Intel has introduced the eleventh generation of Intel Core processors known as Rocket Lake S during this edition of CES 2021, in order to maintain its hegemony in gaming PC environments with the new Core i9-11900K.
There
are also news in Tiger Lake and its new H series, designed to ensure greater
performance in ultralight laptops and the Evo ecosystem. We chatted about
all these news with Jesús Sánchez Paniagua, Intel's Director of Consumption for
Southwest Europe.
PCW: What are the Tiger Lake chips going to contribute to competing with
AMD's Ryzen 5000 Series?
The
new Tiger Lake H series is designed to guarantee greater performance in
ultralight laptops where mobility prevails and in which it is necessary to be
efficient with energy consumption.
Just
announced the technology at CES 2021, many manufacturers are already updating
their configurations, so that throughout the first quarter of the year we will
be able to see up to 40 new models for sale.
PCW: What is the current status of the Athena project?
The Athena project arises as a
solution to meet the needs of consumers, offering the 11th generation of Intel
Core processors (code name Tiger Lake) along with another series of innovations
that must be integrated into the teams.
In
this way, we guarantee the quality and performance of the laptops under the new
Intel Evo brand, as a natural evolution of the previous computers that were
included as Ultrabook laptops.
PCW: How do you influence the evolution of Evo laptops?
The most significant aspects are yet
to come, with a 40% higher performance, the fact of leaving a standby mode in
less than 1 second, or that the battery life exceeds 9 hours of use playing
video in FullHD, or 7 hours in 4K quality.
Current
Evo specifications ensure that computers use the 11th generation of Intel Core
processors, Thunderbolt 4 connection ports, Wi-Fi 6, as well as a small form
factor for laptops with 12 to 15-inch displays.
It also requires other considerations,
such as the fact that the laptop's webcam offers a minimum quality, that
biometric accessibility elements are maintained, and that it guarantees a fast
battery charge (30 minutes for 4 hours of use).
PCW: Intel has announced Authentication using RealSense ID
Facial. When will it become a reality in the new teams?
RealSense ID and the capabilities of
the new cameras are not yet part of Athena's set of requirements, but it is
possible that over the next few reviews it will end up as part of the ecosystem
that teams must meet.
In
essence, it is about securing access to devices as an additional security
route, something that most manufacturers of these equipment already comply
with, including HP, Lenovo, Acer, Asus, Dynabook, Samsung, MSI and Huawei. ,
among others.
PCW: Now that Rocket Lake chips have become a reality, how will they
revolutionize the PC gaming market ?
Rocket
Lake is a firm commitment to a desktop architecture that comes after several
years of development. There are many expectations placed on it and from
what we have been able to verify, it increases the performance of previous
generations (instructions per clock cycle) by double digits.
It is focused on offering core
performance and that the Core are balanced, with a hybrid architecture that is
made up of Ice Lake and Tiger Lake graphics. This way we get better
graphics performance and increase the number of PCI Express 4.0 lines to a
maximum of 20 lines.
PCW: And for PC gaming lovers?
Rocket Lake will guarantee an improved
experience with overclocking ,
with the possibility of adjusting all the parameters, power, voltage, memory
settings for apps and, in short, taking the machine to the extreme of its
possibilities.
Already
within the second half of of year, the next generation of chips known as Alder
Lake, will provide another generational leap with 10nm lithography to combine
high performance and energy efficient cores.
PCW: How does Apple's decision to use its own chips affect you?
At
Intel, we are fully confident that we have the strongest
and most consistent chip launch roadmap of
the last decade.
The eleventh generation in the
different platforms has arrived to respond to everything that consumers demand. The
launches now announced at CES 2021 are another very important element to
consolidate our complete portfolio.
The
investment made in modifying the manufacturing processes and adapting three
factories to the production of 10 nm chips are the launching pad to be able to
meet the new market demand.
PCW: Finally, how have equipment sales been in Spain in
2020?
With the situation caused by COVID-19
of teleworking and monitoring of online classes by
students, the sale of equipment as a whole has had an annual growth of around
27%.
Broken
down, we see how the sale of laptops grew by 31%, while that of PC computers is
16% compared to the previous year. The market has been driven more by
supply than demand, with 9 consecutive months of growth and a total of 450,000
more PCs sold than in 2019.
PCW: And how have online sales been?
The growth in online sales has
been surprising, as more than 45% of computer sales in 2020 were managed
through the web. The industry has known how to adapt to this new
situation.
The
consumer has become more demanding in everything he demands. An important
part of the sales have been given by equipment renewal needs and replacement
with more powerful configurations.
We
have also seen how the number of people playing games using PC computers has
grown. We estimate that there are already 4.1 million PC players in Spain
with about 250,000 newcomers incorporated in 2020 and increasing the average
age and number of women.
