Intel recently listed three new Ice Lake parts in their ARK database, the i7-1060NG7, the i5-1030NG7, and the i31000NG4. These parts are near identical to their non-“N” counterparts apart from having a higher TDP. What’s interesting, however, is that specifications for these new CPU are very much in line with the CPUs that Apple’s listed as powering their latest MacBook Air lineup. This means that Cupertino is almost certainly the “single customer” that these Ice Lake parts are being made for.

Intel Ice Lake-Y 1060NG7 1060G7 1030NG7 1030G7 1000NG4 1000G4 Cores / Threads 4 / 8 4 / 8 4 / 8 4 / 8 2 / 4 2 / 4 L3 Cache 8 MB 8 MB 6 MB 6 MB 4 MB 4 MB Base Freq (GHz) 1.20 1.00 1.10 0.80 1.10 1.10 Turbo Freq (GHz) 3.80 3.80 3.50 3.50 3.20 3.20 TDP 10 W 9 W 10 W 9 W 9 W 9 W Package T5 T4 T5 T4 T5 T4

Relative to their non-“N” counterparts, two of these CPUs–the 1060NG7 and the 1030NG7 both have a 10 percent higher TDP at 10W. The top two models also see a substantial increase to base clocks. The 1060NG7 goes from 1.00 GHz to 1.2 GHz, while the 1030NG7 goes from 800 MHz to 1.1 GHz. These are extremely power-limited parts, so the higher TDP goes a long way towards ensuring higher sustained performance. These parts are also on a smaller Type 5 package, which is 26 percent smaller.

Intel’s struggled with the 10nm process for quite some time. However, they’ve finally been bringing 10nm Ice Lake parts to the market over the past year. These have primarily catered to lower-volume, premium segments of the market. It remains to be seen, however, if they can bring 10nm parts to more mainstream audiences.