The latest patches for Intel’s open source *nix drivers indicate the existence of a new low-power SoC they call “Elkhart Lake”. The interesting thing about this new SoC is that it includes the company’s most advanced integrated graphics solution (Gen11).
Last month we presented the performance of Gen11 over Intel’s current integrated graphics solution, Gen9, which offers an average of 75% more performance than the HD 620.
“Elkhart Lake” is a 10 nm SoC that combines a CPU complex based on the microarchitecture “Tremont” with an iGPU based on the Gen11 architecture. Gen11 will make its debut with the company’s 10nm “Ice Lake” processors and promises great gains in graphics performance. Prototypes of a typical Gen11 variant have the computing power of 1 TFLOP/s, so they run at about the same level as AMD’s current Raven Ridge processors.
We don’t have much more data about the Elkhart Lake than it is a low-power SoC. Regarding the built-in Gen11, this will be the first major update of Intel’s integrated graphics since 2015, when Gen9 was released. Since then, they have always been behind the competition’s iGPUs. We will see how AMD will respond in this segment, with the mid-year introduction of the Navi architecture and Zen 2 processors.