Following its high-end desktop platform launch with the Core X family, Intel is closing the year with the 8th generation Core "Coffee Lake" mainstream processor family. 2017 has been an exciting year in the world of processors with AMD's Ryzen offering becoming an unexpected success, restoring much-needed competition to the CPU market. AMD is able to compete with Intel at nearly every price point, which spells trouble for Intel's mainstream-desktop platform; one of its main cash cows for high-margin processors.
The 8th generation Core processor family is based on the new "Coffee Lake" silicon, which is the company's fourth to be built on the 14 nanometer process (after Broadwell, Skylake, and Kaby Lake). It is proof that Intel's "tick-tock" product development cycle is off the rails, and the company can no longer launch a new process every other year. In the face of a reinvigorated AMD, there was only one direction in which Intel could have enhanced its mainstream-desktop processor lineup – core counts.
