Intel Rocket Lake-S: Up to 8 cores, PCIe 4.0 support and Z490 motherboard compatibility for upcoming 14 nm processors

Rocket Lake-S processors will be arriving in March 2021, according to a new report from Wccftech. Intel will be looking to challenge AMD's Ryzen 5000 Vermeer processors with the Rocket Lake-S series, which it has based upon its new Cypress Cove architecture.

As we reported last month, Intel has effectively backported its 10 nm Ice Lake CPU and Tiger Lake GPU architectures to 14 nm for Cypress Cove. Apparently, this will allow the Rocket Lake-S series to reach 5.0 GHz while offering double-digit instructions per cycle (IPC) improvements over the Comet Lake-S generation.

Wccftech also claims that Rocket Lake-S will support Z490 motherboards. This is unusual in the sense that they will also be the first PCIe 4.0-capable processors, although this does explain why manufacturers included PCIe 4.0 support on Z490 motherboards. Rocket Lake-S will support up to 20 CPU-based PCIe 4.0 lanes, along with USB 3.2 Gen2x2 at up to 20 Gbps.

Intel will replace Rocket Lake-S with Alder Lake-S, which is believed to be arriving in 2H 2021. Alder Lake-S will also make the switch to 10 nm and the LG 1700 socket.