Shenoy didn’t offer many details about the 7th Generation Core Series platform on stage, but he said that it would suport Thunderbolt 3, IR cameras and a range of new features. We also know from Intel’s roadmap that these chips are codenamed “Kaby Lake” and will continue to use the same 14nm process that the company introduced on its 5th Generation Core Series “Broadwell” chips and continues to use on its 6th Gen “Skylake” processors today. While Intel normally shrinks its die size every other generation, we won’t see a 10nm chip until the 8th Generation “Cannon Lake” in 2017 or later. According to Motley Fool (opens in new tab), Kaby Lake will also feature a brand new graphics architecture that can decode 10-bit HEVC video in hardware. Though he didn’t demonstrate the 7th Generation Core Series’ performance capabilities, Shenoy did show off a 2-in-1 reference design from Compal that was running on the new CPU platform. We also know that Asus’s just-announced Transformer 3 detachable 2-in-1 will feature one of the new CPUs. Announced at Intel’s Developer Forum in April, Apollo Lake chips are designed to replace the company’s current value lineup of Celeron, Pentium and Atom “Cherry Trail” CPUs. At IDF, Shenoy said that there are already 100 systems being developed with the new platform. We expect to learn more about both Apollo Lake and Intel 7th Generation Core Series at Intel’s next Developer Forum in August.
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