There’s more evidence that Intel plans to launch laptop chips with up to 6 cores and 12 threads. We got a first glimpse at an unannounced 45W Core i7-8720HK hexa-core processor in December, and details about a higher-performance Core i7-8750HK leaked this week.
Now a leaked Intel roadmap suggests Intel may have at least one more hexa-core laptop chip on the way.
German site ComputerBase has published a series of pictures that allegedly show an Intel roadmap released in January. Among other things, the roadmap features two previously unannounced laptop-class processors:
- Core i7-8550H: 2.6GHz base/4.3 GHz boost, 6-cores, 12-threads, 9MB cache
- Core i5-8400H: 2.5 GHz base/4.2 GHz boost, 4-cores, 8t-threads, 8MB cache
Both chips seem to be able to run at 35W or 45W and they feature Intel UHD 630 integrated graphics and support for DDR4-2666 or LPDDR3-2133 memory.
Intel’s H-series processors are typically aimed at high-performance laptops that need more power than the thin-and-light models served by Intel’s 15 watt U-series chips. But while Intel has been offering 8th-gen Core U chips for months, the H-series has been missing until now. Well, kind of.
Theoretically the new Kaby Lake-G chips Intel announced last month pair an H-series CPU with an AMD GPU. But since you couldn’t get those CPUs on a separate package, I’m not sure that counts.
The “H” moniker at the end of the name is a little confusing. In the past, the H has indicated that it is usually a higher wattage or higher performance version of an “M” model (like MQ and HQ are both quad-core, as indicated by the Q, but the H model is higher performance).
Does the standalone H indicate “Hexa”?
HQ and MQ mobile processors only existed together in Haswell/Broadwell era, and they have equal performance – the difference is that MQ processors were socketed, while HQ processors were soldered onto the motherboard.