Intel has teased of their post lake series launch family of processors. Intel’s website has released some initial hints about the post-Ice Lake/Tiger Lake CPU lineup. To be built on a 7nm process the company claims it to be 12th generation Core processor to be called as “Sapphire Rapids” silicon.
Sapphire Rapids will be a major micro-architecture change since based on speculations it will put 8-cores in more hands. This architecture based on the 7nm process will make up the ‘Tinsley’ platform, which is expected to arrive by 2020.
The 8th generation Core “Coffee Lake” with its 10-14nm architecture can built 2-3 micro-architectures on the same process. The speculated names would be Cannon Lake, Ice Lake and Tiger Lake, to be released over the next three years with gradual improvements over the previous one.
The problem with Sapphire Rapids launch is that Intel took longer than expected to switch on a 10nm process starting with Coffee Lake and similarly 7nm process may not be ready in time, although ASML has claimed that it has found a solution for Intel’s micro-architecture technology.
With ASMLs EUV (Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography); that will ultimately speed up Intel’s progress when developing their next generation manufacturing node. For Tinsel workstation It is worth noting that this CPU has only been mentioned as a server/workstation part, which could mean that it is hitting these platforms before mobile or desktop.
Although judging from the pace of desktop CPU development and innovations in the die node, for the micro-architecture process, it seems that we are not going to see the Sapphire Rapids series anywhere before 2021. This processor series will succeed Tiger Lake followed by Ice Lake, followed by Canon Lake, followed by the recent Coffee Lake on a 10nm process.
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