Intel’s Amber Lake processors are low-power, 8th-gen Intel Core chips designed for fanless laptops, tablets, mini PCs, and other devices where manufacturers want to balance power consumption with performance.
The chip maker launched the first 5 watt Amber Lake chips in mid-2018, but when Apple unveiled an updated MacBook Air a few months alter, it was powered by a previously unannounced 7 watt Amber Lake chip.
Now it has more company. Intel has quietly updated its Amber Lake chip lineup so that there are now six processors, including three 5 watt chips and three 7 watt versions with higher CPU frequencies.
We first got a hint that the new chips were coming last month, when some new model numbers showed up in an Intel document. Now all the details are available from Intel’s ARK website.
Here’s an overview of the updated Amber Lake lineup. The newer models have asterisks before their names.
- * Core i7-8510Y – 7 watt/1.8 GHz base/3.9 GHz boost/UHD 615 graphics (300 MHz/1.05 GHz)
- Core i7-8500Y – 5 watt/1.5 GHz base/4.2 GHz boost/UHD 617 graphics (300 MHz/1.05 GHz)
- * Core i5-8310Y – 7 watt/1.6 GHz base/3.9 boost/UHD 617 graphics (300 MHz/1.05 GHz)
- * Core i5-8210Y – 7 watt/1.6 GHz base/3.6 GHz boost/UHD 617 graphics (300 MHz/1.05 GHz)
- Core i5-8200Y – 5 watt/1.3 GHz base/3.9 GHz boost/UHD 615 (300 MHz/950 MHz)
- Core i3-8100Y – 5 watt/1.1 GHz base/3.4 GHz boost/UHD615 (300 MHz/900MHz)
All six chips are 14nm, dual-core, quad-thread processors with support for up to 16GB of dual channel RAM.
via CNX-Software
If you look closely, this is evidence that Intel is running low on dies to harvest due to process hard limits and supply shortages. The U-class quad-core Whiskey Lake processors (Core i5-8265, i5-8365, i5-8665, etc.) recently had a boost clock increase by 500-600MHz. The fact they had to drop the boost clock (this has never happened before for the Y-class/Core M SKUs) on these higher wattage Y model is indicative that in order to have enough higher quality Whiskey Lake U-class dies to support their higher boost clocks, they had to relegate the lower quality dies to these Y-class ones. They can only cherry pick so many dies before they have to rob Peter to pay Paul.
Edit: In looking at Intel’s ARK, it looks like a typo! The title text for the i5-8510Y, for example, says up to 4.30 GHz. See here for yourselves:
https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/compare.html?productIds=185281,194698
Your theory might have held water, but these Y-class chips are dual-core. Different dies.