Intel reveals Tiger Lake SoC architecture improvements

At CES 2020, Intel first announced its upcoming mobile PC processors code-named Tiger Lake. The Tiger Lake processors will be built on Intel’s 10nm+ process for improved performance. In addition to the optimizations related to the CPU and AI accelerators, Tiger Lake processors will have discrete-level integrated graphics based on the upcoming Intel Xe graphics architecture.

Tiger Lake will deliver double-digit performance gains, massive AI performance improvements, a huge leap in graphics performance and 4x the throughput of USB 3 with the new integrated Thunderbolt.

At Architecture Day 2020, Intel today revealed Tiger Lake SoC architecture improvements.

• New Willow Cove CPU core with significant frequency uplift leveraging 10nm SuperFin technology advancements.
• New Xe graphics with up to 96 execution units (EUs) with significant performance-per-watt efficiency improvements.
• Power management – autonomous dynamic voltage frequency scaling in coherent fabric, increased fully integrated voltage regulator efficiency.
• Fabrics and memory – 2x increase in coherent fabric bandwidth, ~86GB/s memory bandwidth, validated LP4x-4267, DDR4-3200; LP5-5400 architecture capability.
• Gaussian Network Accelerator (GNA) 2.0 dedicated IP for low-power neural inferencing offloading from the CPU. ~20% lower CPU utilization on GNA vs. CPU (running noise suppression workload).
• IO – Integrated TB4/USB4, integrated PCIe Gen 4 on CPU for low-latency, high-bandwidth device access to memory.
• Display – up to 64GB/s of isochronous bandwidth to memory for multiple high-resolution displays. Dedicated fabric path to memory to maintain quality of service.
• IPU6 – up to six sensors with 4K30 video, 27MP image, up to 4K90 and 42MP image architectural capability.

According to Intel, Tiger Lake will deliver more than a generational increase in CPU performance, massive AI performance improvements and a huge leap in graphics performance with a full set of best-in-class IPs throughout the SoC like the new, integrated Thunderbolt 4.

First laptops based on 11th generation “Tiger Lake” processors are expected to ship this year. Leaked benchmarks, for example, have Intel Core i7-1165G7 – a quad-core, 8-thread chip with a base clock of 2.8GHz and a boost of 4.7GHz  outperform AMD’s Ryzen 7 4800 by more than 20% in single-threaded tests. The new Gen 12 Xe graphics are also expected to offer a major boost over Intel’s 10th generation processors, with another leaked benchmark showing the  Core i7-1165G7’s integrated graphics outperforming the Nvidia GeForce MX350 standalone notebook graphics card which was released only recently.

Source: Intel