The manufacturing process at 10 nm from Intel still does not offer good performance, so the company will only offer a small number of chips manufactured with this node, this situation will continue until enough functional chips can be manufactured per silicon wafer. The Core i3 8121U will be the first Intel processor to be built at 10 nm, a model that has been confirmed by Intel itself.
Intel Core i3 8121U shows the deficiencies of Intel’s 10 nm
Lenovo Ideapad 330 is the first notebook to come to market with an Intel 10nm processor, the Core i3 8121U. At the moment it is only shipped in China due to the limited availability of these advanced processors. It’s strange that Intel has quietly launched the Core i3 8121U, but the reason is simple: it’s a 15W dual-core TDP model, which lacks an iGPU component, and offers users unimpressive clock speeds starting at 2.2GHz and increasing to 3.2GHz.
The full specifications of the new i3 8121U processor are available from Intel Ark, the company’s product database, marked with no “Customer-Recommended Price”, which probably means that these processors are shipped at an incredibly low price. OEMs must combine this product with a dedicated graphics chip, which makes the product unusable as a standalone CPU without the help of Radeon or Geforce graphics.
The Kaby Lake-based i3 8130U, manufactured at 14 nm, achieves a TDP of 15W (configurable at 10W), offering base clock/boost speeds of 2.2GHz and 3.4GHz with integrated graphics, which highlights the deficiencies of the manufacturing process at 10 nm Intel. Intel’s 10 nm has a lot of maturing to offer a remarkable improvement over its current 14 nm.