Intel Coffee Lake Core i7-8550U Quad Core CPU Spotted

Within the month, Intel will launch their 8th Generation processors. Dubbed Coffee Lake, Intel may make one of their largest reorganizations yet. This is the biggest revamp of the Core series since the original i3/i5/i7 lineups launched. As part of the changing structure, Intel is releasing mobile quad core U series chips. While we have seen quad core i5 models, this is the first i7 quad core U chip.

Intel Coffee Lake uses the same 14nm process from Kaby Lake and the architecture from Skylake. Intel has further optimised the design, claiming a 30% performance increase from the same power draw. Part of this performance increase is likely due to an increased core count. At the same time, Intel is claiming improved power efficiency. This is likely why we are seeing quad core 15W processors at last.

Intel Coffee Lake i7 8550U Clocks in at 1.9 Ghz

The new Intel Core i7-8550U got spotted in an Acer Nitro AN515-31 laptop. As a full fledged quad core chip, it featured 4 cores and 8 threads with HyperThreading. The 8550U runs alongside 20GB of DDR4 and Nvidia GeForce GTX graphics card. This is a strong statement about the chip’s performance characteristics. The CPU itself also features a base clock of 1.8 GHz, 200 Mhz higher than the Core i5 8250U.

With 15W U series processors hitting 4 cores, the age of the quad core is truly here. In recent years, most laptops have shipped with U series processors. Quad core H series have been relegated to bulkier devices at the 28/35W bracket. With the basic mainstream designs delivering quad cores, it brings more cores to the masses. Hopefully, this will spur greater investments into multi-core computing.