Intel at CES 2023 Announces Mobile 13th Gen CPUs and Low Power Desktop CPUs

[Guest_Jim_*]

Just like NVIDIA, Intel is at CES 2023 as well, and has announced a number of new products, including the mobile versions of its 13^th Gen Core CPUs, but also low power desktop versions.

Looking at the mobile CPUs first, the top of the stack is occupied by the Core i9-13980HX and it is comprised of 24 cores, with 8 being P-cores and 16 being E-cores. As only the P-cores offer Hyperthreading that is a total of 32 threads for this CPU. The H-series CPUs is the high-performance family and for this generation the maximum boost frequency is 5.6 GHz, with Intel claiming 11% faster single-threaded performance than its predecessor, and 49% faster multitasking performance. If that is not enough, the HX and HK versions allow overclocking. They still support DDR4 and DDR5, like their desktop counterparts, with a maximum capacity of 128 GB. For connectivity, Intel Killer Wi-Fi 6E is supported along with Bluetooth 5.2 and Bluetooth LE Audio, for improved speed and multiple devices connections with reduced power consumption. Thunderbolt 4 is supported, naturally, enabling up to 40 Gbps transfer speed and the ability to drive multiple 4K monitors. Compared to the 12^th Gen mobile processors, there will be five times as many laptops using an HX SKU, bringing the count to 60.

Moving down the performance stack, we have the P and U-series, with the latter aimed at thin-and-light laptops. These will offer up to 14 cores, 6 P-cores paired with 8 E-cores, support for DDR4 and DDR5, Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth LE Audio, and up to four Thunderbolt 4 ports. These CPUs are using Intel Iris Xe graphics, which includes support for XeSS for increasing game performance. Some designs will feature Intel Movidius, what the company is calling a Vision Processing Unit, or VPU that Intel developed with Microsoft for offloading AI-heavy tasks. This should free up the CPU and GPU for other workloads.

Between the H, P, and U-series of processors, Intel is claiming over 300 unique designs are expected this year from manufacturers including Acer, Asus, Dell, and Dell. These designs include laptops targeting enthusiasts, thin-and-lights, foldables, and 2-in-1s.

Supporting these processors and designs is the Intel Evo laptop specification to optimize performance, battery life, charge speed, and wake speed. It also includes features to enhance certain tasks, such as video conferencing with Intel's Connectivity Performance Suite.

Coming to the desktop processors, new 35 W and 65 W SKUs have been announced, for those consumers seeking improved power efficiency. The i5 class has gained E-cores, enabling up to 5.6 GHz and 24 cores/32 threads (likely 8 P-cores and 16 E-cores), and with a larger L2 cache, Intel claims single-thread performance improvements of up to 11% and up to a 34% improvement for multi-threaded performance, compared to the previous generation. These CPUs are compatible with 600 and 700 series motherboards, as well as both DDR4 and DDR5.

Rounding things off, Intel also introduced the N-series family that targets entry-level performance and purpose-built devices. This comes with the sunsetting of the Pentium and Celeron branding and the N-series will be present in both Intel Processor and Intel Core i3 families. These CPUs use only up to eight E-cores but still provide up to 28% better application performance and 64% better graphics performance compared to the previous generation. These are efficient enough to provide ten hours of full HD video playback without recharging, based on the Netflix streaming battery rundown test. The processors also support AV1 decode, high-resolution display engine, Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.2, DDR4, DDR5, and LPDDR5 for RAM, as well as UFS, SSD, and eMMC for storage. The intended targets of these CPUs are education and consumer segments that need value-oriented pricing while still offering quality experiences. Over 50 design are expected this year from Acer, Dell, HP, Lenovo, and Asus, including both Windows and ChromeOS devices.

Source: Intel (CES 2023)

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