Intel has officially confirmed its upcoming Rocket Lake-S series.
Intel confirms Rocket Lake-S with Cypress Cove cores
In an unexpected move, Intel decided to reveal the details on the Rocket Lake-S desktop series just a week before AMD launches its Ryzen 5000 series based on Zen3 architecture. The speculation ends here, the Rocket Lake-S series are indeed 8 core/16 thread at maximum.
Intel confirmed that Rocket Lake-S will rely on Cypress Cove architecture, which was speculated earlier as a backport of Willow Cove (Tiger Lake), however, today Intel confirmed that Cypress Cove is Ice Lake (Sunny Cove) design. Intel has not provided any further details on the core design, but the manufacturer confirmed it has ‘double-digit’ percentage IPC improvements.
The series will officially land on desktops under a name of the 11th Gen Core series. One would guess that the successor to Core i9-10900K will therefore be named Core i9-11900K, although it remains to be seen how Intel is planning to advertise a successor, which will feature fewer cores than Comet Lake. This is because Intel also confirmed that Rocket Lake-S tops at 8 core/16 thread configuration.
Intel revealed that Rocket Lake-S supports memory up to DDR4-3200, which is an upgrade over current-gen DDR4-2933.
More importantly, the 11th Gen Core series will feature Intel’s Xe-LP graphics with up to 50% higher performance over the Gen9 series. Additionally, a faster connectivity interface will be available to Intel’s desktop platform, the Rocket Lake-S support PCIe 4.0.
Intel reaffirms its 11th Gen Core series will be available in the first quarter of 2021. The series will support new 500-series chipsets, but the support is also expected on existing 400-series motherboards.
| INTEL Mainstream CPU Series Specs | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| VideoCardz.com | Coffee Lake-S | Comet Lake-S | Rocket Lake-S | Alder Lake-S | Meteor Lake-S |
| Launch Year | 2018 | 2020 | 2021 | 2H 2021 | 2022-2023 |
| Fabrication Node | 14nm | 14nm | 14nm | 10nm SuperFin | 7nm SuperFin? |
| Core µArch | Skylake | Skylake | Cypress Cove | Golden Cove + Gracemont | Ocean Cove + Gracemont |
| Graphics µArch | Gen9 | Gen9.5 | Gen12 | Gen12 TBC | Gen 13 TBC |
| Max Core Count | up to 8 cores | up to 10 cores | up to 8 cores | up to 16 (8+8) | TBC |
| Socket | LGA1151 | LGA1200 | LGA1200 | LGA1700 | LGA1700 |
| Memory Support | DDR4 | DDR4 | DDR4 | DDR5 | DDR5 |
| PCIe Gen | PCIe 3.0 | PCIe 3.0 | PCIe 4.0 | PCIe 5.0 | PCIe 5.0 |
| Intel Core Series | 8th/9th Gen Core-S | 10th Gen Core-S | 11th Gen Core-S | 12th Gen Core-S (?) | 13th Gen Core-S (?) |
| Motherboard Chipsets | Intel 300 (eg. Z390) | Intel 400 (eg. Z490) | Intel 500 (Z590) | Intel 600 (eg. Z690) (?) | Intel 700 (eg. Z790) (?) |