Road map changes happen sometimes but they have always been something unusual for Intel. Yet this is exactly what we have here – online sources claim that after Intel launches Skylake, the chip company will postpone the expected successor called Cannonlake in favor of a new mysterious generation called Kaby Lake.
There are some white papers on Kaby Lake as we speak so we can get some information on the new chips there. According to what we know Kaby Lake processors will be made on 14 nm FinFET technology and will sport two or four cores, an updated integrated graphics core, a dual-channeled memory controller with support for DDR4 memory and up to 256 MB of on-chip DRAM cache to speed up graphics calculations. Kaby Lake will also cover all market segments including the desktop and mobile segments and will have TDP between 4.5W and 91W. It is unclear, however, if Kaby Lake will sport a new microarchitecture and whether the new chips will have support for AVX-512.
The good news is that Kaby Lake will use the same LGA 1151 socket that Skylake will come with. The new generation will also be drop-in compatible with motherboards designed for Skylake and will use the same Intel 100-series chipsets that have been appearing lately. The chip will also have support for USB 3.1.
The reason behind Cannonlake’s postponement is unclear – Intel might have some serious problems with the upcoming 10 nm production process or the cause might be more trivial – weak competition from AMD on the CPU market.
Source: Kitguru.net