FEBRUARY 2021 PCWorld 23there are subtle, significant improvements,
too: a new, wider, 8-lane DMI interface
between the processor and chipset, and an
increased 20 lanes of PCIe 4.0 off the CPU for
GPUs and SSD storage, matching the
PCIe 4.0 capabilities that AMD has offered for
the last two Ryzen generations. All told, Intel’s
promising up to a 19 percent IPC (instruction
per clock) improvement and a 50 percent
boost in integrated graphics performance,
thanks to the new, integrated Xe GPU core.
Intel said that the Core i9-11900K will be
available later this quarter, at an undisclosed
price. Fortunately, though a new 500-series
motherboard chipset will be launched
alongside it, the i9-11900K will be backwards-
compatible with existing 400-series
motherboards.
Intel’s Gregory Bryant, executive vice
president and general manager of Intel’s
Client Computing Group, also showed off a
brief sneak preview of the next-generation
Alder Lake hybrid chip (go.pcworld.com/
aldr), too. Alder Lake will combine “Golden
Cove” Core cores and Gracemont Atom
cores in a hybrid design. Bryant also said that
it will debut on an “enhanced” 10nm
SuperFin process.ROCKET LAKE...BUT IN
14NM
Many of the features of Rocket Lake-S have
been known since last October, when Intel
confirmed the existence of Rocket Lake (go.
pcworld.com/lkcn) and its new CPU
architecture, code-named Cypress Cove.
What we didn’t know was whether the new
chip would embrace Intel’s latest 10nm
process or be manufactured on the relatively
ancient 14nm line. Well, now we know: it’s a
14nm chip, which also explains the drop in
core count, acknowledged Brandt Guttridge,
Intel’s senior director of the Desktop Products
Group. The Cypress Cove CPU core originally
designed for
10nm was
backported to
the 14nm
technology, he
said.
“I think one of
the questions
many of you
might have right
away is, Why are
A summary of Intel’s new Rocket Lake-S platform. you going from