Intel Releases Six-Core Processors for Coffee Lake Series Laptops
Intel has announced its Coffee Lake-H series of processors for high-performance laptops and mobile workstations. The introduction heralds the arrival of six-core processors for consumer laptops. Intel also releases new quad-cores with Iris Plus GPUs.
The H series of Coffee Lake processors consists of five models. The most powerful is the Core i9-8950HK, which has an unlocked multiplier for overclocking and combines six cores with HyperThreading to work on twelve threads. The clock speed is 2.9GHz by default. In addition to the higher clock speed and the unlocked multiplier, this chip has 12MB L3 cache. The integrated GPU is the UHD 630.
The Core i9 supports what Intel calls the Thermal Velocity Boost. This technique makes it possible that under single-core load the clock speed of up to 200MHz can exceed the regular maximum of 4.6GHz if the temperature of the chip remains below 53 degrees Celsius. With multicore computing, the turbo boost can be up to 100MHz extra if the laptop manufacturer provides sufficient cooling. Incidentally, Intel mentions the maximum of 4.8GHz in its specifications of the Core i9-8950HK, although achieving this depends on the temperature of the chip at maximum load.
| cpu | cores/threads | Clock freq./turbo | cache | tdp |
| Core i9-8950HK | 6/12 | 2.9 / 4.6GHz (4.8GHz) | 12MB | 45W |
| Core i7-8850H | 6/12 | 2.6 / 4.3GHz | 9MB | 45W |
| Core i7-8750H | 6/12 | 2.2 / 4.1GHz | 9MB | 45W |
| Core i5-8400H | 4/8 | 2.5 / 4.1GHz | 8MB | 45W |
| Core i5-8300H | 4/8 | 2.3 / 3.9GHz | 8MB | 45W |
For mobile workstations, Intel is releasing the Xeon E-2168M and E-2176M. The former corresponds to the Core i9-8950HK in terms of specifications, but the multiplier is locked with this model. There is support for ECC RAM and it is a vPro chip for business applications such as a RPM chip.
| cpu | cores/threads | Clock freq./turbo | cache | tdp |
| Xeon E-2168M | 6/12 | 2.9 / 4.8GHz | 12MB | 45W |
| Xeon E-2176M | 6/12 | 2.6 / 4.3GHz | 12MB | 45W |
Intel also adds four frugal Coffee Lake-U processors to its lineup. These processors have the Iris Plus GPUs, or GT3e, with 48 execution units and 128MB edram. This means that these processors have more powerful video chips than the four Coffee Lake-U chips that Intel has already released, which have the UHD 620 or GT2 with 24 EUs on board. With 28W, the tdp of the new U chips is a lot higher than that of the Kaby Lake-R variants, which have a tdp of 15W.
| cpu | cores/threads | Clock freq./turbo | cache | iGpu | tdp |
| Core i7-8559U | 4/8 | 2.7 / 4.5GHz | 8MB | 48 EUs’ | 28W |
| Core i5-8269U | 4/8 | 2.6 / 4.2GHz | 6MB | 48 EUs’ | 28W |
| Core i5-8259U | 4/8 | 2.3 / 3.8GHz | 6MB | 48 EUs’ | 28W |
| Core i3-8109U | 2/4 | 3 / 3.6GHz | 4MB | 48 EUs’ | 28W |
The 300 Series chipsets of the mobile Coffee Lake processors have support for USB 3.1 gen 2 and WiFi-ac as standard. The Coffee Lake-H chips and mobile Xeons also have support for Intel’s Optane memory. All processors are built on Intel’s 14++ manufacturing process. Intel ranks the processors under its 8th generation of processors, which includes the Kaby Lake-R and Kaby Lake G chips for laptops and which probably also includes the Cannon Lake processors produced at 10nm.