Intel 11th Gen Tiger Lake CPUs with 10nm SuperFin Technology launched for Ultra Slim Laptops

Intel has launched their 11th Generation of CPUs that uses four of Intel’s latest cores built with the Willow Cove microarchitecture supported with the Intel’s new Xe-LP integrated graphics technology. A total of 9 chips have been uncovered across the Core i7, Core i5 and Core i3 families. These CPUs will offer different levels of graphics performance denoted by alphanumeric letters G7 and G4 at the processor name end, where G7 denotes the highest level of graphics performance offered by CPU.

The 9 CPUs are based on Intel’s latest 10nm SuperFin manufacturing process and are basically divided into two packages: UP3 (formerly U-series chips) and UP4 (formerly Y-series chips). Because of this newer 10nm SuperFin process the chip has a greater dynamic frequency range from the minimum to maximum voltage, which provides better performance at every power level.

In the pic below, the larger left package is for the high-performance UP3 models that operate within a 12W to 28W TDP, and the smaller right package is the UP4 package that operates at 7W to 15W TDP.

One thing to note here is that Intel has provided a dynamic range of TDP for Laptop OEMs to configure the TDP wattages as per the requirements of individual designs.

Intel Tiger Lake UP3 Processors

 
The UP3 processor models will fall into the 12W to 25W TDP range suitable for thin and light laptops. The top model Core i7-1185G7 in UP3 can boost up to 4.8GHz for single core and 4.3GHz for all cores with a 3.0GHz base frequency. Thus a big increase of 700MHz over the previous gen model. On the other hand the closest competitor AMD’s fastest Ryzen 4000 processor can boost upto 4.2GHz on a single core which Intel can pull off on all cores at once.

The Core i7-1185G7 chip comes with a 12MB L3 Cache and supports LPDDR4x-4266. The integrated Xe LP graphics engine comes with 96 EUs (Execution Units) running at 1.35GHz, an improvement of 250Mhz over the previous gen graphics core on Core i7-1068NG7.

The lower end Core i3-1115G4 is a dual core chip with a 3.0GHz base clock speed and 4.1GHz single and all cores clock speed both. The Intel Xe LP graphics comes with 48 EUs and boosts to 1.25GHz.

Intel Tiger Lake UP4 Processors

The processors based on UP4 models fall into the 7W to 15W performance range for premium ultra-thin devices, including fanless laptops. The Core i7,i5 and i3 chips have reduced clock base and turbo frequencies. The EUs range between 96 to 48 from top to low model processor and the paired Intel Xe-LP graphics maximum frequency is set at 1.10 GHz boost clock. All of the UP4 models support LPDDR4x-4266.

Intel Xe Graphics

Intel claims that the new integrated Iris Xe GPU will outperform AMD’s Ryzen 7 4800U by up to 1.8x in a range of titles, and are better than 90% of thin and light laptop models with discrete graphics sold last year. Intel also claims that it can outperform Nvidia’s discrete MX350 in 1080p gaming. If this is true then this could eliminate the need for a discrete graphics card in modern Tiger Lake CPU laptops.

Thunderbolt 4, PCIe 4.0 Interface and WiFi 6

While AMD was the first to bring the PCIe Gen 4 on the desktop, Intel is the first to bring PCIe 4.0 support to laptops. This will support modern SSDs to transfer data at up to twice the speed per lane along with improved performance and efficiency. Tiger Lake also introduces support for WiFi6, USB 4.0 and Thunderbolt 4. Thunderbolt 4 will allow for four 4K HDR displays to run simultaneously.

Pricing and availability

The 11th Gen Tiger Lake Intel processors will be available in more than 50 different laptops from various vendors. There will be over 150 models released in total and these chips will land in time for the holidays. Prices will vary depending upon the configuration variety provided by different OEMs.