The chips will be available in laptop computers and Intel-driven mobile devices beginning this fall, and is expected to appear in more than 100 products between now and the end of 2016.
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With Kaby Lake, Intel is emphasizing experiences rather than hard specs.
Laptops, such as this HP Spectre 13 with an OLED panel, will soon hit the streets with Intel’s new 7th-gen Kaby Lake CPU inside. Interestingly enough, it also reports that the CPU was paired with “2x 4GB Fujitsu TEAMGROUP-D4-3866 DIMM DDR3 PC3-34100” which is plausible as Kaby Lake, just like Skylake will support both DDR3 and DDR4 memory. So Kaby Lake isn’t so much of a tick but more of an incremental refinement on their Skylake edition CPUs. Roll on Kaby Lake. Processors for mainstream and enthusiast desktop PCs, beefier laptops, workstations, and other categories will be refreshed early next year. Now the lowest power level is 4.5 watts, while performance is 2.5 times better.
New chips can be a reason to upgrade PCs. Intel calls this “All Day 4K” where “all day” means “nine and a half hours”.
If you’re more of a content consumer than a content creator, Kaby Lake also makes it easy- and efficient-to view 4K video.
TL;DR: Mo’ better battery life for video freaks! Instead of trying to explain the dizzying array of features inside each of these chips, I’m just going to post Intel’s full accounting of what’s inside.
More functionality can be expected from these skinny devices as Microsoft’s Windows Hello authentication and Thunderbolt support will be included. The chip also has design improvements for media processing, making video editing and 4K viewing run more smoothly. Kaby Lake is built on the same 14-nanometre (nm) architecture as Skylake, so the performance gains are only marginal this time around: with a 300-400mHz gain anticipated by the company increasing the range of several frequencies. There have been a number of enhancement made to Kaby Lake, however, that not only improve overall performance and efficiency, but enhance its multimedia capabilities and responsiveness as well.
The new seventh-generation processors include an Intel Core m3 processor and Intel Core i3, i5, and i7 processors.
Designed for the “Immersive Internet” and built on Sky Lake microarchitecture, Intel’s latest 14nm Kaby Lake processors promise more responsive performance for entertainment and gaming, robust security as well as natural and intuitive interactions with the PC. There is a dedicated media engine for video decoding, and Intel says that improved silicon process and design provide additional performance gains and better power efficiency.
The Kaby Lake die, helpfully labeled. There are two input/output configurations possible for these chips: Baseline (U series only), which supports only AHCI for Intel’s Rapid Storage Technology, up to four USB 3.0 ports, eight USB 2.0 ports, two 6Gbps SATA ports, and up to 10 PCI Express (PCIe) 2.0 lanes; and Premium (both U and Y series), which supports both RAID and AHCI for Rapid Storage Technology, Smart Response Technology, up to six USB 3.0 ports, up to 10 PCIe 3.0 lanes for the Y series and 12 for the U series, and up to four 6Gbps SATA ports. As a result, we’ll see more efficient chips that only use between 4- to 15-watts to start.
The challenge of the Israeli team, which led the efforts and worked in collaboration with Intel’s other global developers, was to make these processors faster and more energy-efficient and also support high-quality video and virtual reality, as required by users today.
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In another shake up, the chip maker is phasing out parts of the Core M-series processor tree.
