Intel to go beyond quad-core with Cannonlake processor family

[canopus72]

Zen is without a shadow of a doubt the kick ass bad boy on the block we should be watching out for. Cant wait.

[whatif]

Just bought skylake - check out my build https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/b/MrjcCJ

Wonder when Canonolake will release - a whole new motherbaord architecture will be required again so it's going to cost Intel as well as consumers

You mentioned that you needed more USB 2.0 headers. Have you seen the NZXT UI01 USB 2.0 expansion board. ( https://www.nzxt.com/product/detail/99-iu01-usb-expansion-case-accessory.html ).
I use two of them just for all the smart products like the Corsair Mini Commander, and 2x AIO watercoolers, the intel AC wifi PCIe card, memory card reader + USB 2.0 hub and the PSU. Still has 4x USB 2.0 ports for things like the keyboard/mouse transmitter, twin TV tuner, and IR receiver.
Had them for almost 2 years now without a problem.

[ByteMyAscii]

Technologically impressive, but really the vast majority of the software is many years behind the hardware as far as utilisation of those extra cores actually goes.
Increasing use finally in some games, but overall the support for that hardware is woefully lacking.
More cores are impressive and big numbers always look better, but only a minority of users will see any moderate usage of those.
Same reason why more ram channels or faster SSD's dont make a lot of if any difference in more typical usage scenario's, only artificial benchamrks to promote big numbers which nobody is normal use is going to see.

[canopus72]

The only reason intel is planning to release 6 and 8 core cpu's is because they clearly feel very threatened by impending Zen release, since Zen will offer 40% IPC improvement over their current top-dog called Excavator. That means the X86 8-cores Zen will trounce the 5960X. Don't forget that AMD will also be releasing the 16 cores Zen APU. I look forward to both of those beasts. Lets just hope AMD can roll out Zen before Q3. Financially, AMD is not in the best of shape. Their current golden egg is HBM. If they can market it to other companies, they could make some profit out of it. Enough to get by on until Zen is out.