Intel cannonlake could bring all 8 cores to the general consumer sector

An Intel engineer has hinted on LinkedIn the possibility that we will see 8-core Cannonlake processors arrive in the general consumer sector, that is, the current i7 processors that have 4 physical processing cores. Something that if confirmed would break a long-standing tradition in which Intel limits itself to offering quad-core processors to said niche.

Zen's threat

A possibility that makes sense in the face of the fact that AMD is finalizing its Zen microarchitecture and with this they intend to launch eight or ten core processors to the general consumer sector. If Zen meets expectations, which they say will offer significantly higher performance per clock cycle than Excavator, it would be a huge advancement in general-purpose processors, leaving Intel with no choice but to give its arm to twist and get off the car of the four nuclei.

The end of Moore's law?

Another reason would be the fact that Moore's law is coming to an end and it is becoming increasingly difficult and less profitable to lower nm in the photolithographic process of chip manufacturing, so you should change your strategy and think about putting more nuclei into instead of increasing its individual power to a great extent (something that we have not seen in intel for a long time).

Cannonlake for the year 2017

Intel Cannonlake processors were planned for next year 2016 but Intel's difficulties in the manufacturing process at 10nm Tri-Gate have forced them to delay them until 2017. In this way, Cannonlake will be face to face with AMD Zen processors, whose arrival is scheduled for now for the end of 2016 if there are no last minute changes.

Source: wccftech