Previously, Intel has increased the number of cores in its desktop segment with Core i9 processors and it’s 8 cores under the “Coffee Lake R”. Now a new Comet Lake S core processors appear to be emerging on the horizon, which would increase the number of physical cores to 10.
Intel will increase the number of cores with “Comet Lake-S” on the desktop
A rumor from the Far East seems to indicate that Intel plans to add more cores to the main line of desktop processors with a new family called Comet Lake. That would be the big difference to the current 8-core, 16-thread models (the Core i9-9900K), and these Comet Lake (or Comet Lake-S) would probably reduce the clock frequency of these hypothetical 10 cores to work without problems.
It is rumored that Intel Comet Lake-S desktop processors will have up to 10 cores under the same 14 nm node. Such an appearance would extend the useful life of Intel’s 14nm lithography, which was refined during the appearance of “unexpected” families such as Kaby Lake, Whiskey Lake, Coffe Lake, and Coffe Lake Refresh.
The rumor comes directly from Taiwanese forums where it was mentioned that a 10-core CPU under the Comet Lake family was mentioned at a meeting of partners. The family will continue to be based on the 14 nm processing node and has recently been included in an updated DT/IOTG roadmap. The roadmap is updated every quarter, but we have not yet seen it in public.
Comet Lake S 10 cores with the same 14 nm node
There are no more details at the moment, except for the mention that the processor would use a double ring bus connection. The other thing is that a single 10-core matrix design would be much harder to cool. Especially when current Intel processors with 8 cores/16 threads generate too much heat. Since the process won’t be reduced in the near future and the core architecture is the same (14 nm), this will, of course, generate more heat. We will see how Intel manages to design this chip in a node of 14 nm, and that doesn’t cause any problems with overheating.
Also, with the Zen 2 architecture, it will be interesting to see if AMD succeeds in turning the game with this new and promising chiplet technology that brings significant improvements to the IPC of its microprocessors, which is an area where Intel has always won the game. Anyway, take the information with a pair of tweezers until we can confirm it or new sources emerge.