In a major leak, Videocardz has shared the I/O diagram of the 11th Gen Rocket Lake-S processors. These CPUs will come to the mainstream desktop market in late 2020 in a bid to challenge AMD’s upcoming Zen3 based Ryzen 4000 parts. For the first time in nearly five years, the desktop market is getting a new core architecture from Intel, PCIe 4.0 support, Xe integrated graphics and much more.
Although still based on the 14nm node, Rocket Lake-S will be a backport of the 10nm based Willow Cove design. That means significant IPC gains, increased single-threaded capabilities and better overall performance.
The second main addition is the inclusion of PCIe 4, more than a year after AMD started supporting the standard with its Zen 2 based Matisse and Epyc Rome CPUs. We’ll be getting a total of 20 PCIe lanes, up from 16 on Coffee and Comet Lake.
Rocket Lake-S will be a backport of the 10nm based Willow Cove design. That means significant IPC gains, increased single-threaded capabilities and better overall performance.
Rocket Lake will be the first desktop chips from Intel to feature integrated Xe graphics. This is most likely Gen12, same as Tiger Lake, although we’re not sure whether it’ll be the same 96EU graphics core or a cut down version.
Thunderbolt 4 is also one of the purported features of Rocket Lake-S with speeds in excess of 50Gb/s. There are some other changes as well like DMI 3.0 and lack of SGX. Overall, the 11th Gen Rocket Lake CPUs appear to be a solid lineup, one that should have succeeded the existing 9th Gen Coffee Lake parts.
Lastly, as far as the availability is concerned, although the report puts the launch at the end of 2020, I wouldn’t hold my breath. Intel is still coping with serious 14nm chip shortages and considering that the upcoming Comet Lake-S and H parts will also use the same process, I’m not entirely sure if Intel will be able to fulfill the demand for multiple product stacks. I’m guessing Rocket Lake will be pushed to 2021. Regardless of the outcome, we’ll keep you posted.
