Intel’s biggest reveal during IFA Berlin was the new Kaby Lake 7-th generation Core processors, but it wasn’t the only CPU news from the chip maker.
Intel also debuted the new 14nm Apollo Lake platform featuring six different Celeron and Apollo processors—though the company didn’t make a big deal about it.
The story behind the story: Apollo Lake uses the next-generation Atom architecture, Goldmont, that was meant primarily for the defunct Broxton and Sofia mobile chips. Like its predecessors, the Apollo Lake processors will be used in low-end notebooks and desktops and succeed the 14nm Braswell chips that rolled out in 2015.
Intel’s Apollo Lake lineup.
Meet Atom Lake
Intel’s new Atom Lake SOCs feature three different Pentium processors for desktops. They’re all 10 watt processors and come rocking Intel’s 500-series integrated graphics. The top processor is the 1.5GHz quad-core Pentium J4205 SOC, with a boost speed of 2.6GHz and an MSRP of $161. The other two lower-end processors (listed in the graphic above) are priced at $107.
Moving on to the stingier 6W notebook Pentium processors, the top of the line is the 1.1GHz quad-core Pentium N4200, which maxes out its burst speed at 2.5GHz. Just like the Pentium J4205 this notebook SOC has a suggested price of $161 and uses 500-series Intel integrated graphics.
The new Apollo Lake chips were first tipped in June when an Intel document named the six new chips. A slide snapped by an attendee at Computex added some expected specs for the new processors, as reported by Liliputing. Then in mid-August, HP accidentally shared details of the Pentium N4200 on its own site.
Those are the basics for the new Apollo Lake chips. If you want a deeper dive into Goldmont’s more technical aspects, including what you can expect in terms of performance from the SOCs, check out Anandtech’s look at Apollo Lake.