Hardware Spotlight: Intel Unveils 11th Gen Core Processors, Arm Introduces Cortex R-82

Intel unveils 11th Gen Tiger Lake processors to compete against AMD in the ultra-thin laptop market, while Arm releases Cortex-R82 to boost computational storage.

This week turned out to be an interesting one for PC and tech enthusiasts as Intel and Arm both announced new processors. For decades, Intel has dominated the PC market with multiple products, and recently the promising launches by AMD have shaken its market foothold. Making a strategic move, Intel announced the launch of a new processor, Evo, along with a complete brand makeover. On the other hand, Arm, the semiconductor giant, announced a new processor to address the challenges of large data processing. 

Intel Unveils 11th-Gen Intel Core Tiger Lake Processors

This week at Intel’s official virtual launch event, the company unveiled its 11th-Gen processors powered by Tiger Lake architecture. Intel’s 11th Gen Tiger Lake processors made a giant leap in performance, battery life, which ensures 20% faster office productivity, 2.7 times faster for photo-editing, twice as fast for video editing and gaming experience, and 20% better immersive entertainment.

This strategic launch aims to win the race against its strong competitor, AMD, who currently holds close to 20% market shareOpens a new window in the laptop market. The nine new Tiger Lake processors are built on Willow Cove, a new CPU architecture, and leverage Intel’s new 10nm SuperFin transistor technology (launched on Intel Architecture Day 2020) with a clock speed of 4.8 GHz for faster performance at lower power consumption.

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In terms of GPU performance, five of the nine processors will feature Intel’s integrated Iris Xe graphics technology that claims twice the graphics performance of the previous generation models. The company compared its Iris Xe Graphics to AMD’s 4800U and NVIDIA’s MX350+, giving its partners a direct comparison of the processors and concluded that its gaming performance was significantly faster than others.

The new processors are also embedded with Thunderbolt 4 and Wi-Fi 6 that supports 8K HDR displays and up to four 4K HDR displays at once. The company has heavily focused on its AI engine to improve video conferencing with AI-powered background blur and video super-resolution.

Gregory Bryant, executive vice president and general manager of the Client Computing Group at Intel, saysOpens a new window , “From productivity and content creation to entertainment and gaming when you pick a system powered by 11th Gen Intel Core – especially one of our new Intel Evo co-engineered and verified designs – you know you are getting the best laptop experience possible.”

The semiconductor giant also introduced Intel Evo, the second iteration of its next-generation Project Athena. Intel Evo will ensure that 11th generation Intel Core processor-powered devices deliver unrestricted battery performance, wake from sleep in less than a second, offer at least 9 hours of battery life with FHD displays, and support fast charging. The company has partnered with several vendors to deliver 20 Evo badge machines by the end of 2020.

By the end of this year, Tiger Lake CPUs will be available in more than 150 designs from partners, including Dell, Samsung, Lenovo, Asus, Acer, and LG. 

Arm Launches Cortex-R82 Embedded Processor for Computational Storage

Semiconductor company, Arm, has made a substantial difference in the microcontrollers and microprocessors market with various high-efficiency Cortex-M CPU cores. Now, the company is making a breakthrough in the real-time (RT) processors with its Cortex-R portfolio. This week, the company expanded its R-series with the launch of Cortex-R82, its first 64-bit, Linux-capable, RT processor designed for computational storage. Offering flexibility to run RT applications and server applications on the same core, the Arm Cortex-R82 is a successor to the 32-bit Cortex-R5 and Cortex-R8 processors used in solid-state drives.

IDC predictsOpens a new window that by 2025 there will be 41.6 billion IoT devices generating 79 zettabytes of data. The rapid increase in data sets demands for faster data processing for better insights. While it is challenging to store all data and process later, an alternative is to perform data processing in the storage system. The Arm Cortex-R82 processor addresses this challenge by supporting both real-time and server data processing.

Neil Werdmuller, director of storage solutions at Arm, saysOpens a new window , “Computational storage is emerging as a critical piece of the data storage puzzle because it puts processing power directly on the storage device, giving companies secure, quick and easy access to vital information.”

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The Cortex-R82 has up to eight cores, supports 1TB memory, optional Arm Neon technology, and promises higher performance with lower latency over previous cores. A significant addition to the R82 architecture is the inclusion of a memory management unit (MMU), which will create a virtual memory for data processing on a large scale.

Werdmuller further added, “As the storage market evolves, one of the biggest requirements we’ve seen from our partners is flexibility. The new features of the Cortex-R82 processor give partners the possibility to design multi-core implementations of up to 8 cores and adjust the types of workload running on the storage controller based on external demands in software. As storage controllers are becoming more diverse to address different markets and features, Cortex-R82 delivers an architecture to provide this extreme flexibility – reducing costs and time to market.”

These advancements in the PC and datacenter server processor market surely marks the beginning of a new era. While Intel’s 11th Gen Core processor is all set to help the company advance its foothold in the PC market, Arm’s Cortex-R82 will solve data processing challenges and help companies make data-driven decisions.

Do you think this launch will strengthen Intel’s position in the market? Comment below or let us know on LinkedInOpens a new window , TwitterOpens a new window , or FacebookOpens a new window . We’d love to hear from you!