The latest leaked roadmap implies that the successor of this charming project will include Tiger Lake Core i7, Core i5, or Core i3 processor depending on the SKU and a discrete graphics. Back in January, our friends at Fanless tech showed a roadmap where this machined was codenamed Panther Canyon AKA NUC 11 Performance, codename. Both Hades Follow up and Panther Canyon seam to be the same thing, just different naming. The NUC chassis grew from 1.2 liter Hades Canyon to 1.35 liter with the new machine. Optically, you can expect a similar case to the 2018 tiny gaming powerpack, just a tiny bit bigger.  

At the heart of Hades Canyon heart is Intel’s Core i7-8809G. It came in a TDP package maxing out at 100W, mainly due to the discrete mobile Radeon RX Vega M GH Graphics clocked at 1063MHz. Intel has two choices now, to use its own DG1 or DG discrete graphics card or to use another Nvidia/AMD discrete mobile card.  The current state of the market implies that due to the current climate, you can expect Intel or Nvidia discrete in the new NUC.

In our recent test, Hades Canyon still has a decent performance punch.  

AI Punch

The fact that the new Tiger Lake U solution mostly likely won’t have discrete mobile graphics on the same package as the CPU implies that Intel is using a soldered or MXM discrete mobile graphics card. Intel engineers had to come up with custom cooling for this, too, so that most likely resulted in a slightly bigger case.  

Intel will continue using both the DIY kit and the whole mini PC sales strategy, as both have their customer base. Tiger Lake U was announced by Intel’s CEO at the Computex video conference call just a few days ago, and it is to be expected later this year. Naturally, we would expect to see notebooks launching for back to school timeframe, but COVID-19 might have messed with some of the schedules. In any case, we expect to see NUC and Notebooks based on Tiger Lake U before the holiday season.

Either way, it will be fun to see what this machine is capable of, and 1.35 liters is tiny compared to new consoles. Earlier conversations about Tiger Lake we had with our industry friends prepared us for a big boost in AI and machine learning related workloads.