Developing a processor is not simple, it requires different phases of manufacturing and testing. Normally, these prototype-type designs don’t usually see the light of day, although sometimes some can be filtered into images, and even be commercialized. A development board has now been leaked Intel in which the curious would have boarded m3-8114Y processor.
You should know that in 2018, Intel launched the first 10nm processor, the Core i3-8121U, for laptops. This processor with very green 10 nm lithography was barely present on the market. Shortly after, the m3-8114Y was launched, an extremely low power solution.
What is curious about this second processor is that it is designed for very low consumption embedded and portable systems. In fact, we don’t know much about the m3-8114Y, so much so that it doesn’t even appear in the Intel ARK database.
The unknown m3-8114Y processor
This processor was never officially announced by Intel and we have almost no data. At the time, in 2018, a benchmark of this processor was leaked on a Lenovo laptop. In fact, we know little about this processor beyond that and have never seen a laptop with this processor on the market.
According to the data we have at that time, Intel m3-8114Yt processorhad a total of 2 cores and 4 threads. This processor had a basic frequency from 1.5GHz and could reach 2.2GHz In Boost mode and one 5 Watt TDP.
The leaked image of a test board is really curious, showing a processor with three DIEs. Apparently, the largest one located in the center (70.52 mm square) would be the processor. Located on the left we have the chipset with an area of 46.17 square mm.
But, without a doubt, the most curious thing is the smallest chip, which is not the graphics card, as one might think. This is actually the McIVR, a multi-chip integrated voltage regulator designed to control the CPU and chipset.
We also see on this development board four Samsung LPDDR4-3733 memory chips which total 8 GB. For storage, 128 MB SK Hynix eMMC memory has been provided. It also integrates an Intel 9560 Wi-Fi 5 wireless network card. In addition, we can see a large number of interfaces and development and debugging slots.
The craziest detail of this dev board is that in the bottom left corner is a picture of the Pokémon, Meowth. A rather curious and not at all common detail. The text below is nothing more than an identifier for the development board.
We assume this processor was discontinued, as it was never released to the market. Although there is a benchmark of a Lenovo system with this processor, it is possible that the brand will never end up launching it.
We are talking about a processor manufactured in 10nm, but not using a good process. We know that Intel had a lot of problems moving from 14nm to 10nm. So much so that the manufacturing of chips using the 14nm process had to be extended by almost four years.