What Intel’s 10th-gen ‘Ice Lake’ processors mean for your next laptop

Thin-and-light laptops are about to get hella fast starting later this year.

Powered by Intel’s new 10th-generation “Ice Lake” Core processors, svelte laptops will be capable of faster AI processing, gaming performance, and speedier WiFi connectivity.

The new computer chips, based on a smaller and more power-efficient 10-nanometer process, will be available in the usual Core i3, Core i5, and Core i7 configurations and will come with two to four cores.

Like previous Intel chips, the new 10th-gen CPUs will be split between “Y-Series” and “U-Series.” Y-Series chips will use up less power — good for the thinnest and lightest laptops like the MacBook Air — and have lower performance. U-Series chips, however, have faster clock speeds, but also eat up more power; you’ll find these in devices like the MacBook Pro or gaming laptops.

But enough with the geeky specs. What will these 10th-gen chips enable? Intel says they’ll be able to run AI instructions up to 2.5x faster than the previous 9th-gen chips and up to 8x faster than competing chips (Intel didn’t specify, but we can safely assume it’s an AMD CPU).

As computers integrate more AI – think applications like voice assistants, on-device machine learning, and real-time image recognition — they need to be able to efficiently process this data. Intel believes the boost to AI performance enabled by these new chips are more important than simply increasing the clock speed.

Gaming is also another activity that’ll get a large spike in performance. Thanks to powerful Iris Plus Graphics — Intel’s beefiest integrated graphics to date built with the first new architecture since its sixth-gen “Skylake” chips — “top games” will be playable at 1080p resolution with up to 2x faster frame rates. Intel specifically called out Fortnite and Dirt Rally 2 as two games that would be playable on new laptops without discrete graphics.

Intel upped the ante with smooth 4K video playback with its 8th-gen “Kaby Lake Refresh”. With the new 10th-gen chips, they’re furthering that with 4K video playback at up to 60 frames per second in HDR. The company says 4K HDR will be able to display video in a billion colors.

Lastly, the new 10th-gen chips will come with full support for WiFi 6, the next-gen wireless connectivity that’s up to 3x faster than WiFi 5 (formerly called 802.11ac). Wired connectivity will also see improvement with support for up to four Thunderbolt 3 ports baked directly into the device, as opposed to being an add-on option; Thunderbolt 3 provides up to 4x faster data transfer speeds compared to USB 3.1, which is the data transfer standard on 9th-gen Intel chips.

All of these upgrades will help revitalize interest in skinny laptops and open the door to more powerful versions of machines like the Surface Laptop, Dell XPS 13, and of course, Apple’s MacBook. Will you finally be able to game next-gen versions of these laptops? Intel says yes, but we’ll wait and see when the chips themselves make their way into clamshells this holiday season.