Intel Sends Exclusive Invites For Architecture Day, Just Don't Expect Gaming GPUs Yet

The invite goes on to state, “Join us as we take a look at how Intel's innovation will bring breakthroughs in new products and experiences.”

It should come as no surprise that most of us would be quick to assume that Intel will discuss its upcoming dedicated graphics cards at the event. In fact, when news of the conference began making the rounds this morning, all of the headlines pointed to Intel’s new GPU as being a major topic of discussion. However, an Intel representative told HotHardware that these reports are “inaccurate”.

Update 11/28/18 - 4:40 PM - Another, physically shipped invite, that Intel sent today includes an illuminated magnifying glass, signalling that these sessions will be architectural deep dives of Intel's next-generation CPU architecture.

While that may be disappointing news to hear for those that want plenty of early details on a strong competitor to AMD and NVIDIA in the graphics market, we're almost certain to hear about Intel's architecture that will power its upcoming 14nm++ Cascade Lake-AP Xeon server processors. Intel is committed to delivering Cascade Lake-SP processors during the first half of 2019, and they will be competing directly against AMD's 7nm Zen 2-based EPYC processors.

Late last week, we received some alleged early benchmarks of two 2P systems: one with two 48-core Cascade Lake-AP Xeon processors, and one with two 64-core Zen 2 EPYC processors. Both machines put down some incredible Cinebench R15 scores, and were within a few hundred points of each other.

Since Intel also plans to talk about its client business, it's likely that we may hear details on the rumored Comet Lake-S processors that we first talked about over the weekend. Comet Lake-S is rumored to leapfrog over the 8-core Coffee Lake-S processors with burly 10-core SKUs. In addition to further Cascade Lake-AP details and potentially Comet Lake-S, it's possible we'll receive an update on Intel's 10nm chip production, aka Ice Lake. Intel's first 10nm processors (consumer market) are expected to ship during the latter half of 2019, while 10nm parts for the server market aren't expected to arrive until 2020. Whether or not Intel is willing to talk about this process status as early as next month, is anyone's guess.

Of course, this is just speculation on our part, and Intel hasn't confirmed any of this. We'll be attending Intel's event next month and will be providing coverage as permitted. And if you'd like to hear more about Intel's upcoming GPUs, we will be holding a Q&A session with Intel on this very topic soon.