With only a couple of weeks to go until Kaby Lake-S arrives, we’ve been getting more leaks for Intel’s new lineup. After Kaby Lake arrives in full, the next major release will be Cannonlake. Cannonlake will be the first release for Intel’s new PAO roadmap. The Process part comes from the new 10 nm process the chips will use. According to the latest report, it looks like Intel will be releasing Cannonlake in late 2017.
PAO was born when Intel realized that their aggressive Tick Tock strategy was no longer viable. With PAO, we got the new 14nm process with Broadwell, the new Skylake architecture and then the Kaby Lake optimation. Cannonlake will be the first release since process since PAO became official. Ice Lake will reportedly follow Cannonlake with a new architecture on 10nm.
Given Kaby Lake, I suspect we will see a repeat with the Cannonlake launch. The new series will launch in late 2017 for mobile with desktop to follow in early 2018. The new 300 series chipsets will also likely bring 3D XPoint support as well as native WiFi and USB 3.1.
One snag though are reports that suggest desktop Cannonlake may only be 14nm again. Other reports suggest that Cannonlake will feature 6 cores for the mainstream. Either way, it will be something new and hopefully, Intel brings something exciting to the table.
Coffee lake is the 4th 14nm architecture launching concurrently with Cannonlake. Coffee lake will be used for 8th gen H and S processors. Supposedly Coffee lake will bring a 6 core mobile processor.