Intel claims that 10nm desktop CPUs will arrive “early next year”

Now, a report from IT World Canada says that Intel will be ready to release 10nm desktop processors “early next year” while claiming that the company’s 10nm “ramp is going very well” and that they are “happy with the yield we’re having”.  

Sadly, this does not answer our questions about 10nm, and to what extent 10nm will be brought to the desktop market. Will we see a 10nm successor to the i9-9900K, or will this be another Broadwell-like desktop release where the product launch is extremely limited. 

This also raises another question. What about Comet Lake? Intel’s rumoured to be releasing Comet Lake series CPUs in early 2020 with up to 10 cores and 20 threads, succeeding today’s Coffee Lake 8-core models. Will Intel’s 10nm desktop chips release alongside 14nm counterparts? Will this be just like Ice Lake’s mobile release?

While Intel’s 10nm Ice Lake processors boast impressive levels of integrated graphics performance and a notable IPC boost over the company’s 14nm Skylake/Coffee Lake core designs, Intel’s Ice Lake CPUs have launched with lower clock speeds than their 14nm counterparts. This means that Intel’s Ice Lake CPUs deliver similar or less performance than their 14nm Comet Lake counterparts in many use cases, which doesn’t bode well for a higher-TDP desktop release. 

IT World Canada also reported that Intel plans to get a third fab working on 10nm processors in the near future, significantly boosting the company’s 10nm manufacturing capacity.