Intel's 10nm CPUs might not come to desktops until 2022, leaked slides indicate

Leaked slides indicate that 10nm from Intel still won't be arriving in volume for another two or three years

Leaked slides purportedly from Intel appear to indicate that 10nm Core processors for mainstream PCs won't be appearing in volume until 2022 - not later this year as the company had hinted.

The slides - if authentic - suggest that the company is still struggling to finesse its 10nm manufacturing process and will almost certainly put the company further behind rival AMD, which is expected to unveil CPUs and GPUs based on its second-generation Zen microarchitecture, built on TSMC's 7nm process, at the Computex trade show in Taipei at the end of May.

Intel has been struggling to develop viable mass-market 10nm processors, despite showing off its Sunny Cove 10nm architecture in December last year. Its most recent publicly shared roadmap indicates that the company should be cranking up production about now for widespread availability later this year.

But leaked slides that purport to plot out Intel's processor roadmap fell into the hands of specialist German tech hardware site Tweakers, indicating that it will be a couple of years before Intel's 10nm Core processors are widely available.

For desktop chips, Intel looks like it will continue to refine its current 14nm process for another couple of generations, with Coffee Lake S refreshes set to take place from now until the first quarter of 2021.

According to the leaked slides, Intel will bring out desktop Core CPUs, code-named Rocket Lake S, from the second quarter of 2021. These will still be based on the 14nm node. But to make up for the late shift to 10nm, between 2020 and 2021 we can expect to see Core CPUs with up to 10 cores on a chip.

As such, 10nm desktop Core processors are only likely to arrive from 2022, which is when Intel is expected to move to its Ocean Cove architecture that's centred around next-gen high-performance processors.

Ocean Cove is scheduled to succeed 2021's Golden Cove Core architecture, itself a successor to 2020's Willow Cove, which follows on from the Sunny Cove architecture.

As such, it looks like the first 10nm CPUs from Intel will come in the form of Ice Lake mobile chips, which will be based on the Sunny Cove Core architecture.

Ice Lake is expected to take the form of the low-powered U-series and Y-series laptop CPUs at some point this year. They will be based on the 10nm process and are expected to come in two and four-core variants.

Getting 10nm-based CPUs into laptops first makes sense as the shrinking of each process can deliver more power efficiency, which is most useful for devices running on battery power.

But Ice Lake has been tagged as 'limited', so we it is likely that they will only be available in specific devices, such as slim ultra-portables. As such, it looks like there'll be a mix of 10nm and 14nm Core mobile processors in the market over the next couple of years.

Following on from Ice Lake in 2020 will be Tiger Lake-based U and Y-series chips, which looks to up the core count for the latter CPUs.

Higher-powered H and G-series laptop Core processors look like they'll stick to the 14nm process until at least 2021.

One particularly interesting detail in the leaked slides is the reveal of "Rocket Lake" CPUs, about which no prior news or rumours has previously been revealed.

With Y-Series chips, Rocket Lake will mix 14nm Core architecture with a 14nm GPU architecture. But in the U-series chips, coming in the third quarter of 2020, Rocket Lake will mix a 14nm Core CPU, in four and six core variants, with a GPU based on the 10nm node.

This would suggest it will be built using chiplets, which allow chips to be assembled out of several smaller chips in a somewhat Lego-like fashion. Or a Rocket Lake chip could be assembled in a fashion more akin to how Intel created a multi-chip CPU and GPU package as seen with the chips the mix a Core processor with an 'off die' AMD's Vega mobile graphics accelerator.

Given AMD Vega GPUs are based on 14nm and 7nm processes, a GPU with a 10nm process would indicate that Intel is planning to use a discrete mobile GPU based on its own graphics technology.

Intel has also issued a profits warning this week following below-expectations quarterly results.

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