Intel Tiger Lake-U Refresh is coming to bridge the gap until Alder Lake processors arrive
Intel already has Tiger Lake-H45 and Alder Lake processors in the pipeline, but it has another series up its sleeve too. According to information published by Anandtech, Intel plans to refresh its Tiger Lake-U (TGL-U) series, as it did with the Kaby Lake Refresh generation in 2017.
So far, all we know is that Tiger Lake-R (TGL-R) will be one of Intel's 2021 Leadership Products for laptops, alongside Tiger Lake-H (TGL-H). It remains unclear how Intel will manage its TGL-R and Alder Lake releases. The company may sell the pair side-by-side, as it did with Comet Lake-U and the Ice Lake-U/TGL-U series. On the other hand, we would not be surprised if Intel staggers TGL-R and Alder Lake releases. Intel has already confirmed that the latter will arrive in 2021, so we may see TGL-R by the summer and Alder Lake mobile processors in late autumn or early winter.
Anandtech expects TGL-R to support LPDDR5 RAM, a feature that Intel claimed would be present on TGL-U processors. However, no TGL-U processors support beyond DDR4-3200 or LPDDR4x-4267 currently. Undoubtedly, TGL-R processors will feature a refined 10 nm SuperFIN process, along with clock speed increases compared to the current TGL-U product stack. Anandtech states that the TGL-R series will only include 15-28 W processors though, such as the Core i7-1195G7.
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