Intel this week introduced plans to discontinue its higher-end eleventh Era Core ‘Rocket Lake’ processors, that are made utilizing its 14nm-class course of expertise. The CPUs will nonetheless be out there to Intel’s companions for some time, however their days at the moment are numbered. Intel additionally mentioned it is going to section out its 400 and 500-series chipsets for processors in LGA1200 packaging.
Intel suggested its companions to position their remaining orders on eleventh Era Core i5, Core i7, Core i9, and corresponding Xeon W-series processors, in addition to choose 400 and 500-series chipsets for LGA1200 platforms by August 25, 2023. The ultimate CPUs and chipsets might be shipped by February 23, 2024. The corporate will preserve Rocket Lake-based Xeon E-series CPUs for embedded purposes round for longer, however the bulk of Rocket Lake processors might be discontinued by subsequent yr.
Intel’s Rocket Lake processors for desktops have all the time been considerably controversial: On one hand, they’re based mostly on the Cypress Cove microarchitecture (which derives from Sunny Cove microarchitecture) and are geared up with an Xe-powered built-in GPU, identical to Intel’s 10nm Ice Lake and Tiger Lake CPUs for cell PCs and compact desktops. Alternatively — not like Ice Lake and Tiger Lake processors — Rocket Lake chips are made utilizing a refined 14nm-class course of expertise.
As a result of Rocket Lake chips function backported general-purpose cores, Intel needed to cut back the core depend of those CPUs from 10 (within the case of Comet Lake) to eight. The brand new chips nonetheless supplied higher efficiency than their predecessors in a great deal of purposes, however those that wanted larger core depend most popular AMD’s Ryzen 9 3900-series CPUs with 12 or 16 cores, and even Intel’s tenth Era Comet Lake processors.
It is unlikely that Intel’s eleventh Era Core Rocket Lake CPUs might be missed all that a lot, as Intel has since launched two 10nm-based product households for desktops that includes aggressive microarchitectures. However for many who want to improve their LGA1200 machines, Rocket Lake chips will proceed to be out there for some time — however not eternally.