INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
For anyone that's been following the computing industry over the last year, it's probably not too surprising or controversial to say
that Intel hasn't had its best year ever
The Santa Clara chip manufacturer faced a number of challenges in 2019, from its own silicon shortages to recent developments in the
Intel did release some very promising technology this year, mostly when it comes to its 10nm Ice Lake laptop chips that kick off a new age
is finally over and 2020 is peeking from around the corner, we're going to dive into all the major breakthroughs and defeats that Intel
experienced in 2019, along with what we predict for 2020.(Image credit: Intel Corporation)Kicking off Project AthenaBecause we knew that AMD
would be releasing a slew of 7nm processors in 2019, we were expecting big 10nm moves from Intel in response
And, that's exactly what we got at CES 2019
behind the upcoming Ice Lake microarchitecture
Intel was hinting at a mobile platform that wouldn't come out for months, along with Lakefield, a new hybrid CPU architecture meant to take
on Qualcomm's increased competition with the likes of the new Qualcomm 8cx chipset found in the Surface Pro X
Future)In fact, we didn't hear more about Ice Lake until Computex 2019, which was a whole five months later
clarification was also given on what Project Athena actually was - rather, is
Rather than a single product or CPU microarchitecture, it is a multi-year-long initiative that would see Team Blue pushing mobile computing
streets in September 2019, we noticed that a lot of them were more power efficient and mobile, but we've yet to see how Intel's AI focus
will truly impact your average consumer
We've heard about how your computer would be able to learn what users need the most power for, and intelligently boosting performance around
architectureIce Lake wasn't the only mobile architecture on offer by Intel this year
Comet Lake also managed to power a lot of the best laptops this year, but there was a catch: it was still based on the same 14nm process as
Intel's been stuck on for years
more laptops with Comet Lake than Ice Lake, perhaps because the new 10nm Sunny Cove architecture is in shorter supply
We just hope that in 2020, Intel can go all-in on 10nm.(Image credit: Future)A single mainstream desktop chip?Also at Computex 2019, Intel
announced the Core i9-9900KS, a "special edition" of the Intel Core i9-9900K with an all-core boost clock of 5.0GHz
The only problem was that the Core i9-9900K really had no problem hitting that via overclocking, providing you had a halfway-decent cooling
solution.When we finally got our hands on the Intel Core i9-9900KS for review, we found that it was only marginally faster than the original
did not release a new desktop lineup of processors, leaving AMD Ryzen 3rd Generation to take over the desktop market completely unopposed
Intel fell behind AMD both in performance and market share, which was only exacerbated by some bizarre claims made by its marketing.This is
definitely something that Intel needs to improve on in 2020 if it wants to remain competitive in the desktop space
Intel still has a leg-up when it comes to single-core performance (which is especially important in PC games), but that gap narrows with
credit: Future)Those HEDT price cutsIn 2018 Intel only just managed to pull ahead of Threadripper 2nd Generation, but with a higher price
We expected the same thing to happen this year as well, with Intel tackling Threadripper 3rd Generation directly
they'd be significantly cheaperthan prior generations, to the tune of as much as 50%.And while we haven't had a chance to get a full review
of the Intel Core i9-10980XE, our own internal testing points to a chip that's slower than AMD's Ryzen 9 3950X
Not only is that chip cheaper, but it's on the mainstream X570 platform which is also more affordable than the Intel X399 motherboard
2020 is going to be a make-or-break year for Intel: if it doesn't innovate in the desktop space, Team Blue is going to be all but irrelevant
Hopefully, CES 2020, which is right around the corner, will give us some hint as to what we can expect from the 10th-generation desktop
graphics cards, but we would expect those to be shown off at Computex 2019, as that show is all about breakthrough computing
we can easily toss in our bag without even noticing the weight difference
Tiger Lake is promising to be at least an interesting mobile platform, and the replacement for Ice Lake may even be the first glance we get
of Xe graphics - sometimes things come in the weirdest packages.At the end of the day, we want nothing more than for Intel to remain
competitive across the entire computing landscape
AMD is on top of the world right now, providing Intel with competition it hasn't faced in years
But, if Intel doesn't adapt and provide some meaningful improvements in the desktop space, we could see the processor market becoming
stagnant again in a few years
