Intel teases market with 10nm microprocessors codenamed Ice Lake to debut by 2019

Coffee Lake, coming within weeks, was supposed to be built on 10nm process architectures

Intel has revealed details of its Ice Lake microprocessor range that will follow Cannon Lake, the first Intel CPUs built on 10nm process architectures. Ice Lake is scheduled to arrive by or before 2019 and will be followed by Tiger Lake.

The reveal comes as the company comes under pressure from rival AMD with its successful Ryzen microprocessor launch, which offers competitive devices from around £100 to £950.

Intel's Coffee Lake codenamed devices, which are set to release before the end of the month, were supposed to have been built on a 10nm process, but the company ditched plans to do this due to manufacturing difficulties. The next-generation, codenamed Cannonlake, will therefore be the first Intel devices to be manufactured to 10nm processes.

In a vague teaser, which Intel has posted just days before it will unveil its 8th-gen processors, if claimed that the next-gen parts will offer "amazing performance and responsiveness".

It continues: "The Ice Lake processor family is a successor to the 8th generation Intel Core processor family. These processors utilize Intel's industry-leading 10nm+ process technology."

Intel doesn't specify what the plus sign in "10nm+" means, but it likely means that users can expect a performance and battery life boost over the company's upcoming Cannon Lake CPUs, which will be the first time Intel drops to 10nm - a shift that had been planned for Coffee Lake, but put back due to manufacturing challenges.

Back in February, Intel said that its first Cannon Lake CPUs would launch in the second half of this year and promised that the 10nm chips would offer a "15 per cent performance boost" over its yet-to-be-announced predecessor.

Before the launch of Intel's first 10nm chips, the company will next week launch its 8th-gen Coffee Lake processors, which will remain on 14nm despite increased pressure from AMD's Ryzen line up, which has already seen AMD start to claw back market share from its main rival.

It is unlikely that the impending unveiling will contain too many surprises, though, as alleged specifications for Intel's Coffee Lake CPUs appeared online last month.

If legitimate, expect Intel to offer a trio of six-core, 12-thread devices, with a leaked CPU-Z screenshot of an engineering sample suggesting they will slot into Intel's standard LGA1151 socket. The leak also indicated a part with a 3.5GHz base clock speed, but capable of boosting to 4.3GHz on at least one core, and a 12MB level-3 cache.

All three parts will support DDR4 with a 2,400MHz integrated memory controller frequency. Only the cheaper of the three parts will not offer DDR overclocking.

While this is mostly speculation, Intel has publicly claimed that its Coffee Lake processors will be 15 to 30 per cent faster than its previous generation Kaby Lake chips.

It's unclear when Ice Lake will be making its debut, but Motley Fool reports that it is unlikely that they will appear before 2019.

According to a leaked roadmap from January, 'Tiger Lake' will be the successor to Intel's 10nm+ Ice Lake processors.