Intel's Latest 8th-Gen Core Processors Focus on Improving Wi-Fi Speeds (theverge.com)

IFA 2018 is here, and to go along with the wealth of new laptops that will presumably be announced over the next few days, Intel is taking the wraps off its latest 8th-Gen processors. There are three new Whiskey Lake U-series chips (Intel's midrange line for laptops), and, for the first time, there are three 8th-Gen Amber Lake Y-series processors. From a report: While Intel is still using the same underlying architecture as its previous processors -- making these new chips ostensibly an "8.5-Gen" lineup, at least where the U-series models are concerned -- the big change that the company is highlighting is integrated gigabit Wi-Fi support. Intel promises that this should result in dramatically faster internet speeds, especially apparent on the cheaper, midrange laptops that may not have been able to offer those kinds of speeds before. Also being added to the new Y-series and U-series chips is built-in support for virtual assistants like Cortana and Alexa. So you should expect to see the digital assistants cropping up on more laptops in the near future. Further reading: Intel Launches Whiskey Lake-U and Amber Lake-Y: New MacBook CPUs?

Comments

Mmmmmm whiskey

[renegadesx]

I really dont trust Intel to build secure chips anymore, but god damn the name "whiskey lake" is incredibly intoxicating.

Because the one thing I look for in a CPU

[rsilvergun]

is improved WiFi? Seriously, I know we're at the end of Moore's law and all but come on. My work laptop is dog slow with a clean load of Windows. Maybe do something about that first please?

Re: Because the one thing I look for in a CPU

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny you should say that. Thanks to all the mitigations, both this years and last years CPU is slower than last years CPU!

Weird priorities

[DrYak]

AMD: we will try to make upcoming Zen 2 architecture more spectre-proof (not that there that many of the various spectre vulnerabilities that affect us, but still)

Intel: with 8th Gen Core architecture, we will make your Wifi a tiny bit faster, and make the various "voice assistant" devices even more efficient at spying on you.
(Forget about the ~20 and still growing list of spectre vulnerabilities affecting our chips, look at the shiny trendy instead !)

huh... what ?

Re:Network Card

[Anonymous Coward]

Shouldn't the network card of my PC be handling that?

Not if Intel wants to update your CPU microcode whenever you venture into a WiFi network under their control. This allows ad-hoc networking of Intel CPUs completely invisible to users, debuggers, and even hardware. You could infiltrate a complete corporate's hardware base by coming into WiFi range without needing to go through their rooters, firewalls, or cables. Including computers purposely quarantained from the network.