Discussion Intel current and future Lakes & Rapids thread

[CHADBOGA]

I don't see how 8 big cores and 8 little cores beats 16 big cores. Could happen, I guess. I wouldn't count on it.

Not only that, but the little cores don't have SMT, so it will be 24 threads vs 32 threads.

 

[dmens]

Pros: Something tells me Intel will take the performance crown away from AMD, not just today, but will best what AMD has next

Why would anyone think Intel's slap-dash attempt to jump on the big.little bandwagon with Alderlake is anything other than a bad publicity stunt? Alderlake is 8 cores from an obsolete lineage, whose current incarnation is getting slapped around five ways to sunday by AMD's offerings, and additionally saddled with useless gimmicks like AVX-512, paired with 8 Atom cores that are utterly useless in the desktop power envelope. Take that and run Windows, which does not even understand the hardware differentiation at all.

Alderlake will be DOA. Bank on it. You can try waiting for Sapphire Rapids if you care about performance, and by the time that comes out (if it even does), AMD will have their next from-scratch architecture out for yet another beatdown.

 

[etrin]

the new intel launch is a little strange. big (Golden Cove) and little (Gracemont) cores in the design. Other features such as PCIe 5.0 and DDR5 should be present as well.
IF so they say it comes out in March and motherboards come out second half?????
We might see AMD waiting tooooo long for zen 4

 

[Exist50]

It's an unannounced goal for the lowest power chips to get nearly identical performance in single thread.

Desktop chips typically use a ULT process vs XLT on the mobile ones. Ballpark 5% higher maximum frequency. But yes, single thread for mobile chips is converging/has converged with desktop ones. It's more a factor of power budget though. Currently cores target around 4-5W per core at TDP. That's quickly trending downwards towards 2-3W a core. No longer anything to gain by trying to shove 30W+ into it. This is also why mobile cores are competing with desktop ones. Converging per core power envelopes.

I don't see how 8 big cores and 8 little cores beats 16 big cores. Could happen, I guess. I wouldn't count on it.

While I think it's very unlikely in this case, there's a possible way. Throughput performance is heavily influenced by the efficiency of the core. A "stronger" core doesn't mean anything if it takes too much power to maintain its clocks. Lakefield is perhaps a good example. So if Gracemont was exceptionally efficient even compared to Zen 3, it would have a chance.

Gracemont is good. Very good. But so is Zen 3. I think AMD will ultimately still have the upper hand in throughput vs Alder Lake, but perhaps by a smaller margin than some might think.

 

[mikk]

the new intel launch is a little strange. big (Golden Cove) and little (Gracemont) cores in the design. Other features such as PCIe 5.0 and DDR5 should be present as well.
IF so they say it comes out in March and motherboards come out second half?????
We might see AMD waiting tooooo long for zen 4

AMD needs Zen 4 sooner than later, they will definitely lose the ST crown against Golden Cove since Zen 3 seems to have only a slightly better IPC than Sunny Cove which is a 2017 design. Next year Warhol is next which still uses Zen 3 cores. AMD said a few days ago that Zen 4 is in design phase currently, this is in big contrast to ADL-S which is up and running fully enabled with all cores.

 

[uzzi38]

AMD needs Zen 4 sooner than later, they will definitely lose the ST crown against Golden Cove since Zen 3 seems to have only a slightly better IPC than Sunny Cove which is a 2017 design. Next year Warhol is next which still uses Zen 3 cores. AMD said a few days ago that Zen 4 is in design phase currently, this is in big contrast to ADL-S which is up and running fully enabled with all cores.

AMD also said Zen 3 was in design phase at the end of last year. Either way, I wouldn't worry too much about it.

 

[mikk]

AMD also said Zen 3 was in design phase at the end of last year. Either way, I wouldn't worry too much about it.

This is not true, AMD revealed it in August: https://www.techradar.com/news/amd-zen-3-has-finished-its-design-phase-rumored-to-launch-in-2020

Zen 4 is still in design phase in October which makes sense because they are bringing a refresh release next year.

 

[dullard]

We can continue this discussion in a week or so.

It has been 9 days. Will you please now tell us exactly what you wanted to say?

 

[uzzi38]

This is not true, AMD revealed it in August: https://www.techradar.com/news/amd-zen-3-has-finished-its-design-phase-rumored-to-launch-in-2020

Zen 4 is still in design phase in October which makes sense because they are bringing a refresh release next year.

I stand corrected, you're absolutely right

 

[uzzi38]

It has been 9 days. Will you please now tell us exactly what you wanted to say?

No can do, still waiting for something else to happen.

 

[jpiniero]

paired with 8 Atom cores that are utterly useless in the desktop power envelope.

It should be useful in mobile.

And I would not expect the Sapphire Rapids Golden Cove Core to be much different than that of Alder Lake's Big Core. Other than the mesh and more big cores.

 

[Gideon]

AMD needs Zen 4 sooner than later, they will definitely lose the ST crown against Golden Cove since Zen 3 seems to have only a slightly better IPC than Sunny Cove which is a 2017 design.

Golden Cove will certainly take the ST crown. It'll be interesting to see how big an upgrade it will be (hopefully big).

Nevertheless it's a bit unfair to compare Zen 3 to Sunny Cove, as it's a higher frequency design (reaching 4.9 on TSMC 7nm) while Sunny Cove couldn't really clock past 4.0. WIllow cove is essentially Sunny Cove that clocks well and has minor improvements. It's a better comparison to Zen 3.

 

[Edrick]

Nevertheless it's a bit unfair to compare Zen 3 to Sunny Cove, as it's a higher frequency design (reaching 4.9 on TSMC 7nm) while Sunny Cove couldn't really clock past 4.0. WIllow cove is essentially Sunny Cove that clocks well and has minor improvements. It's a better comparison to Zen 3.

IPC has nothing to do with how high a core can clock, hence IPC. Also, it was the process node (10nm) that limited Sunny Cove clocks, not the uArch.

 

[Gideon]

IPC has nothing to do with how high a core can clock, hence IPC. Also, it was the process node (10nm) that limited Sunny Cove clocks, not the uArch.

So this means that intel did nothing with Willow Cove arch? Despite them flat out mentioning they decided not to chase IPC to get the clocks up.

 

[mikk]

Nevertheless it's a bit unfair to compare Zen 3 to Sunny Cove, as it's a higher frequency design (reaching 4.9 on TSMC 7nm) while Sunny Cove couldn't really clock past 4.0. WIllow cove is essentially Sunny Cove that clocks well and has minor improvements. It's a better comparison to Zen 3.

This is process related not design related, Intels 10+ is just bad and RKL will prove a SNC based design can do 5+ Ghz on 14nm.

 

[dmens]

It should be useful in mobile.

And I would not expect the Sapphire Rapids Golden Cove Core to be much different than that of Alder Lake's Big Core. Other than the mesh and more big cores.

Sure, it would be useful in mobile, if the Intel big core becomes so inadequate that an undervolted/underclocked big core actually gets beaten by an overcharged Atom. At which point, Intel might as well just cede the entire market to AMD, Apple and Qualcomm.

When I was still at Intel, Sapphire Rapids was supposed to be a from-scratch design. The fact that it has become a small evolution is quite telling of Intel's design woes.

 

[Ajay]

When I was still at Intel, Sapphire Rapids was supposed to be a from-scratch design. The fact that it has become a small evolution is quite telling of Intel's design woes.

Haven't been paying enough attention, obviously, but that is a *****g sad regression.

 

[jpiniero]

Sure, it would be useful in mobile, if the Intel big core becomes so inadequate that an undervolted/underclocked big core actually gets beaten by an overcharged Atom.

You also have to factor in per mm2. There's some amount of workloads that 4 Atom cores would beat an big core.

 

[Exist50]

When I was still at Intel, Sapphire Rapids was supposed to be a from-scratch design. The fact that it has become a small evolution is quite telling of Intel's design woes.

Lol, where on earth did you hear that? I thought you were just obviously trolling before, but since some people are taking you seriously, might as well point out that this, as well as your previous comments, are all 100% BS.

 

[dmens]

Lol, where on earth did you hear that? I thought you were just obviously trolling before, but since some people are taking you seriously, might as well point out that this, as well as your previous comments, are all 100% BS.

Heard it inside an Intel office building while I was still working there as a CPU design engineer, from people on that very project before it got canned and most of the good people involved left Intel.

 

[dmens]

You also have to factor in per mm2. There's some amount of workloads that 4 Atom cores would beat an big core.

And those workloads are not run by machines with a CPU footprint of 4 atoms.

 

[uzzi38]

Heard it inside an Intel office building while I was still working there as a CPU design engineer, from people on that very project before it got canned and most of the good people involved left Intel.

You heard wrong then. Simple as.

 

[Exist50]

Heard it inside an Intel office building while I was still working there as a CPU design engineer, from people on that very project before it got canned and most of the good people involved left Intel.

Lol, sure you did. As evidenced by your hysteria about literally every project they have in the pipeline. We know it has, at minimum, a new core, new PCIe, and new DDR. And there's more than that. In what world is that incremental?

 

[dmens]

You heard wrong then. Simple as.

Yeah fine, I heard wrong from coworkers on a CPU design team that I worked in for the better part of a decade. Whatever sails your boat.

 

[dmens]

Lol, sure you did. As evidenced by your hysteria about literally every project they have in the pipeline. We know it has, at minimum, a new core, new PCIe, and new DDR. And there's more than that. In what world is that incremental?

This just sounds like your own fanboy hysteria getting riled up because you heard things you don't like.

Also, what new core?