Since the launch of AMD's Ryzen processors last spring, the processor market has been an interesting, and even exciting one to follow. It seemed like overnight, we went from quad-cores being the norm to six and eight-core processors taking over on the desktop. As AMD became even more aggressive after its Zen launch, we wound up seeing 16-core and higher CPUs come out from both it and Intel before the year ended.

2018 has been good to CPUs so far as well. We saw the launch of the second-gen Ryzen (not to be confused with Zen 2), impressive follow-ups to AMD's EPYC series, and Intel launched its refined 14nm 9th-gen Coffee Lake-S processors, including a new eight-core flagship model. So, what's next? It seems Chipzilla a trick up its sleeve.

And for Intel what's next might be more 14nm technology-based products. Like burdocks stuck to your clothing after carelessly walking through brush, 14nm appears completely stuck on Intel, with 10nm proving more elusive, and more alluring by the day. Based on new leaks, the next set of Intel desktop chips will fall into the Comet Lake-S series and what's immediately impressive about them is the fact that a top-end 10-core SKU is planned.

This leak allegedly came from a partner meeting, and given the source is on a Taiwanese forum, it seems likely that country is where the meeting took place. Nonetheless, the only thing we know aside from a 10-core part being planned is that another ring bus could be introduced in the design, though why exactly this is needed remains to be seen.

If a 10-core chip doesn't launch until next summer or fall, it seems likely that Intel would revolve a marketing campaign around 10-cores on 10th-gen Core processors. That would also represent an accelerated uptick in core counts on Intel CPUs, since 7th-Gen was capped at 4 cores, 8th Gen at 6, and 9th-Gen, at 8. We like where this is going.