Intel Quietly Speeds Up Skylake-U: i7-6660U now in Price List
by Anton Shilov on March 24, 2016 1:00 PM EST
Intel has quietly added a new Skylake-U processor into its price list. The new Intel Core i7-6660U system-on-chip is designed for low-power notebook systems and provides higher performance than its direct predecessor, the Core i7-6650U, and sits on the top of Intel's 15W mobile CPU stack.
The new Intel Core i7-6660U belongs to the Skylake-U family of processors that feature CPU and PCH on the same piece of substrate and are used to build mobile PCs with low power consumption. The new chip is currently only listed in Intel’s price list, which reveals its general specs (two cores with hyperthreading, 4 MB L3 cache and 2.40 GHz clock-rate, no word on turbo) as well as its price of $415 in 1000-unit quantities. The CPU costs the same amount of money as the Core i7-6650U and the Core i7-6560U.
If the Core i7-6660U chip shares general design with its predecessor, then it features two cores with Hyper-Threading technology clocked at 2.40 GHz (up 200 MHz from the i7-6650U), 4 MB L3 cache, a dual-channel memory controller (support for DDR4-2133, LPDDR3-1866 and DDR3L-1600 memory), Intel Iris Graphics 540 (48 execution units with 64 MB eDRAM, up to 1.05 GHz clock rate, up to 806.4 GFLOPS compute performance) as well as a 15 W TDP. The new processor should also support all the technologies that other Skylake-generation mobile Core i7 chips support, including AES-NI, AVX 2, vPro, virtualization (VT-x, VT-d), software guard extensions (SGX), TSX-NI, MPX, Trusted Execution, Secure Key, SSE4.1/4.2 and so on.
| Intel Core i7 "Skylake-U" CPU Comparison | ||||||
| Core i7-6660U | Core i7-6650U | Core i7-6600U | Core i7-6500U | Core i7-6567U | ||
| Cores/Threads | 2/4 | |||||
| Base Frequency | 2.4 GHz | 2.2 GHz | 2.6 GHz | 2.5 GHz | 3.3 GHz | |
| Turbo Frequency | unknown | 3.4 GHz | 3.4 GHz | 3.1 GHz | 3.6 GHz | |
| L2 Cache | 256 KB x 2 (512 KB) | |||||
| L3 Cache | 4 MB | |||||
| Memory | Dual-channel DRAM controller with DDR4-2133, LPDDR3-1866, DDR3L-1600 support |
|||||
| iGPU | Iris Graphics 540 | Iris Graphics 540 | HD Graphics 520 | HD Graphics 520 | Iris Graphics 550 | |
| iGPU Config | 48 EUs | 24 EUs | 48 EUs | |||
| eDRAM | 64 MB | - | 64 MB | |||
| TDP | 15 W | 28 W | ||||
| Configurable TDP-down | unknown | 9.5 W | 7.5 W | 23 W | ||
| Launch | Q1 2016 | Q3 2015 | ||||
| Price | $415 | $415 | $393 | $393 | $415 | |
The quiet addition of the Core i7-6660U into the price list indicates that Intel is starting to gradually refresh its Skylake lineup of products. It is unclear whether the refresh is conditioned by the upcoming spring refresh cycle of PC makers or higher yields of chips produced using the 14 nm process technology. Nonetheless, the new CPU will help PC makers to differentiate their new offerings and speed up performance in certain applications.
Source: Intel Price List via CPU-World.
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MrCommunistGen - Thursday, March 24, 2016 - link
It seems to also be listed in the Intel ARK: http://ark.intel.com/products/88192MrCommunistGen - Thursday, March 24, 2016 - link
oops nm... 6660Uzepi - Thursday, March 24, 2016 - link
EDRAM versions have seemed to be very elusive vaporware as they are only now starting to show up in some devices...Valantar - Friday, March 25, 2016 - link
Unfortunately, it seems like device makers outside of Apple have some sort of Iris anxiety. And of course, apple only uses the more power hungry 28W versions. Considering how graphics horsepower is the most obvious weakness of todays ultrabooks, I really don't get why we aren't at least offered an option with this. With a $22 price difference, they would even make (sort of) a killing swapping these in and making this option a $50 upgrade. I'd gladly pay that for a decent iGPU in an ultrabook.ikjadoon - Friday, March 25, 2016 - link
Hmmm...I wonder. Looking at the Iris options, you have 15W for 48EU + 2.4GHz base. Can you realistically use both the GPU + CPU effectively enough to game? 15W is not a lot of headroom, thermally or electrically.Hrel - Friday, March 25, 2016 - link
Well, if you intend to game then you aren't looking at Ultra Books, so....Valantar - Sunday, March 27, 2016 - link
Not without the CPU throttling way below base - you already see that on non-iris parts, no reason to expect anything else with these. Although (with sufficient cooling in the system) I'd love for Intel to be more flexible with this. Don't see how increasing the power limit to 20 watts while gaming would harm anything. It's not like anyone but Apple uses the 28W SKUs anyway.ajp_anton - Friday, March 25, 2016 - link
I just ordered a Dell XPS13 with the i7-6560U. Seems to have been an option there for a while now.Krysto - Sunday, March 27, 2016 - link
Yup, but it paid handsomely for Intel in terms of great PR, especially when sites like Anadtech went right along with Intel's misleading of customers by comparing Iris Pro to mainstream dedicated GPUs, as if you were actually going to get the much more expensive Iris Pro to replace those mainstream GPUs from AMD and Nvidia.TheinsanegamerN - Thursday, March 24, 2016 - link
Hoping that 6567u ends up in the 13 inch macbook pro