INTEL 6TH GEN CODE NAMED SKYLAKE.

There was a time, when you would showoff the technical specifications of your Personal Computer and your friends would be jealous of you because they had a slightly lower end version of your PC, Until someone in your friends circle brought a new one.

Then there was a sudden surge of the mobile phone segment and in particular, Smartphone industry, collectively first the Phones and now the Smartphones have taken PC industry for a ride.

Many people feel that there has been a decline in year-on-year sales of the personal computers for the past couple of years. But, the processor maker Intel thinks otherwise and is heavily pushing upgraded chips that help developers to build some beautiful products and some really amazing games with breathtaking graphics and actions.

This can in turn bring back those huge sets of users who loves to play hardcore graphics oriented games. To add up to the list, the company has unveiled no less than 48 Intel Skylake a.k.a 6th generation processors for desktop and mobile with both under clocked and over clocked options.

Similar to last years’ Broadwell Microarchitecture, Intel has pushed 14nm process nodes to the Skylake processors as well. The desktop family comprises a Core i3, Core i5 and Core i7 line-up aimed at all types of desktop devices across the market, for the gamers to traditional PCs, all-in-ones, mini PCs, portable all-in-ones and the Intel Compute stick (as well as other sticks).

Compared to the 5th gen processors, the Intel Skylake promises a 60 percent better performance, 11x better HD graphics performance and an ability to overclock it. Also, the company is trying to bring in DDR4 to the mainstream at last. Well, yourd DDR3 will work, but you need to have a lower-voltage variant of DDR3 that’s not very common on desktop systems.

For the mobile devices, Intel has released three types of processors:-

• 5W Y-series with Intel HD graphics 515 for 2-in-1s and detachable.
• 15W U-series with Intel HD Graphics 520 for “thin and light powerful systems.
• Most powerful 45W H-series with Intel HD Graphics P530 for “the ultimate mobile experience”

Even for the tablets, Intel has upgraded the Core M line up of chips, which promises to double the performance, 14 percent better graphics and a whooping 10 hours battery backup on the machine running Windows 10 operating system.

All in all, Intel Skylake seems to be a worthy upgrade keeping in the mind the cost it carries for the chip as well as the other upgrades like DDR4 RAM. This line of chipsets claimed to be 30 percent better performance than a three-year-old Ivy Bridge architecture or a third generation processor, 20 percent better performance than a two-year-old Haswell architecture or a fourth generation processor and a 10 percent better performance than a year old Broadwell architecture or a fifth generation processor.

Here are some of the benchmarks pulled from the web which are a two year old chipset i7 4790K vs latest i7 6700K chipset.

Mobile Specific – Intel Skylake Processors

As said before, Intel has launched a chipset based on Skylake architecture wherein the cache memory ranges from 3MB to 8MB and clock speed ranging from 2.3GHz to 3.8GHz. Well, these are really powerful chipsets for the gamers. Also, the ability to overclocking and underclocking few more advantages for the manufacturers to place their product from being a best productivity to best gaming system.

6th Generation Intel® Core™ i3 Processors for Mobile Products

Processor Number	Intel® Core™ i3-6100H Processor (3M Cache, 2.70 GHz)	Intel® Core™ i3-6100U Processor (3M Cache, 2.30 GHz)
Cache	3 MB	3 MB
Clock Speed	2.7 GHz	2.3 GHz
# of Cores/# of Threads	2/4	2/4
Max TDP/Power	35 W	15 W
Memory Types	DDR4-2133, LPDDR3-1866, DDR3L-1600	DDR4-1866/2133, LPDDR3-1600/1866
Graphics	Intel® HD Graphics 530	Intel® HD Graphics 520

6th Generation Intel® Core™ i5 Processors for Mobile Products

Processor Number	Intel® Core™ i5-6440HQ Processor (6M Cache, up to 3.50 GHz)	Intel® Core™ i5-6300HQ Processor (6M Cache, up to 3.20 GHz)	Intel® Core™ i5-6300U Processor (3M Cache, up to 3.00 GHz)
Cache	6 MB	6 MB	3 MB
Clock Speed	2.6 GHz	2.3 GHz	2.4 GHz
# of Cores/# of Threads	4/4	4/4	2/4
Max TDP/Power	45 W	45 W	15 W
Memory Types	DDR4-2133, LPDDR3-1866, DDR3L-1600	DDR4-1866/2133, LPDDR3-1600/1866	DDR4-1866/2133, LPDDR3-1600/1866
Graphics	Intel® HD Graphics 530	Intel® HD Graphics 530	Intel® HD Graphics 520

6th Generation Intel® Core™ i7 Processors for Mobile Products

Processor Number	Intel® Core™ i7-6920HQ Processor (8M Cache, up to 3.80 GHz)	Intel® Core™ i7-6820HQ Processor (8M Cache, up to 3.60 GHz)	Intel® Core™ i7-6820HK Processor (8M Cache, up to 3.60 GHz)
Cache	8 MB	8 MB	8 MB
Clock Speed	2.9 GHz	2.7 GHz	2.7 GHz
# of Cores/# of Threads	4/8	4/8	4/8
Max TDP/Power	45 W	45 W	45 W
Memory Types	DDR4-2133, LPDDR3-1866, DDR3L-1600	DDR4-1866/2133, LPDDR3-1600/1866	DDR4-1866/2133, LPDDR3-1600/1866
Graphics	Intel® HD Graphics 530	Intel® HD Graphics 530	Intel® HD Graphics 520

When the power of the 6th generation Intel Core processor meets the promise of Windows 10, bold becomes breathtaking. With such huge processing powers, one can feel the stunning improvements in Visual Experiences. There is a huge dip in wake up time of the processor as well that leads to boot up the system in flash and lets you switch in and out of apps more seamlessly than ever.

All the new features look fine on paper, but it’s up to us to see whether these new features will cause a big impact on the actual user experience in the real world. Further testing of the final units will confirm or disapprove the claims that Intel has been making. I am already waiting to get these processors and start playing my favorite games.