Kaby Lake

Kaby Lake is the name Intel gave to its seventh generation of Core processors, which it unveiled on August 30, 2016. Like the chip that came before it, Skylake, Kaby Lake was built on a 14 nanometer manufacturing process. This release marked a shift away from Intel’s old “tick–tock” rhythm of alternating new designs and new manufacturing, instead following a new pattern called process–architecture–optimization, with Kaby Lake serving as the optimization step. Intel started shipping these chips to manufacturers and OEMs in the second quarter of 2016, and the desktop versions went on sale in January 2017.

In August 2017, Intel introduced Kaby Lake Refresh (Kaby Lake R) as its 8th generation mobile CPUs, breaking the usual link where each architecture matched a specific generation number. These chips also ended up supporting Windows 11. Originally, Skylake was supposed to be followed by Cannon Lake, a 10 nanometer design, but in July 2015 Intel announced that Cannon Lake had been pushed back to the second half of 2017. To fill the gap, Intel released a fourth 14 nanometer generation called Coffee Lake on October 5, 2017. Cannon Lake finally arrived in 2018, but only one mobile CPU ever came out, and it was discontinued the next year.

Development of Kaby Lake was led by Intel’s Israeli team in Haifa, the same group behind earlier processors like the 8088, Banias, Dothan, Conroe, Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge, and Skylake. Ran Senderovitz, manager of Intel’s Israel Development Centers, said the team initially planned only basic improvements over the previous generation but then shifted focus, applying innovation and determination to achieve major gains. He claimed the seventh generation chips were 12% faster for applications and 19% faster for internet use compared to the sixth generation, though third-party benchmarks did not confirm these numbers for gaming.

Kaby Lake used an improved 14 nanometer process called 14FF+, which allowed for faster clock speeds, quicker clock speed changes, and higher Turbo frequencies. Beyond these tweaks, the CPU architecture itself changed very little from Skylake, so instructions per clock (IPC) stayed the same. The graphics architecture was updated to boost 3D graphics and 4K video playback.