KABY LAKE AND ZEN WITH BUILDERS

SEVENTH GENERATION IS HERE

PROCESSORS BASED ON INTEL’S KABY LAKE ARCHITECTURE have begun to ship to PC builders, so we will see the first systems using this 14nm seventh-gen core later this year. It’s a development of the Skylake design, and will come in the usual i3, i5, and i7 flavors, with up to four cores. Only Windows 10 is supported. Meanwhile, AMD’s Zen architecture will also put in an appearance later in the year, although consumer desktop systems won’t be available until next year. It’s also a 14nm process, and a completely fresh design. It’ll power a range of high-end processors code-named Summit Ridge, with up to eight cores.

Kaby Lake and Zen architectures will be used as the basis of a wide range of chips under various names, from servers and high-end desktops through to mobiles. Both will hit the market in real numbers at about the same time, so expect an old-fashioned AMD versus Intel head-to-head. Excellent.