On Tuesday, Intel’s chief executive positioned the First 6GHz CPU as just another milestone — and also one his company has promised but has yet to achieve.
In a speech at the company’s Intel Innovation conference in San Jose, Chief Executive Pat Gelsinger said that when its 13th-gen Core (Raptor Lake) hits 6GHz, it won’t necessarily be something to celebrate, though it does help set the tone for the company’s ambitions. from Intel.
“It was like when we crossed the 1 GHz threshold,” said Gelsinger. “That was when we had a 950MHz [version] and we said it was just another 50MHz, right?”
That might have been true if Intel had been the first to cross the 1GHz milestone. Unfortunately, rival AMD was the first to break that mark, announcing an overclocked Athlon. (Intel, however, counter-claimed that it was the first to ship a 1GHz Pentium III, a dispute that stirred up launches of both chips in 2000.)
In any case, Intel still doesn’t have a 6GHz chip, although it only used it a few months ago. The unlocked Core i9-13900K hits a boost speed of 5.8GHz, and Intel on Tuesday promised that a 6GHz chip would ship next year in “limited volumes.” Intel didn’t specify whether this chip would be part of the current Raptor Lake-K series or a new enthusiast-level part that the company has yet to announce.
But for Gelsinger, hitting the 6GHz mark is simply one piece of the puzzle. “And for us, you know, as we rebuild the company, we rebuild the product line, it’s unquestionable leadership,” Gelsinger said.
“E cores and P cores,” said Gelsinger, referring to the architecture’s efficiency and performance cores. “Heterogeneity, processing at scale in our hybrid architecture. It’s being the leader in Wi-Fi performance, memory performance, being the leader in USB and Thunderbolt performance that we offer and being the leader in CPU – gigahertz is just one of those pieces going forward.”
We’ll have to see if Intel adopts the same stance if and when it can beat rival AMD.
