Intel Debuts New Silicon at CES Including 8th Gen Core Processors

The annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas has long been the place where Intel has debuted its latest products and announced new innovations. At the 2018 CES show, Intel didn’t break that trend in announcing a new Intel Core chip, quantum computing innovations and the latest generation of its NUC (next unit of computing) systems.

The new 8th Generation Intel Core differs from its predecessors in multiple ways, with the most notable new addition being the direct integration of the AMD Radeon RX Vega M Graphics Processing Unit (GPU). The 8th Gen Intel Core includes a quad-core CPU and 4GB of dedicated HBM2 (High Bandwidth Memory), by way of Intel’s Embedded Multi-Die Interconnect Bridge (EMIB) technology.

“EMIB acts as a high-speed intelligent information bridge between the GPU and HBM2 and reduces the usual silicon footprint to less than half that of discrete components implemented separately,” Intel explained in a press release detailing the new chip.

In addition to the chip itself, Intel also announced the latest iteration of its NUC platform, which will be powered by the 8th Gen Intel Core.

“The new Intel NUC (formerly code-named Hades Canyon) brings this powerful new processor and graphics solution into an incredibly tiny 1.20-liter system. Great for VR enthusiasts and workload-heavy content creators, it will be Intel’s smallest premium VR-capable system in the market,” Intel stated.

Quantum Computing

While the Intel Core chip is a current-day reality, Intel used CES as the platform to talk about the future of computing as well, and not all of it is silicon-based either.

During his CES keynote on Jan. 8, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich announced Intel has fabricated a 49-qubit superconducting test chip.

“In the quest to deliver a commercially viable quantum computing system, it’s anyone’s game,” Mike Mayberry, corporate vice president and managing director of Intel Labs, stated. “We expect it will be five to seven years before the industry gets to tackling engineering-scale problems, and it will likely require 1 million or more qubits to achieve commercial relevance.”

Neuromorphic Computing

While the promise of Quantum computing is still a few years out, Intel is working on another area called Neuromorphic computing, which aims to mimic the human brain’s operations.

The first test chip was announced by Intel at CES and is code-named Loihi.

“This has been a major research effort by Intel and today we have a fully functioning neuromorphic research chip,” Krzanich said. “This incredible technology adds to the breadth of AI solutions that Intel is developing.”

Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at ServerWatch and InternetNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.