Intel Coffee Lake Release Date, Specs Rumors: 8th-Gen Core CPUs Confirmed for 2nd Half of 2017
Anticipation for the eight-generation Intel Core central processing units (CPUs), dubbed Coffee Lake, has increased dramatically following a specific release window, as confirmed by the popular chip maker.
Earlier this week, Intel's official Twitter account posted a picture of its current roadmap which revealed that the Coffee Lake processors will be arriving in the second half of 2017. The next-generation chips are said to come with a 15 percent improvement over the current Kaby Lake processors. Similarly, they will also be built using the 14 nm manufacturing process technology.
Intel's announcement came as a surprise to many considering that Kaby Lake-powered devices are just beginning to pop up in the market. Nevertheless, this development is still exciting as the Coffee Lake CPUs weren't expected to arrive until 2018.
Reports have suggested that the earlier-than-planned announcement of eight-generation Intel Core processors could have been made due to the threat that Intel's rival, AMD, poses once the latter's next-generation Ryzen CPUs arrive next month.
At this time, it's too early to identify the exact technical specifications of the Coffee Lake chips but according to MSPowerUser, four variants are expected to arrive: Coffee Lake-U, Coffee Lake-X, Coffee Lake-S and Coffee Lake-H. They are touted to come in dual-core, 4+2 and 6+2 chip configurations with Intel's GT2 integrated graphics processors. The Core i7-8000 series is also expected to be the flagship of the Coffee Lake lineup.
There is also speculation that the eight-generation Intel Core CPU family may include Cannon Lake-badged chips which are said to be the 10 nm versions of Kaby Lake and will be used for Y-series Core M devices.
Apart from the release window, Intel has not released official details for the upcoming Coffee Lake CPUs so information should be taken with a grain of salt. More specific attributes will be revealed closer to the official launch.
