Unique picture by PCMag.

When you had been in a coma, simply awoke, and had been planning on upgrading to a Rocket Lake CPU, you higher transfer shortly. Intel has revealed a “product change notification” stating a “discontinuance program” has began for its Rocket Lake CPU line. That program started on Feb. 6, so the end-of-life clock is already ticking. Rocket Lake launched in March 2021 and was the corporate’s ultimate 14nm product. Intel changed it with Alder Lake simply seven months later as the corporate lastly, lastly moved to Intel 7 (previously often known as 10nm) for its desktop CPUs.

Intel’s steering states the discontinuation program has already began, however the CPUs gained’t disappear in a single day. Companies nonetheless have till Aug. 25 to ship their ultimate orders to Intel. That features boxed (DIY) and tray (bulk) orders, that are unsurprisingly non-refundable. We think about there gained’t be too lots of these pouring in over the following few months, given its age. The ultimate cargo date for any Rocket Lake CPUs comes on Feb. 24, 2024. It’s additionally discontinuing the 400 and 500 collection chipsets alongside the identical time-frame, according to Tom’s {Hardware}.

(Picture: Intel)

Rocket Lake was a bizarre product for Intel. On the one hand, it marked the corporate’s first semi-new structure in a really very long time. As we noted then, it differed from Skylake, Kaby Lake, Espresso Lake, Whiskey Lake, and Comet Lake through the use of the Cypress Cove structure. Nevertheless, that was primarily based on the 10nm Ice Lake cell structure with Sunny Cove, which was backported to 14nm for Rocket Lake. This allowed Intel to attain the upper clocks it wanted to compete with AMD.

Regardless of its excessive clock speeds, the truth that Intel had launched one other eight-core CPU on the 14nm course of was the supply of many an eyeroll. By then, AMD was already on 7nm through TSMC and had a 12-core, 24-thread CPU within the Ryzen 9 5900X. The Core i9-11900K’s excessive clock speeds and single-threaded efficiency allowed it to compete towards AMD in gaming. Nevertheless, in multi-threaded checks, it couldn’t maintain a candle to the Ryzen 9.

All in all, this marks the closing of a chapter of Intel’s historical past that we think about the corporate is keen to neglect. Its battle to leap nodes from 14nm to 10nm is one among legend that allowed TSMC to surpass it. When Rocket Lake arrived, AMD was firmly in command of the fanatic market. The launch of the eleventh gen CPUs did little to vary that. It has been capable of flip the tide with its Alder and Raptor Lake architectures. Nevertheless, with these within the rear view, it finds itself on the precipice of a node bounce as soon as once more. It’s seeking to transfer from Intel 7 to Intel 4 for Meteor Lake, due in 2023. The query is whether or not historical past will repeat itself.

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