Cypress Cove cores consist of Ice Lake’s 10nm core architecture ported back to 14nm combined with Tiger Lake graphics.

Back in early October, Intel announced that 11th Gen Core S-Series Ice Lake desktop processors would start hitting the shelves and PCs in Q1’21. In advance of this release, Intel is today offering up more information about the cores that sill power this line of processors.

The cores — codenamed Cypress Cove — consist of 10nm Ice Lake cores that have been back ported to 14nm, combined with the Tiger Lake Graphics architecture.

Why the back-port from 10nm to 14nm? Since these are desktop processors aimed at high clock speeds rather than energy or thermal efficiencies, Intel can go for the lower-cost, higher-yield architecture.

What’s Intel’s target audience for these chips? Those looking for high clock speeds.

“Games and most applications continue to depend on high frequency cores,” the press release states. “Better performance is required to drive high framerates, a foundational element of achieving lower latency – this is where frequency matters and why we will keep pushing the limits.”

So, what do Rocket Lake chips with Cypress Cove cores bring to the table?

• Double-digit percentage Instructions Per Cycle performance improvement
• Improved gen-over-gen performance
• Up to 20 CPU PCIe 4.0 lanes for more configuration flexibility (x16 for discrete graphics, and 1×4 for PCIe storage or Intel’s Optane memory)
• New memory controller with support for DDR4-3200
• Enhanced Intel UHD graphics featuring Intel X e Graphics architecture (Intel estimates about a 50 percent improvement over Gen9 integrated graphics)
• Intel Quick Sync Video, offering better video transcoding and hardware acceleration for
• latest codecs
• New Intel 500 chipset
• Integrated USB 3.2 Gen 2×2
• New overclocking features for more flexible tuning performance
• Intel Deep Learning Boost and VNNI support