Intel’s Rocket Lake desktop CPU configurations have started leaking, and it looks like the blue team is preparing to take over AMD’s Ryzen 4000 (Vermeer) CPUs with a ‘Frankenstein’ that will still use the 14nm node.
Intel Rocket Lake vPRO, three new CPU models are leaking
We’ve talked about the Intel Rocket Lake family on several occasions, and a few hours ago new information came up that tells us about the Rocket Lake vPRO series. The vPro line is essentially the standard line, but with additional security features provided by the Intel vPro platform.
The roadmap shows that at least three unlocked or ‘K’ series Rocket Lake-S desktop CPUs are in use. In addition to the standard 65W and 35W lines, other lines may be available, but these are not mentioned in the filtered line layout:
It has long been known that Intel’s Rocket Lake S family of desktop CPUs would reach a maximum of 8 cores and 16 threads. The unlocked version of the Core i9 has 8 cores and 16 threads, which is lower than the 10-core, 20-threaded Core i9-10900K.
Intel may be compensating for the loss of cores and threads with a new architecture that is said to be a mixture of Sunny Cove (Ice Lake) and Willow Cove (Tiger Lake), but occurs in a 14nm process node.
As we can see, Intel does all sorts of mixes of architectures and nodes, which are a little difficult to understand if you’re not so familiar with the subject.
Key features of Rocket Lake desktop CPUs from Intel include:
- New Xe graphics architecture
- Increased DDR4 speeds
- PCIe 4.0
- Enhanced media (12 bit AV1 / HVEC, E2E compression)
- Storage attached to the CPU or Intel Optane memory
- USB Audio Download
- CNVi and Wireless-AX integrated
- USB 3.2 Gen 2 × 2 integrated (20G)
- Discrete Intel Thunderbolt 4 (USB4 compatible)