Discussion Intel current and future Lakes & Rapids thread

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RetroZombie

Senior member
Nov 5, 2019
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Intel already broke that with the 8700k years ago.
Sorry but they didn't, all their new 10nm designs are dual or quad core. If they really wanted to broke from that or planed to do it, they would already have released or announced something...
Did you ever saw something even in some old road map from them with more than dual/quad?
 

jpiniero

Lifer
Oct 1, 2010
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If Rocket Lake is using chiplets, it would easy to assume that Alder will too. And if the chiplets are compatible with each other... that would make it feasible to mix in Rocket Lake's CPU and GPU chiplets with Alder Lake to hide 10 nm, even if they don't bother to port Golden Cove to an functional node.

Did you ever saw something even in some old road map from them with more than dual/quad?

There was a leak that Cannonlake was meant to go up to 8 cores. Whether mobile would have gone that high with U is another story.
 

RetroZombie

Senior member
Nov 5, 2019
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Does any alder lake thread exists?
Well I will put this here.
I was searching for information and was surprised for the huge size and amount of pins in the package.

Will they kill the chipset from the boards?
Release something like the amd AM1 socket with functions of the board limited at the cpu level (no pcie 5 just 4 or 3 for example).

And because of the amount of space and pins they will almost for certain do multi chiplets package, I was wondering if they would do something like this:

1581721068196.png
 

lobz

Platinum Member
Feb 10, 2017
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Another shame that Zen 4 is the same year too, and timeframes are in line with one another to boot.
Shame for whom though? Zucker2k or The Elf? At most. ;)

P.S.: I know how you meant that, sorry for this post :)
 

lobz

Platinum Member
Feb 10, 2017
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Well it wasn't like that honestly, consider I saw charts in 2013 or so that pointed at 6 (if not 8?) cores cannonlake mainstream, graphics should have topped at 96EUs with gen-10.
It would have made sense then if you think how much denser than 14nm the 10 nm process was in the first place, literally two nodes at once.

Look at this:
-Broadwell 14 nm quad core, 48 EUs, 182 mm^2 die size
-Tiger lake 10 nm quad core, 96 EUs, 144 mm^2 die size

You have faster, larger cores (with AV512 and possibly 30% better IPC) plus twice the EUs (each one better too) in a smaller chip.

Also:
-Broadwell with 24 EU sits at 82 mm^2, same cores with 48 EUs is 133 mm^2.
50 mm^2 for 24 EUs more.
-Icelake with 64 EUs is 122 mm^2, similar Tiger lake cpu has 96 EUs in just 146 mm^2.
Hence 24 mm^2 for 32 EUs more, they are Gen 12 vs 11 too.

The density increase is sizable here, 2.77x better in the real world products, if 10 nm worked sooner we would be sitting on really great CPUs.
If 7 nm is anywhere near working and has another 2x by 2022 at best that's some revolution going to happen, along with new architectures, finally.
Then life swept it all away. You can bet both our houses that Intel never wanted to offer more than 4 cores on the mainstream desktop on 14nm until someone actually realized that 10nm will never really happen.

"The density increase is sizable here, 2.77x better in the real world products, if 10 nm worked sooner we would be sitting on really great CPUs." The reason is sitting right there in your sentence. Well, part of it - cobalt shenanigans too, but still. The 10nm jump was not a very good plan. Ambitious as fudge, yes, but not very good. Zero safety nets other than hiring Ryan Shrout to handle the media, invent real world benchmarks and put results in (PC)perspective...

Also, I still don't think that Xe will be as efficient as AMD's iGPU in the perf / area metric, but let's wait and see.
 
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RetroZombie

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That was kind of what I was saying about being most likely a U part on a socket.
Didn't understood it sorry, any link for that?

I could only find the old ones like the i3-350M:
L_00005046.jpg
 

OriAr

Member
Feb 1, 2019
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Just theories at this point. They take Alder Lake-U, stick it on a socket and call it a day.

There is one problem here, ADL is gonna change Intel's product segmentation, apparently they are unifying the -H and -U SKUs into ADL-P, how is that gonna look is anyone's guess.
My guess is that there will be 2 different dies, an octa core die and a quad core one, each for different needs. There is also the question of what does it mean to ADL-S, which I strongly believe will use EMIB at this point (Like Zen 2 uses chiplets).
 

DrMrLordX

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Apr 27, 2000
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Yeah, but for TGL-U Intel decided they prioritize the iGPU over core count.

Which was a bit weird. It was like . . . hey guys, let's be AMD from 2014-2016! If it lets them knock off cheap mobile dGPUs then great (for them), but OEMs that seem to have warehouses full of 8GB SODIMMs and aging mobile dGPUs insist on jamming that crap into their products anyway.

For ADL-S they could decide to gut the iGPU for core count, or even connect the iGPU through EMIB with an 8 core die. The truth is that an 8 core die with a gutted iGPU wouldn't be much bigger (And probably not bigger at all) than TGL-U's die. If Intel decide to take the iGPU off the die and connect it with EMIB than you are saving even more silicon.

I was thinking they could do that for their entire Alder Lake product lineup, and I'm a little surprised they didn't move in that direction for Tiger Lake. They could link up smaller or larger iGPUs based on product segmentation and focus on 8c dice (and disable cores for lower-cost products). They might even be able to link up two 8c dice in one package for a 16c product. Maybe. We still don't know how much Intel's process problems @ 10nm are affecting these decisions.

Intel don't want to go over 150mm^2 for consumer parts, and up until the 9900K, they never really have done so.

Another thing that sort of jumped out at me: why are the cores in Tiger Lake so darn big? We don't have much in the way of performance data on them yet, but if the GB scores are any indicator, the higher transistor count per core isn't helping much.

Intel managed to add AVX512 to Cannonlake, which had tiny cores, so that doesn't seem to be the reason for the ballooning core size either.

Sorry but they didn't, all their new 10nm designs are dual or quad core.

Again it goes back to what's possible vs. what's plausible. You don't go from producing 6c and 8c desktop parts to 4c parts again and expect the market to be happy with that.
 

mikk

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Which was a bit weird. It was like . . . hey guys, let's be AMD from 2014-2016! If it lets them knock off cheap mobile dGPUs then great (for them), but OEMs that seem to have warehouses full of 8GB SODIMMs and aging mobile dGPUs insist on jamming that crap into their products anyway.


Some people seem to underestimate Tigerlakes CPU Performance. Unlike AMD back in 2014-2016 Intel has a Singlethread lead over Renoir, probably quite a big one with Tigerlake, the Willow Cove cores are top notch and superior to AMDs Zen2, the situation with AMD years ago was completely different. As for multithreading they can improve quite a lot over Icelake because of the mediocre clock speeds.

Also I'm reminding you that not all U series CPUs from AMD gets the fully enabled 8/16 part, only one SKU to be exact and it remains to be seen how far ahead 8/16 performs in a power limited U series. Furthermore the iGPU is very important for the U-series because of the ongoing thin and light trend, only a very small percentage of Icelake-U notebooks have a dGPU option. I mean if someone really needs excessive multithreading for rendering or software encoding etc, they should go with the 4800U, but the majority won't need this.
 

lobz

Platinum Member
Feb 10, 2017
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Some people seem to underestimate Tigerlakes CPU Performance. Unlike AMD back in 2014-2016 Intel has a Singlethread lead over Renoir, probably quite a big one with Tigerlake, the Willow Cove cores are top notch and superior to AMDs Zen2, the situation with AMD years ago was completely different. As for multithreading they can improve quite a lot over Icelake because of the mediocre clock speeds.

Also I'm reminding you that not all U series CPUs from AMD gets the fully enabled 8/16 part, only one SKU to be exact and it remains to be seen how far ahead 8/16 performs in a power limited U series. Furthermore the iGPU is very important for the U-series because of the ongoing thin and light trend, only a very small percentage of Icelake-U notebooks have a dGPU option. I mean if someone really needs excessive multithreading for rendering or software encoding etc, they should go with the 4800U, but the majority won't need this.
Of course, ICL and TGL are only up to midrange CPUs with 4 cores, something has to be important there ;p
 
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jpiniero

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There is one problem here, ADL is gonna change Intel's product segmentation, apparently they are unifying the -H and -U SKUs into ADL-P, how is that gonna look is anyone's guess.

They are already kind of doing this with Rocket Lake, according to the rumors. There's supposed to be 35 W Rocket Lake U parts released after the initial batch.
 

uzzi38

Platinum Member
Oct 16, 2019
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They are already kind of doing this with Rocket Lake, according to the rumors. There's supposed to be 35 W Rocket Lake U parts released after the initial batch.

First I've heard of that, where's that rumour from?
 

RetroZombie

Senior member
Nov 5, 2019
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Some people seem to underestimate Tigerlakes CPU Performance. Unlike AMD back in 2014-2016 Intel has a Singlethread lead over Renoir, probably quite a big one with Tigerlake, the Willow Cove cores are top notch and superior to AMDs Zen2
We have almost zero ice lake parts and you are already comparing yet to be released in one or even two years parts from intel with amd current gen?

And this single thread thing in 2020 is annoying, I wounder if intel released an single core cpu lets name it celeron 4299K with 5.0Ghz unlocked for 200€, would it be some kind of king in sales because it's single thread performance would be amazing...
 

uzzi38

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Oct 16, 2019
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Some people seem to underestimate Tigerlakes CPU Performance.
There's also quite a few people overestimating it apparently.

Unlike AMD back in 2014-2016 Intel has a Singlethread lead over Renoir, probably quite a big one with Tigerlake, the Willow Cove cores are top notch and superior to AMDs Zen2, the situation with AMD years ago was completely different. As for multithreading they can improve quite a lot over Icelake because of the mediocre clock speeds.
Two problems here. 1 - the difference looks to be under 20% IPC and clock difference is still unknown. 2 - but how power efficient are the CPU cores?

Let's take R20 as an example workload which stresses all cores in a CPU. In a 15W config, Ice Lake maintains a clock speed of approximately 2.2GHz all-core. Not a bad showing at all, especially when you consider the IPC uplift over Skylake.

But compare this to my dirt-tier r5 3600. At 15W for the cores alone and in R20 they can maintain a clock speed of 3.225GHz on average. (Note: this is not including uncore power, but the fact that it's a 6 core CPU and the sheer difference in clocks should still show it is considerably above Ice Lake in terms of power efficiency).

I don't see Tiger Lake performing particularily well in multi-core tasks compared to Renoir. Improved clocks compared to Ice Lake probably won't make as huge a difference as you'd think, because in the same power limited scenarios (as you should be getting with a -U sku), Renoir will clock much higher.

and it remains to be seen how far ahead 8/16 performs in a power limited U series

See above, I think I've done a good job at showing the 8 cores will be fine. I'd wager most - if not all - 4800U skus will be set to 25W cTDP, so the maintained clocks I mentionned above may be on the table still. If not right there, then close at least. Even at 15W, I doubt we'll be seeing the 4800U drop below it's 1.8GHz base clock with the exception of power-virus-style tests.

Furthermore the iGPU is very important for the U-series because of the ongoing thin and light trend, only a very small percentage of Icelake-U notebooks have a dGPU option.
iGPUs are great, but they're far from important. 90% of people buying notebooks don't care about iGPU perf. There's a lot of stigma around iGPUs, and on top of that... most people just don't care about iGPUs.

If iGPUs were 'very important', Picasso would have sold like hotcakes.

Also, you're only considering 1065G7 devices, of which yes few have dGPUs. But that's not necessarily the case for 1035G1 devices, for example.

I would love for iGPUs to be more important given future things here and there, but the reality is they're not.

I mean if someone really needs excessive multithreading for rendering or software encoding etc, they should go with the 4800U, but the majority won't need this.
The vast majority of people would be fine with an r3/i3, 8GB RAM, an SSD, a 1080p screen and an 7-8 hour+ battery life. Extrememly solid single threaded and iGPU performance aren't particularily important for the vast majority of laptops, because they're used as Facebook/Office machines by most.
 
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ondma

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We have almost zero ice lake parts and you are already comparing yet to be released in one or even two years parts from intel with amd current gen?

And this single thread thing in 2020 is annoying, I wounder if intel released an single core cpu lets name it celeron 4299K with 5.0Ghz unlocked for 200€, would it be some kind of king in sales because it's single thread performance would be amazing...
Almost as annoying as those on these forums who want to disregard clockspeed and ipc. Not everyone does encoding all day, especially in mobile. Four fast hyperthreaded cores are more than enough for most users in mobile, and probably even in desktop.

And at least get your facts straight. There are certainly more than "almost zero" Icelake products on the market.
 

lobz

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Almost as annoying as those on these forums who want to disregard clockspeed and ipc. Not everyone does encoding all day, especially in mobile. Four fast hyperthreaded cores are more than enough for most users in mobile, and probably even in desktop.

And at least get your facts straight. There are certainly more than "almost zero" Icelake products on the market.
Is this 2015 all over again?

Write Intel an e-mail to manufacture only very few CML chips over 4 cores, because according to your extensive research, everything will be just fine with 4 cores.
 

RetroZombie

Senior member
Nov 5, 2019
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Four fast hyperthreaded cores are more than enough for most users in mobile, and probably even in desktop.
Well intel had that plan forever it seams and many liked it.

You could tell them that you are fine with 2C4T 4.0Ghz at 45Watts has you are with 4C8T 3.0Ghz at 45Watts they don't need to waste their time doubling products that will perform about the same at the end.

Contrary to you i'm actually shameful that some random guy with some smartphone have more cpu cores, not to mention the other integrated uncore parts full of accelerators, and had to building pcs for my friends with pentiums G3220/G4560 like if those where actually good buys...

And at least get your facts straight. There are certainly more than "almost zero" Icelake products on the market.
It depends on the part of the market that you are looking for them.
 

Markfw

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May 16, 2002
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Almost as annoying as those on these forums who want to disregard clockspeed and ipc. Not everyone does encoding all day, especially in mobile. Four fast hyperthreaded cores are more than enough for most users in mobile, and probably even in desktop.

And at least get your facts straight. There are certainly more than "almost zero" Icelake products on the market.
Aside from a couple of laptops, what other products ? Product links please
 

mikk

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May 15, 2012
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We have almost zero ice lake parts and you are already comparing yet to be released in one or even two years parts from intel with amd current gen?

This is a lie, Icelake is easily available if you want one....unlike the paper launched Renoir, zero devices available. It's fine in the case of Renoir which isn't available but not for Icelake which is available, this speaks for itself. Tigerlake in or or two years is another dumb lie, you really have to try better, otherwise you can't be serious.

And this single thread thing in 2020 is annoying

Because Renoir won't be able to match Intel in singlethread against Tigerlake, that's why it annoys you. Same with the GPU, AMD falls behind Intel and suddenly it's not relevant anymore.