Intel Formally Announces Whiskey Lake & Amber Lake Low-Power CPUs

Intel has announced their new U-series "Whiskey Lake" and Y-series "Amber Lake" processors for laptops, 2-in-1s/convertibles, and other low-power devices.

These Whiskey Lake and Amber Lake CPUs offer integrated Gigabit WiFi via Intel Wireless-AC and are being marketed as "optimized for connectivity" with the chips not being too different from the other Kabylake Refresh processors. Intel says these new low-power chips will deliver a 10% generational improvement over Kabylake-R. The Whiskey Lake parts include the Core i3 8145U as dual-core 3.9GHz turbo part to the Core i5 8265U as quad-core and 3.9GHz turbo, or the Core i7 8565U as quad-core but with a 4.6GHz turbo. All three of these CPUs sport Intel UHD Graphics 620. The i7-8565U has a 15 Watt standard TDP and 8MB SmartCache.

The Amber Lake parts as in the Core M3-8100Y, Core i5 8200Y, and Core i7 8500Y are all dual-core parts with maximum turbo frequencies from 3.4GHz to 4.2GHz while sporting HD Graphics 615. These Amber Lake processors have a 5 Watt TDP. All of these parts remain based upon a 14nm ("14nm++") process.

More details on these new parts at Intel.com. The new CPUs are expected to begin appearing in devices as soon as next month.

The Whiskey/Amber Lake Linux support should be together if using the latest upstream components where in recent months it's mostly been a matter of adding the new PCI IDs.