Tiger Lake Architecture: New CPU and GPU in 2020

Tiger Lake was first announced during the Architecture Day 2020 in August and is the successor to Ice Lake. It integrates a new CPU core architecture (Willow Cove microarchitecture), new Xe graphics card (Gen12) and the latest display and I/O technology.

Tiger Lake was introduced in the two U-series (UP3 and UP4) for thin and light laptops. UP3 is designed for 12-28 W TDP range for laptops (former U-series) and UP4 for smaller devices (like tablets and fanless designs) with a TDP range of 9-15W (former Y-series). The UP4 chips also comes in a smaller package. Both feature four cores and Xe graphics with up to 96 EUs. The LLC (last level cache or L3-cache) can be up to 12 MB.

Later (early 2021?) Intel will introduce the Tiger Lake-H series for gaming laptops and mobile workstations. It features up to 8 cores, 24 MB LLC and 32 EU Xe graphics. The PCH is discrete and not on the package as in the U-series.

Tiger Lake is produced in an improved 10nm process at Intel and called 10nm SuperFin. It combines enhanced FinFET transistors with Super metal insulator metal (MIM) capacitor. According to Intel this leads to the largest single, intranode enhancement in its history, comparable to a full-node transition.