Willow Cove processor core design is based on Sunny Cove, the first Intel core with a truly new core design in the last 5 years. However, Sunny Cove is only available in 10nm Ice Lake processors, while Willow Cove cores are expected to appear in Tiger Lake CPUs (10nm+ process technology). Mass printing of 10nm Intel chips is delayed until the end of 2020, so fans of Intel solutions can stay with a relatively old architecture for another year.
But it turns out that Intel is working on adapting the Willow Cove cores to its modern 14nm standards, and this may already be implemented in Rocket Lake processors. At least that's what Twitter user @chiakokhua, a retired VLSI (Very Large Scale Integrated Circuit) engineer, has been posting on his account about various CPU architecture related news.
Here's the proper translation:
Apologies, made mistakes copying the spec. RKL-UP3/S should be AVX-512."
"In plain language: RKL = 14nm version of TGL, minus iTBT, with weakened IGD"
"Plus changed VRM scheme to SVID."
- RetiredEngineer® (@chiakokhua)
He noted that the technical documents describe Rocket Lake, in fact, as a 14-nm adaptation of Tiger Lake, but at the same time, much less transistor budget was allocated for integrated graphics: this was done by engineers to make room for larger processor cores. Also FIVR (Fully Integrated Voltage Regulator) from Tiger Lake in this processor will be replaced by the traditional SVID VRM power management system.
From earlier reports, it is known that the 14nm Rocket Lake-S die will include up to 8 processor cores, although its predecessor, Comet Lake-S, had up to 10 cores. Now it is clear that the reduced number of cores will probably be partially offset by the gain in terms of the number of instructions executed per clock (IPC). This could be the first major increase in IPC since Skylake processors.
Source: 3dnews.ru