Intel channel flocks to Opera House for Skylake debut

The likes of Dick Smith and Bing Lee were among the dozens of partners attending Intel’s 6th generation Core processor launch (codenamed Skylake) at the Sydney Opera House yesterday.

The event saw more than 50 Intel 6th Gen Core devices on show, with Intel’s corporate vice president in the Client Computing Group and general manager of Desktop Client Platforms, Gregory Bryant, claiming it was the largest Intel 6th Gen Core showcase in the world.

There are more than 800 device designs for the chip and more than 50 processor SKUs will be released in the coming months.

OEMs and vendors at the event included Aer, Dell, Asus, HP, Lenovo, Microsoft and Toshiba, as well as Accenture, Cloudera, Cisco and Leader Systems.

Bryant said the 6th Gen Core i7 6700K was the “best” processor Intel has ever made, claiming it enabled two and a half times the performance of an average system, three times the battery life and 30 times the graphics performance of the typical install base.

“It’s a giant leap forward. You’re going to see designs half as thin as they were before, half the weight they were before,” he said.

The Intel 6th Gen Core family includes the Core i, Core M and Xeon workstation processor lines. Intel will be bringing the 6th Gen Core processor to its Compute Stick in early 2016, in addition to desktops, laptops and two-in-ones.

Bryant held up a Toshiba Satellite with 6th Gen Core i7 chip that was 15mm thin and weighed 1.3Kg. Other devices shown-off during the presentation included a Lenovo Miix two-in-one with a Core M chip and a small form factor Gigabyte desktop with Core i5.

He also touted hardware optimisations for Windows 10 features, claiming the new chip enabled “instant” wake-up and resume in less than 500 milliseconds. He claimed optimisation work meant that two-in-ones could change “seamlessly” from tablet to laptop mode.

Intel also announced that the Opera House would be upgrading its broadcast studio to 6th Gen Core technology. The studio is connected via fibre optic network to each venue within the Opera House.

The studio has been named Intel Broadcast Studios - the first naming rights sponsor for the Sydney Opera House.