Rocket Lake is Intel's codename for its 11th generation Core microprocessors. Released on March 30, 2021,^[2] it is based on the new Cypress Cove microarchitecture, a variant of Sunny Cove (used by Intel's Ice Lake mobile processors) backported to Intel's 14 nm process node.^[4] Rocket Lake cores contain significantly more transistors than Skylake-derived Comet Lake cores.

Rocket Lake features the same LGA 1200 socket and 400-series chipset compatibility as Comet Lake, except H410 and B460 chipsets. It is accompanied by new 500-series chipsets as well.^[5] Rocket Lake has up to eight cores, down from 10 cores for Comet Lake. It features Intel Xe graphics, and PCIe 4.0 support.^[6] Only a single M.2 drive is supported in PCIe 4.0 mode, while all the rest are wired via PCIe 3.0.^[7]

Intel officially launched the Rocket Lake desktop family on March 16, 2021, with sales commencing on March 30.^[8] The 11th generation Core i3, as well as Rocket Lake-based Pentium Gold and Celeron CPUs were not included along with the higher-end models; instead, Intel launched refreshed models for Comet Lake Core i3 and Pentium Gold CPUs. These processors have the same characteristics as their original parts, albeit with a 100 MHz higher frequency and the last digit of their model numbers changing from zero to five.^[9] Intel also released Tiger Lake processors as part of the 11th generation lineup in the desktop/NUC and tablet market. Such processors have the new B suffix in the model names.

Features

CPU

• Intel Cypress Cove CPU cores
• Up to 19% claimed increase in IPC (instructions-per-clock)^[4][10]
• DL Boost (low-precision arithmetic for Deep Learning) and AVX-512 instructions
• Compared to its predecessors, SGX instruction set extensions are removed^[11][12][13]

GPU

• Intel Xe-LP ("Gen12") GPU with up to 32 execution units^[14][15]
• Fixed-function hardware for decoding HEVC 12-bit, 4:2:2/4:4:4; VP9 12-bit 4:4:4 and AV1 8K 10-bit 4:2:0^[16][17][18]
• DisplayPort 1.4a with Display Stream Compression; HDMI 2.0b
• Support for a single 8K 12-bit HDR display or two 4K 10-bit HDR displays
• Hardware accelerated Dolby Vision
• Sampler Feedback support^{[19][20][21][22]}
• Dual Queue Support^[15]
• Variable Rate Shading^[23][24]
• Integer- and nearest neighbor image scaling^[25]
• GPUs on desktop CPUs support 5K 60 Hz

I/O

• Up to 20 CPU lanes of PCI Express 4.0^[26]
• DDR4-3200 memory support^[4]
• USB 3.2 Gen 2×2
• Optional USB4 / Thunderbolt 4 when paired with Intel JHL8540 Thunderbolt 4 Controller^[27][28]
• DMI 3.0 x8 link with Intel 500 Series Chipsets

List of 11th generation Rocket Lake processors

Rocket Lake-S (Desktop processors)

• All CPUs listed below support DDR4-3200 natively. The Core i9 K/KF processors support a 1:1 ratio of DRAM to memory controller by specification at DDR4-3200, whereas the Core i9 non K/KF and all other CPUs listed below support a 2:1 ratio of DRAM to memory controller at DDR4-3200 and a 1:1 ratio at DDR4-2933.^[29]
• All CPUs support up to 128 GB of RAM in dual channel mode^[30]
• Core i9 CPUs (except 11900T) support Intel Thermal Velocity Boost technology^[31][32]

Workstation processors

• These CPUs support ECC memory and require Intel W480 or W580 chipset
• Support up to 128 GB of DDR4-3200 RAM in dual channel mode

Server processors

• CPUs support ECC memory and require Intel C252 or C256 chipset
• Support up to 128 GB of DDR4-3200 RAM in dual channel mode