[Hardware] Intel’s Rocket Lake CPUs With Major New Architecture Will Boost To 5.0 GHz

[Dr.Drako]

Intel's Rocket Lake is an upcoming series of processors based on the 14nm process, but unlike older generations, it will feature a revamped architecture (Willow Cove), PCIe 4.0 support and Xe graphics. Think of it as a backport of the advanced architecture reserved for 10nm to 14nm so the company can maximally utilize its foundry capacity. Since it is based on the 14nm process, a leaked benchmark (Geekbench via _rogame) indicates that it will be able to boost up to 5.0 GHz (which is typical for the highly mature process right now) allowing for a best of both worlds situation where a new architecture is able to hit the ground running (speaking from a clock speed perspective) because of the highly mature node.

 

Intel Rocket Lake CPUs will boost up to 5.0 GHz and feature Willow Cove cores, PCIe 4.0 and Xe Graphics
Backporting is a usually a double-edged sword because if 10nm isn't able to sufficiently compete in terms of power efficiency gains, the loss in clock speed from shifting to the infant 10nm process (when it happens) could result in reduced performance from the bar that Rocket Lake is going to set when it launches. In the meantime, however, this is great news for enthusiasts because RKL is going to be the first major new architecture in a very long time. Early benchmarks of the platform were spotted over at Geekbench and they are expected to come to market sometime in late 2020 or possibly by early 2021.

A 5.0 GHz boost clock combined with a major new architecture should offer the best possible combination for a performance upgrade for Intel customers (although at the cost of similar TDP) in  a very long time and I am personally really excited to see how this performs. Backporting could also turn out to be Intel's saving grace as it misstepped on 10nm and now again on 7nm.

Rocket Lake-S will be housed on 500-series motherboards and will have features that are characteristic of a major architectural change. Willow Cove itself is going to result in massive IPC uplifts and considering this is based on the 14nm process - it will be able to sustain the high clock speeds that were the saving grace of Intel's current generation of processors. The result is a platform that is significantly faster (think Nehalem to Sandy Bridge) than the generation it succeeds and could even put the hurt to its upcoming 10nm family if the clock rates don't improve enough.