Intel’s “Apollo Lake” line of Celeron and Pentium processors are low-cost, low-power chips that are found in entry-level laptops, convertibles, and small form-factor desktops.
Rumor has it that Intel is readying the follow-up to Apollo Lake, codenamed “Gemini Lake,” and now a few more details are emerging.
Following last week’s report detailing some Gemini Lake specs, PC Watch has published a product roadmap from computer hardware company ASRock, and journalist Roland Quandt has shared a few details he picked up while covering the Computex Trade Show in Taiwan.
In a nutshell, it sounds like Gemini Lake is set to ship in December, 2017 although that doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll be able to buy computers powered by the chips right away.
ASRock’s roadmap shows that the company is already developing at least one Gemini Lake mini-ITX (170mm x 170mm) motherboard, but it’s not expected to ship until 2018.
The company also has a few other Gemini Lake products that are still in the planning stage, including a Pico-ITX (100mm x 72mm) board, a PC-Q7 ITX (70mm x 70mm) board and a COM Express Type 6 computer-on-a-module product.
ASRock also plans to build an Intel NUC-like (104mm x 102mm) device with a Gemini Lake processor.
For the most part the upcoming Gemini Lake chips will likely be a lot like today’s Apollo Lake variants. They’re expected to be based on a new version of the Goldmont chip architecture called Goldmont Plus, and they’ll support HDMI 2.0 and feature 4MB of cache, up from HDMI 1.4b and 2MB cache.
Intel’s expected to offer 6 watt and 10 watt models in dual-core and quad-core variants, and they’re all expected to feature Intel Gen9 graphics. Unless the chip maker boosts the clock speeds significantly in the new models, I would only expect to see a modest performance boost.
But later in 2018 Intel plans to launch its first Mercury Lack chips built on a 10nm process. That should bring larger performance and efficiency improvements.
I find it interesting that mini-itx has all chipsets supported. Personally I prefer mini-itx as I only use the graphics card and m.2 slots. My Lian-li aluminum mini-itx tower has been working great for years. Full size ATX power supply. I don’t think I will ever buy a new case.