Intel's Core i9 and Skylake-X parts deliver up to 18 cores on the desktop

Intel has been accused of incrementalism in the CPU worldthe idea that the company is holding back in order to increase profits and stretch out upgrades. Whether that's true is sort of irrelevant, though if it is, I can only wonder what would have happened to AMD in the past decade. The harsh reality of microprocessor design is that it becomes increasingly more difficult to improve performance each succeeding generation. I discussed some of the reasons behind this in our Processors 101 overview of pipelining and superscalar architectures. Today, Intel takes the shrink-wrap off its latest and greatest collection of CPUs, the Skylake-X and Kaby Lake-X line of enthusiast processors, all of which will run on the Basin Falls platform, which includes the X299 chipset and socket LGA2066.