Had things originally gone to plan, Intel would be readying the launch of Cannonlake processors right about now, and in turn keeping its tick-tock release cadence intact. Instead, Intel pushed Cannonlake’s launch to 2017, so that it can fine tune its 10nm manufacturing process, and will release Kaby Lake (14nm) in its place. Ahead of Kaby Lake’s official launch, details of Intel’s upcoming 7th generation Core i7-7700K desktop processor have leaked online.
The Core i7-7700K is set to be Intel’s flagship desktop CPU built on a 14nm manufacturing process, the same process used for Skylake and Broadwell. According to a post in SiSoft Sandra’s database that was picked up by WCCFTech, the Core i7-7700K is a quad-core chip clocked at 3.6GHz that can ramp up to 4.2GHz via Turbo Boost. It also features 8MB of L3 cache and 256KB of L2 cache.
Bear in mind that whatever data ended up in SiSoft Sandra’s database was probably taken from an engineering sample. Final specs could differ, though assuming the leaked specs are real, we’d be surprised if the specs on the final silicon ended up being drastically different.
On the integrated graphics side, there will be 24 execution units. SiSoft Sandra shows a 1,150MHz clockspeed, the same as the GT2 graphics on the Core i7-6700K. Overall, the Core i7-7700K should be a more efficient chip with perhaps a lower TDP. It will be interesting to see how performance compares to the Core i7-6700K, which has a faster base clock speed (4GHz), but same Turbo clock and L3 cache size.
The leaked data also revealed some specs for two mobile parts in the Kaby Lake family, the Core i7-7500U and Core M7-7Y75. Starting with the former, the Core i7-7500U is a dual-core CPU with a 2.7GHz base clock and 2.9GHz boost clock. It also has 4MB of L3 cache and 512KB of L2 cache. As with other Kaby Lake-U processors, this one is aimed at ultra-low power platforms.
Finally, the Core M7-7Y75 appears to be part of Intel’s Kaby Lake-Y series. If so, its TDP won’t go above a mere 4.5W. The chip is another dual-core part with base and boost clocks of 1.3GHz and 1.6GHz, respectively. It also has 4MB of L3 cache.
