Intel has really outdone itself with the Skylake brand - not only in terms of architecture, but in terms of marketing and brand revival. A recent press release now indicates that it has received over 800 design wins from different manufacturers - all of whom will be using the Skylake mobility lineup in their offerings of laptops, notebooks and hybrid 2-in-1s. The new architecture not only boasts performance gains over broadwell, but is highly efficient and has a much more powerful iGPU as well - all factors which have undoubtedly contributed to the trend shift.

A slide showcasing the perks of Skylake mobile processors. @Intel Public Domain

Intel wins over 800 designs for Skylake mobility - Will strengthen its CPU lineup of 40 SKUs with 8 more by year end

Common examples of a brand revival include a particularly flashy box, removal of the complimentary High Speed Fan (lowering cost and increasing profit margins, introduction of its own barely acceptable 'high end' cooling solutions and tons of other improvements to the desktop and mobile lineup. There are approximately 800 different skylake based laptops incoming this year - something that will not only provide a big wave of revenue for the PC Industry but could actually, finally, stabilize the declining trend.

“We have unprecedented amount of design wins, more than 800 system designs are coming to market,” said Kirk Skaugen, senior vice president and general manager of Intel’s client computing group, at Citigroup’s global technology conference. “It is probably hard to put it into perspective without putting a denominator, but that is absolutely unprecedented. 48 different [mobile] processors are launching across every form-factor you can imagine.” via KitGuru

The current number of the family of mobile devices present in the Skylake lineup includes laptops with the Core i or Core M series, high end luggables, ultrabooks and even 2-in-1 systems. The current CPU lineup includes of Skylake Mobility has around 40 SKUs - and according to Intel, 8 more will be added in the coming months. The new uArch offers upto 10-20 percent real life performance upgrade with marginal IPC gains. The new microprocessors also house Intel’s latest integrated graphics (Intel Gen 9 LP) with quite a number of architectural enhancements as well as increased amount of execution units. These new iGPUs are rated to bring upto 40 per cent higher performance in graphics-intensive applications.

Intel has also, with Skylake, introduced its new Xeon for mobility class this year. And manufacturers like Dell are already working in incorporating these into a 2-in-1 lineup aimed at the professionals. Not only will this target a new market but it could start eating at chunks of the Apple domain.

Basically, Intel has gone on and provided a very wide ranging and very flexible lineup of building blocks to manufacturers that will allow them to create a product for just about every niche in the market. This has resulted in an unprecedented number of designs - 800 if once again, Intel is to be believed. This expansion will occur over the next 12 months and should also have positive affects on the PC market - not to mention Intel's revenue stream.