Skylake overload! 48 new Intel 6th gen Core processors for desktop and mobile

It's raining Skylake

In the company’s biggest and most ambitious rollout of a new generation processor, Intel launches no less than 48 new 6th gen Core processors that span the desktop, notebook, 2-in-1 convertibles and tablet segment.

With a focus on re-architecting the 14nm Broadwell processor to bring about an improved leap in performance and power efficiency, Intel’s engineers have delved deep to tweak the microarchitecture to deliver Skylake. Optimized for Windows 10, together with supporting hardware like a new sensor hub, Intel’s RealSense 3D technology and more, Skylake based systems will be the first in a new breed of systems that will deliver new experiences like voice activated commands, face/iris recognition based authentication and more.

All 48 Skylake CPUs are broadly segmented in 4 processor series with Y, U and H-series reserved for mobility products and S-series for desktops. Note that there are several TDP variants for each class as this following slide summarizes:-

Skylake desktop processors

We start off by listing the 20 new desktop S-series Skylake processors, two of which (K-SKU variants) have been launched a few weeks earlier:-

We managed to get a very brief test run of Intel's Core i5-6400, Core i5-6600T and Core i5-6700K on identically configured systems using an ASUS Z170M-Plus motherboard with 16GB of DDR4-2133 memory. Here then are the compiled results:-

Mobile Skylake processors

Moving on, we'll cover each of the three series of mobile processors. This slide above sums up the key differences among the Skylake mobile processors.

The high performance H-series of processors is where Intel raked up the most number of firsts such as the first unlocked mobile K- SKU processor, first quad-core Core i5 mobile processor and last but not least, mobile Xeon processors.

Here then are the nine H-series 45W Skylake processors:- 

Next is the workhorse of the notebook platform that will service most ultrabooks and the likes, the U-series. Available in 28W and 15W editions, there are 14 mobile processors in this group. Take note that the processors with Iris Graphics will debut at a later undisclosed date.

The last segment of mobile Skylake processors are the 4.5W Y-Series of Core M processors. This time round, Intel has sub-divided them into m7, m5 and m3 branding, just like the Core-i series to help consumers figure out what class of Core M processors are they buying into. Given the Characteristics of Core M processors, they are targeted at seriously thin and light machines, 2-in-1 convertibles and tablets where fanless designs are getting common.

Expect even more Skylake processors to be released later in the year and next year for commercial systems, servers and a larger variety of Iris graphics based processors.

Meanwhile, you can read a lot more about Skylake in the following articles:-

• New experiences offered by Skylake systems and Windows 10
• Deep diving into Skylake's architecture
• Performance preview of Aftershock's S-15 notebook running Skylake

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