The sky has officially fallen and you should be on the lookout for low-flying swine. Because AMD and Intel are working together.
This week, Intel announced that they would be partnering with long-time rival, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) to produce a new Core processor.
The fanboys will have a lot to rejoice over with this new product; as it combines AMDs stellar HBM2 innovations and their discrete graphics power, with Intels design and production capabilities to produce a lighter and thinner 8th Generation package. The new processor will be the latest in the Intel Core Processor line.
These new processors will be much smaller in terms of both form and footprint, allowing hardware OEMs to make sleeker and smaller laptops with decent gaming performance a reality for more consumers. Although that development will take some time. And unfortunately we don’t have a specific window for release just yet.
AMD has yet to be able to get HBM2 integrated into its APU products, so this collaboration will allow them to make money off of their memory designs without burning too much cash re-inventing their existing product lineup.
We don’t know much about performance or power consumption yet, but don’t expect a revolutionary upgrade for smaller form factors. This isn’t a deal to drive performance in smaller form factors; H-class CPUs from Intel are typically rated for up to 45W of performance. But this does suggest Intel wants to launch a set of SKUs that don’t need external graphics at all, possibly replacing its own lineup of Crystal Well-derived graphics SKUs.
The licensing deal will be for a variety of products. The first is a MCM (Multi-chip Module) unit with Kaby Lake CPUs that will share a module, but not a processor die, with AMD GPU tech. This new variant has reportedly been in the works for months, but was confirmed definitively this week.
Check out a great promo trailer for this new product line below:
