Intel Amber Lake Vs Kaby Lake, the new ultra-low power processors

Intel Amber Lake is a new generation of very low-power processors from Intel. These new chips will be legacy under the Y series, in addition to being based on the 14 nm Tri-Gate manufacturing process of the semiconductor giant.

Intel Amber Lake, the semiconductor giant’s new premium low-power platform

So far there are three Intel Amber Lake processors, all of them featuring a two-core physical configuration and a TDP of only 5W, something that would put them quite close to the power efficiency that the most powerful ARM processors are capable of achieving. Their common features are followed by a 4MB L3 cache and a built-in Intel HD 615 GPU. These processors will arrive at quite low frequencies but will have turbo mode for overall good performance.

The exceptional balance between performance and power consumption of these processors will make them ideal for use in ultra-portable, tablet, two-in-one and other very compact devices where energy efficiency is paramount. Its arrival on the market could take place by the end of this year.

For the time being, we are talking about three models, which we summarize as follows:

Intel Core m3-8100Y: 1.1GHz (up to 3.4GHz Turbo Boost)
Intel Core i5-8200Y: 1.3GHz (up to 3.9GHz Turbo Boost)
Intel Core i5-8500Y: 1.5GHz (up to 4.2GHz Turbo Boost)

We will have to wait a bit to see if the arrival of these Intel Amber Lake processors is finally confirmed and what they are capable of doing, because unlike the Gemini Lake, low cost and low power consumption SoCs, these Intel Amber Lake are based on a high-performance architecture.

Three matching Intel chips

Besides the Amber Lake Y, Intel is also planning the Whiskey Lake U, the 15-watt versions for ultrabooks. The Core i7-8565U, for example, should reach 1.8 GHz to 4.6 GHz in the short term. Manufacturers like Dell have switched to increasing the TDP of these models to up to 25 watts, which makes them significantly faster, but also makes comparisons between individual notebooks and their CPU performance more difficult.

Intel Amber Lake Vs Kaby Lake: Core CPUs Amber Lake-Y and Kaby Lake-Y compared

In the area of mobile processors, Intel even surrounds itself with many more code names. Meanwhile, however, it is becoming increasingly clear that “Whiskey Lake”, “Comet Lake” and “Amber Lake” only end up with new editions of various Kaby and Coffee Lake processors, which in turn are all CPU-technically pure-bred Skylake-based.

These code names no longer refer to really new processor generations in the mobile segment, but simply to new product iterations – because of course notebook manufacturers in particular need something new every now and then, regardless of whether the differences are actually minimal or primarily exist in the new sales name. Everything that refers to really new processor generations is currently happening in the desktop or HEDT/server segment alone, so the many mobile code names from Intel are usually worth no further consideration.