Does Intel Have An 18-Core Processor Secret?

Expect massive leap from 10-core processor soon with Intel Core i9-7980XE processor.

Ah, the good old days when tech fans drooled over a dual-core processor… we were so young and innocent then (and by then we mean somewhere around 2012). Now, a huge trove of leaked information points directly to an 18-core processor coming soon from Intel, an almost exponential increase from its hot-ticket 10-core processor in its most recent generation.

The processor wars are well and truly heating up!

We love a good leak

Tech news leaks are a lot of fun for a variety of reasons, most of which center around the ability to speculate on what this will mean for all of the manufacturers – hint: AMD is rumored to be releasing a monster of a multi-core processor in both Ryzen and Threadripper – and waxing poetic on what this will mean for speed and capability. Of course, the other fun part of an incomplete insider peek is stabbing in the dark about the possible price points.

A massive development

According to Anthony Leather from Forbes (whose data comes from Videocardz), “It’s a massive development if true as it means that Intel is nearly doubling the core count from its previous flagship, the Core i7-6950X, which has 10 cores, and that’s just from one generation to the next… With AMD planning to go all-out with Ryzen and Threadripper – both desktop parts that use common PC components, and also with AMD’s Zen architecture showing promise, this is perhaps not an entirely unexpected move from Intel.”

Price point

However the processor war plays out, here’s hoping that the price point is workable, or at least that the rumors prove to be true just in time for the massive back-to-school sales and tax-free holidays. As too many other tech giants have discovered, though, releasing a high-dollar major improvement from one generation to the next puts you at risk of alienating those consumers who just shelled out a lot of money for the previous generation; hopefully that means a manageable price tag on any brands that boast the new high-powered processors.