & Tamper Protection Disabled / Defender Disabled, Graphics driver: PROD-HC-RELEASES-GFX-DRIVERCI-MASTER-2334-REVENUE-PR-1006952-WHQl. vs Processor: Intel® Coreâ„¢ i7-8565U (WHL-U4+2) PL1=15W TDP, 4C8T, Turbo up to 4.6GHz, Memory: 2x16GB DDR4-2400 2Rx8, Storage: Intel® 760p m.2 PCIe NVMe SSD with AHCI Microsoft driver, Display Resolution: 3840×2160 eDP Panel 12.5”, OS: Windows* 10 19H1-18362.ent.rx64-Appx59. Power policy set to AC/Balanced mode for all benchmarks except SYSmark 2014 SE which is measured in AC/BAPCo mode for Performance. Power policy set to DC/Balanced mode for power with UX Slider set to Better Performance. All benchmarks run in Admin mode & Tamper Protection Disabled / Defender Disabled, Graphics driver: 2019-1006577-WHQL.

 

  

With the release of the company’s 10th Generation Comet Lake processors, Intel has confirmed that their 14nm mobile 10th Generation processors will be available in Project Athena systems. This means that both Comet Lake and Ice Lake processors will be available in Athena-based systems. 

Intel has stated that Project Athena is a set of specifications, which means that 14nm Intel processors can be used with Athena systems if the notebook can meet the spec’s performance and power consumption targets.   

  

You can join the discussion on Intel’s ‘Comet Lake’ series of 10th Generation Mobile CPUs on the OC3D Forums.