Intel promises 10nm CPUs with better graphics and WiFi at Computex 2019

Ice Lake coming to laptops later this year as Intel also shows off 5GHz Core i9-9900KS

Intel has unveiled details of its 10^th generation Core processors, code-named Ice Lake, built on its 10nm process node, at the Computex 2019 trade show in Taipei. The unveiling comes ahead of the company's keynote today.

The Ice Lake processors will feature improved Iris Plus integrated graphics that will, Intel claims, bring "broad scale artificial intelligence to the PC for the first time". GPU clock speeds will hit 1.1GHz, with Intel claiming that Ice Lake offers double the previous generations' integrated graphics performance, and should outperform AMD's own APUs.

The products should start appearing in laptops later this year.

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Ice Lake is based on Intel's Sunny Cove architecture, and will come in Core i3, Core i5 and Core i7 iterations and will offer up to four cores and eight threads, with turbo clock speeds of up to 4.1GHz.

Intel claims that Ice Lake's raw performance is 18 per cent better than Skylake, with peaks in the 30 to 40 per cent range for some types of workloads. The company is also claiming up to two-and-a-half times better performance in AI tasks compared to its 8th-gen chips, thanks in part to what it calls its new "Deep Learning Boost" (DL Boost).

Aimed squarely at premium think-and-light laptops, Intel adds that Ice Lake will also provide integrated Thunderbolt 3 and WiFi 6 support for the first time, enabling a near-three-times boost for WiFi connectivity.

However, Intel's briefing as light on specifics, such as product parts and numbers.

The company has also been pushing 'Project Athena', which it first touted at CES at the beginning of the year.

In a bid to take on Qualcomm's ARM-based 'Always Connected' Windows 10 PCs, this new initiative provides a new standard for next-generation laptops. Devices designed to the Athena standard will offer always-on connectivity, a battery life of 16 hours or more, and will be capable of powering-on instantly.

The chipmaker said that the first commercial Athena devices will come from the usual big-name system builders, including Acer, Dell, HP and Lenovo.

Finally, in a bid not to be out-done by AMD's unveiling of its Ryzen 3000-series CPUs, Intel also showed off the Core i9-9900KS, a high end CPU capable of hitting 5GHz across all eight cores.

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