Introduced almost two years ago, the first mainstream CPUs from Intel, codenamed Ice Lake-U, are being retired. With Tiger Lake on the market for nine months, the announcement is not surprising, as they are superior in all situations. But it is surprising that Lakefield has already been caught.
Ice Lake-U is history
The first 10 nm excursion by Intel, which made it into the mass market, suffered primarily from comparatively low clock rates, while the Ice Lake architecture itself marked a step forward and has only been used in the server environment for a few weeks comes. The notebook flagship Core i7-1065G7 presented at the time, which is now also being discontinued, only managed 3.9 GHz even in single-core turbo, months later Intel added a 28-watt version with a maximum clock rate of 4.1 GHz . Tiger Lake started right there and raised the maximum clock rates up to 5 GHz again.
After less than 2 years, the starting shot has now been given for the early retirement of Ice Lake. Intel needs the capacities for the 10 nm chips elsewhere anyway. Alder Lake is literally just around the corner with a wide range of products in notebooks and desktops and will fully rely on this expansion stage. And that's how Intel now names the Core i7-1065G7 and the Core i5-1035G7 with its variants Core i5-1035G4 and Core i5-1035G1 as well as the Core i3-1005G1 and the entry-level solutions Pentium 6805 and Celeron 5805 CPUs are still to be ordered, the orders will be delivered by April next year.
Lakefield was a test run and a commercial flop
To discontinue Lakefield after around a year is surprising at first glance, but in the end, given the signs of the future, it is not surprising either. Because the hybrid design with large and small cores will expand in size in Alder Lake. The first solution in the form of the two models Core i5-L16G7 and Core i3-L13G4 was not a good star from the start, and certain insights have been gained internally. From a purely commercial point of view, the product was a total failure with not even two devices on the market. Here too, the end is in October.
The last two weeks in October were brought into play by the rumor mill as the start date for Alder Lake. In addition to variants for the notebook, there will also be K processors for the desktop. Until then, Intel will lift the veil on the new CPU family piece by piece, as was the case last and also at Ice Lake two years ago.
In the fairway: Comet Lake-U also works
The sweeper does not stop even with other CPUs. Comet Lake-U, which was also at home in the notebook as the 10th generation Core, will be discontinued. Almost all models down from the Core i7-10810U through various Core i5 and Core i3 to the Celeron 5205U are caught here. However, Intel is taking a little more time here, some of these CPUs can still be ordered until January 2022 and will then be delivered until July 2022.