Intel has just officially released the Lakefield chip – the first chip combining Core i3 and i5 hardware and a Tremont Atom core to save energy.
Called “Intel Core with Hybrid Technology,” Lakefield found the ideal hardware for ultra-thin laptops such as the refurbished Galaxy Book S, Foldable ThinkPad X1, or dual-screen devices such as Surface Neo.
With this chip, the Core Cove i3 and i5 Sunny architectures will perform high workloads while lighter tasks are transferred to the Atom core, as directed by Qualcomm. Unlike Snapdragon 8cx laptops, all 32-bit and 64-bit Windows software can run on Lakefield chips.
Thanks to the Foveros 3D packaging technology, Intel can combine many chips and integrated memory architecture in one processor. This allows companies to manage several areas of logic and memory instead of distributing them at the 2D level, like conventional processor chips.
It is worth noting that Lakefield chips also do not take up much physical space, making them ideal for fragile devices. As a result, the computers that use it will provide significant benefits of single-thread processing performance without having to exploit multiple cores to meet users’ expectations.
Lakefield is launched with two 5-core processors (Core i3 or Core i5 with 4 Atom cores) with a consumption voltage of only 7W. First, the i5-L16G7 has a base speed of 1.4 GHz and can reach 3 GHz on a single core, or 1.8 GHz on all cores. Meanwhile, the i3-L13G3 has a base speed of 800 MHz and a single-core speed of up to 2.8 GHz. Both chips use Intel’s 11th-generation graphics promising 1.7 times faster than the Core i7-8500Y. Intel says it will work with systems with LPDDR4X RAM of 4 GB or 8 GB, with quantities varying depending on the manufacturer.
As Moore’s Law gets closer and closer to the end, technological innovation with Intel’s Foveros 3D packaging process is considered appropriate, especially when increasing competition comes from Qualcomm and AMD.