Intel’s (News - Alert) super-secret 14-nanometer architecture, known as Kaby Lake, looks like it will offer the most robust media and video processing improvements seen in chips in years, according to a fresh leak.
A leak of two internal PowerPoint slides from BenchLife show a host of new features, including support for 5K display output as well as acceleration of 10-bit HEVC and 10-bit VP9 streams directly in hardware.
Not to be confused with the trendy green, leafy vegetable that it anagrams with, Kaby Lake is expected to follow the just-released 14nm Skylake processors in late 2016, rolling into 2017. It’s a stop-gap development effort before Intel’s first 10-nanometer product, code-named Cannonlake, arrives in the second half of 2017. Kaby Lake chips will be compatible with Skylake motherboards as well.
Intel CEO Brian Krzanich's statement has previously said that Kaby Lake would "build upon the foundations of the Skylake micro-architecture, but with key performance enhancements." And the new leak backs that up. Skylake for instance can only handle 8-bit HEVC streams in hardware and uses hybrid acceleration for VP9.
Kaby Lake parts will include low-power models with Intel HD Graphics, quad-core mobile parts, dual-core mobile parts with Iris graphics and quad-core desktop chips.
According to one of the two leaked slides, it would appear the silicon also delivers increased core CPU performance, and includes support for up to 24 PCIe 3.0 lanes, up from 20 in the currently available Z170 chipset. Intel also claims "increased port flexibility" with respect to these lanes relative to Z170.
All in all, the offering looks to be a significant improvement over existing offerings, and one that will support exciting new application development, especially in the gaming space.
“Although the delay of Intel's 10-nanometer Cannonlake processor is still less than ideal, it looks as though Intel plans to deliver a fairly interesting product with Kaby Lake, which should help Intel avoid some of the issues it had with Broadwell, particularly in the desktop space,” the Motley Fool opined.