Coffee Lake's Coming: Intel's 8th gen chips will arrive in late 2017

Intel and AMD subscribe to different philosophies when it comes to CPU manufacturing. While AMD can take years to develop a new platform, Intel opts for a more iterative approach. That trend will continue with Coffee Lake, Intel’s 8th generation of CPUs scheduled for release in the second half of 2017.

Built on the same 14 nm process as every generation since 2014’s Broadwell, Coffee Lake will still bring performance gains of about 15%, according to Intel. Frankly, this is a small jump. But considering that Kaby Lake offered incremental gains over Skylake, this move isn’t out of the ordinary for Intel.

An earlier roadmap showed Cannon Lake was to be released in the back end of 2017. Coffee Lake was originally slated to release in the first half of 2018. Built on a 10 nm process, Cannon Lake should bring a substantial boost in both power efficiency and processing performance, but it looks like those chips have been pushed back at least a year.

Intel may be feeling pressure from Ryzen, AMD’s upcoming CPU platform that looks rather impressive if initial benchmarks are to be believed. Ryzen is AMD’s first major platform shift in almost 5 years. The CPUs aim to bring massive performance at an aggressive price and may have Intel worried. After a lukewarm reception for Kaby Lake, Big Blue may be looking to move on quickly with another “new and shiny” processor. It’ll be an interesting year in the CPU market.

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