First small details surface for Intel’s next-generation CPU; “closer to the linear curve on performance”


At a gathering in U.C. Berkeley, VLSI guru Jim Keller shared the first details about Intel’s next-generation CPU architecture. Unfortunately, though, we don’t know whether Jim Keller is reffering to Willow Cove or Golden Cove. Willow Cove will succeed the Sunny Lake, whereas Golden Cove will succeed Willow Cove.

According to Intel, Willow Cove will be an incremental upgrade over Sunny Cove, with faster caches and process-level optimization. On the other hand, Golden Cover may bring significant IPC increases. Therefore, Keller may be referring to the latter CPU architecture.

As Jim Keller hinted, the next-generation CPU architecture will be bigger than Sunny Cove, and will be “closer to the linear curve on performance“. Jim Keller also claims that this a really big mindset change for Intel.

Sunny Cove is Intel’s 10nm x86 core microarchitecture for an array of server and client products, including Ice Lake (Client), Ice Lake (Server), Lakefield, and the Nervana NNP-I.

Keller did not reveal any additional details, so other than that there is nothing really interesting for Intel’s next-generation CPUs. Still, Keller’s speech is quite interesting (for tech people) and you can find it below.

Kudos to our reader ‘Metal Messiah’ for bringing this to our attention, and thanks TechPowerUp.

Jim Keller: Moore’s Law is Not Dead