News outlet FanlessTech has tweeted an alleged Intel roadmap that reveals the potential specifications for the chipmaker's forthcoming NUC 11 products.
The NUC 11 Extreme (codename Phantom Canyon) and NUC 11 Performance (codename Panther Canyon) will seemingly exploit Intel's future 11th Generation Core Tiger Lake-U (TGL-U) processors. If the information is accurate, the first will only be available with Core i7 and Core i5 parts, while the latter will stretch to the Core i3 SKUs.
As a quick recap, Tiger Lake is expected to be manufactured on an improved 10nm++ process and feature a combination of Willow Cove cores and Gen12 Xe graphics. Besides the obvious upgrade to Gen12 graphics, Tiger Lake purportedly packs up to 50% more L3 cache in comparison to Ice Lake.
Although Tiger Lake's integrated graphics look promising, Intel will still offer buyers the option to have slap a discrete graphics card in the device. We would assume that Intel might want to put its own discrete graphics card into the Phantom Canyon. However, the leaked roadmap claims that Phantom Canyon, which presumably resides in a 1.35-liter case, comes with discrete graphics options from a third-party manufacturer instead.
Panther Canyon will arrive in 0.5-and 0.7-liter cases. The reduced space means that Tiger Lake's Gen12 solution will have to take care of all the graphics duties as there is no apparent spacing for a discrete graphics card.
As previously reported, both NUC 11s come with similar connectivity options. They could come equipped with 2.5G Ethernet port, Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5 coverage. PCIe 4.0 support is handled differently on both devices though. Phantom Canyon reportedly provides PCIe 4.0 support for graphics while retaining the older PCIe 3.0 interface for NVMe SSDs. Panther Canyon, on the other hand, will have a PCIe 4.0 slot for solid-state storage since it won't be housing any graphics cards.
As per the roadmap, Phantom Canyon and Panther Canyon were scheduled to land in the second half of the year. However, FanlessTech highlighted that the roadmap dates back to before the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak. It's unclear if the NUC 11's production was heavily affected. With the tech industry going through the mayhem, Intel's NUC 11 may land later than expected.
