Intel turns it up to (generation) 11, and more tech news you need to know today

Your tech news digest, by way of the DGiT Daily tech newsletter, for Thursday, 3 September 2020, as IFA 2020 gets underway in Berlin.

1. Intel Tiger Lake detailed

Intel had a nice little stack of announcements, firmly trying to take back its crown from AMD’s rapid rise across PC desktops and laptops.

We saw some announcements in August, but now we have benchmarks and specs for Intel’s first 11th Gen Core Tiger Lake processors, designed to fight AMD in thin-and-light laptops.

• These quad-core CPUs will use four of Intel’s latest cores built with the Willow Cove microarchitecture, updated from Sunny Cove in the 10th gen.
• They’ll peak at 4.8GHz, up 20% from the previous gen.
• Built on Intel’s 10nm SuperFin technology.
• Nine varieties of the CPUs will range from low-power 7W up to 28W, in the i3 to i5 to i7 range.
• Intel claims they’re 32% faster than Ice Lake and 24% faster than AMD’s Ryzen laptop chip in tasks like word processing, while video editing and streaming online games jumps further.
• “It’s the most significant leap forward in a laptop processor in more than a decade,” said Gregory Bryant, general manager of Intel’s PC group. Big claims!

More features:

• The new Tiger Lake processors will be the first to use Intel Xe integrated graphics. It’s meant to be close to discrete GPU performance (and catch up to AMD’s Vega iGPUs)
• They’ll also support Thunderbolt 4 and WiFi 6.
• There’s new branding for Project Athena, now called Evo. Expect to see this on laptop boxes, as it indicates Intel has certified the laptop can run for nine hours or more on battery at modest settings, wake in less than a second, and more.
• Intel says over 150 laptop models are poised to use 11th Gen Core from the likes of Acer, ASUS, Dell, Razer, Samsung, ASUS, and so on.
• Samsung has a new Galaxy Book Flex with 5G and the 11th gen CPUs (no pricing/availability yet).
• It means great competition, and that there’s a big boost coming for your next laptop upgrade — not ignoring the competition from Apple Silicon, too.

Pricing problem?

• We don’t know anything yet about the price of Tiger Lake laptops.
• Last year, the first Ice Lake laptops from the likes of the Razer Blade Stealth and Dell XPS 13 started at a hefty $1,500.
• If Intel was forging ahead here and reducing costs, it probably would’ve told us pricing.
• What you get for your dollar might still be tipped towards AMD.

One more thing:

• Intel is revamping its logo with a new minimal look, and shock, it is updating its classic five-note audio signature.
• It’s the first change since 2006, as you can see in the gif above.
• A new logo doesn’t exactly change what you get in the box, but it does indicate Intel is trying to start fresh.
• The new ‘modernized’ sound comes later in the year (Engadget).

2. Qualcomm is bringing 5G to ultra-affordable phones with new 400-series chips (Android Authority). Also, Qualcomm’s just announced 8cx Gen 2 5G processor promises a new wave of better ARM-based laptops, but only incremental improvements (The Verge).

3. Tech demo: This cool color-changing phone switches hues on demand (Android Authority).

4. US 9th Circuit Court of Appeals rules NSA surveillance uncovered by Edward Snowden, in 2013, is illegal (Android Authority).

5. The joys of owning an ‘OG’ email account (KrebsonSecurity)

6. The first battery-free Game Boy wants to power a gaming revolution (CNET).

7. Each LED in the new Philips Hue lightstrip can match different colors on your TV, and the new gradient models are a big upgrade (Gizmodo).

8. Google proposes new campus in Mountain View, billed as a ‘neighborhood’ with homes, shops and parks (CNET).

9. SpaceX targets another Starlink launch this morning (8:41am ET) to continue record pace (Ars Technica). Also, NASA tests a rocket booster that produces 3 million pounds of thrust (Ars).

10. Incoming object with Earth impact trajectory …turns out to be a 56-year-old NASA spacecraft, with video re-entry and all (ScienceAlert).

11. These students figured out their tests were graded by AI — and the easy way to cheat. Keyword stuffing! (The Verge).

12. “Why do humans need to eat many different kinds of food to get their vitamins etc but large animals like cows only need grass to survive? “(r/ELI5)

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