Discussion Intel current and future Lakes & Rapids thread

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IntelUser2000

Elite Member
Oct 14, 2003
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Maybe it's engineering samples but these results look awful. I'm not sure why Intel is even bothering releasing them unless they have more HW fixes against a long list of vulnerabilities.

The Comet Lake U parts have slightly higher Turbo compared to Whiskeylake so those are probably early samples.

There are zero cache changes so its still based on Skylake.

Oh and BTW, that product brief has been out since Intel revealed Icelake at Computex. So its nothing new.

Weird. I have to wonder if Samsung would fab Rocket Lake's front end chiplet. If it was the CPU core you would think they would use 8 nm at the very least.

That doesn't mean they won't use Samsung's 8nm, or 7nm process. It's just saying Intel needs a replacement for their 14nm.

Its still very strange. Are they going to have shortage even with Apple no longer needing their modems? So their chipsets are taking that much of their production?

So the logic of using Samsung for Rocket Lake must be related to volume. They want something better than 14nm, but 10nm capacity is filled up by other chips.

@french toast Renoir is using GFX909, so its a variant of the Vega core. Being on 7nm still has opportunities for big gains though.
 

Thala

Golden Member
Nov 12, 2014
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Its still very strange. Are they going to have shortage even with Apple no longer needing their modems? So their chipsets are taking that much of their production?

The Intel 5G modems were going to use TSMC N7 - which of course is history now.
 

beginner99

Diamond Member
Jun 2, 2009
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I had thought Intel was over their 14nm wafer shortage anyway?

And I thought it never was a wafer shortage but validation shortage.

Albeit with dies getting bigger and bigger, who knows? I mean 9900k is a lot bigger than a 7700k was. Not to mention server CPUs.
 

DrMrLordX

Lifer
Apr 27, 2000
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And I thought it never was a wafer shortage but validation shortage.

Oh yeah, there was that issue. I had totally forgotten.

Albeit with dies getting bigger and bigger, who knows? I mean 9900k is a lot bigger than a 7700k was. Not to mention server CPUs.

They're not burning up a lot of wafers on Cascade Lake-AP. Heh. Still. Intel had (has?) a problem with rising prices and reduced availability on their smaller core-count parts because they were (apparently) burning up so many resources producing/validating higher-margin CPUS like, as you said, 9900ks and server CPUs. A brief look at 1-6 core Intel parts of recent generations:

https://pcpartpicker.com/products/cpu/#m=21&C=1,6&sort=price&f=90,85,75,57,66,73

Price/availability . . . actually looks kind of bad there. The now-ancient G4560 costs $81. Granted, Intel probably isn't making any more of those, but still, the prices on 2-4 core parts are pretty horrendous. $154 for the i3-7100? $165 for the i3-8300? Those parts are holding value far too well. At least the 9100 and 9100F are okay-ish. Narrowing it down to Coffee Lake Refresh:

https://pcpartpicker.com/products/cpu/#m=21&C=1,6&sort=price&f=90

Intel isn't selling anything below $100.

Hmmmm
 

jpiniero

Lifer
Oct 1, 2010
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Intel isn't selling anything below $100.
Hmmmm

They are now, Newegg is selling the 9100F for $99.99. And the 9600K for $225, which is the lowest I've seen. The latter is not a bad deal at all, especially given that 5 Ghz is very doable.
 

DrMrLordX

Lifer
Apr 27, 2000
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They are now, Newegg is selling the 9100F for $99.99.

I wouldn't really consider that to be "below $100" since the sequence of 9s is intended to fool the customer into thinking they are paying $90 instead of $100. It works, too. Realistically speaking, it's close enough to $100 that when you buy it, your bank account will feel like you just spent $100.

I was more thinking $40-$60 chips and suchlike. Intel simply does not have anything socketed from Coffee Lake Refresh in that price range. That's a pretty good signal that either they want to abandon that market or that they simply do not have enough resources to deal with lower-margin products like that (limits on wafer supply and/or validation capacity).
 

Thunder 57

Platinum Member
Aug 19, 2007
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I wouldn't really consider that to be "below $100" since the sequence of 9s is intended to fool the customer into thinking they are paying $90 instead of $100. It works, too. Realistically speaking, it's close enough to $100 that when you buy it, your bank account will feel like you just spent $100.

I was more thinking $40-$60 chips and suchlike. Intel simply does not have anything socketed from Coffee Lake Refresh in that price range. That's a pretty good signal that either they want to abandon that market or that they simply do not have enough resources to deal with lower-margin products like that (limits on wafer supply and/or validation capacity).

I never understood how that works. I always read x.99 or x.95 as a dollar more. It must work though, otherwise they wouldn't do it. Simple minded people, I guess.
 
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DrMrLordX

Lifer
Apr 27, 2000
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Simple minded people, I guess.

Yup! That's exactly it. When it comes to products with specific tax structures (like gasoline), politicians in the United States like to sneak fractional taxes in there to make it look like you aren't paying as much tax. Or they used to. I remember when gas signs local to me would read, like . . . $1.19 with a tiny little 9 next to it. It's because the gas tax added 9/10s of a penny on the end (in addition to the tax amount indexed in whole cents). The real cost per gallon was closer to $1.20 but you might think you were only paying $1.19 . Sneaky politicians.

Anyway.

As of a few years ago, Intel had a fairly healthy lineup of non-mobile CPUs in the sub-$100 category, which no longer exists. I'm kinda wondering if they'll ever go back there with Core.
 
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IntelUser2000

Elite Member
Oct 14, 2003
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I was more thinking $40-$60 chips and suchlike. Intel simply does not have anything socketed from Coffee Lake Refresh in that price range.

Yes they do. They are called Pentiums and Celerons. The Celeron G4920 is the cheapest Coffeelake and RCP is $42, and $60 at Newegg. Pentium Gold G54 is $75 with $64 RCP.

Actually if you are looking for the generations that came out the same time as the Refresh chips go here and arrange it by date and click to only show Desktop CPUs: https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/codename/97787/coffee-lake.html#@Desktop

Many Celerons and Pentiums in the Q2 '19 line. They are not even big updates compared to the Q2 '18 parts.

I always read x.99 or x.95 as a dollar more. It must work though, otherwise they wouldn't do it. Simple minded people, I guess.

Oh, things go worse, way worse. The 9's just mean people say its nine hundred dollars when looking at a $999 item, rather than saying its $1000(that's even before taxes which will push it far past $1000). Probably has some subconscious effect.

Many stores are accused of pretending items are on sale when they are not. Walmart, Macy's, Best Buy, etc all engage in such practices. The item in stock selling for 44 weeks, but its on "sale" for 44 weeks.

I was following Lenovo's laptop leak for weeks and said the pricing will be $1099 or something. The very day it was released, it said:
$1499 sale $1099.
 
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Thunder 57

Platinum Member
Aug 19, 2007
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Yup! That's exactly it. When it comes to products with specific tax structures (like gasoline), politicians in the United States like to sneak fractional taxes in there to make it look like you aren't paying as much tax. Or they used to. I remember when gas signs local to me would read, like . . . $1.19 with a tiny little 9 next to it. It's because the gas tax added 9/10s of a penny on the end (in addition to the tax amount indexed in whole cents). The real cost per gallon was closer to $1.20 but you might think you were only paying $1.19 . Sneaky politicians.

Anyway.

As of a few years ago, Intel had a fairly healthy lineup of non-mobile CPUs in the sub-$100 category, which no longer exists. I'm kinda wondering if they'll ever go back there with Core.

Ha! I remember that growing up. The whole 9/10's of a cent thing. I can't say that I've seen that in a long time though. Maybe in some states?
 

DrMrLordX

Lifer
Apr 27, 2000
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Yes they do. They are called Pentiums and Celerons.

Ah, but they haven't released any of those as a part of Coffee Lake Refresh. Yeah, they have some cheap-ish Coffee Lake:

https://pcpartpicker.com/products/cpu/#m=21&f=85&sort=price&page=1

Exactly 4 items below $100, and only one in the $40-$60 range. And they're all still dual cores . . . it just doesn't seem like they've made populating this space a top priority.

Actually if you are looking for the generations that came out the same time as the Refresh chips go here and arrange it by date and click to only show Desktop CPUs: https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/codename/97787/coffee-lake.html#@Desktop

Many Celerons and Pentiums in the Q2 '19 line. They are not even big updates compared to the Q2 '18 parts.

Some of those I can't even find for sale, like the G4950.

Ha! I remember that growing up. The whole 9/10's of a cent thing. I can't say that I've seen that in a long time though. Maybe in some states?

I think the move to digital signs killed it. Either they truncate the tiny 9 or they just round up. Not sure what they do now.
 

Dayman1225

Golden Member
Aug 14, 2017
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Looks like Elkhart Lake (10nm Atom) will arrive in Q1'20, at least for the IOTG/Vision Product Roadmap at Intel. Also a mention of next generation Movidius which is still likely fabbed at TSMC in Q1'20 also.

1560985357490.png
Source
 
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jpiniero

Lifer
Oct 1, 2010
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Wasn't expecting Elkhart Lake so soon, although I guess it's strictly for IoT and friends. Guess that explains the work being done on the Linux driver.

If the die is small enough, and they have plenty of markets where they can put mostly defective parts, maybe they can make it work.
 

IntelUser2000

Elite Member
Oct 14, 2003
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Sounds like the IGP chiplet will have 10 nm and 14nm options, but I'm not sure about the front end.

I don't get what you mean by "front end"? I naturally assumed it was the memory controller/PCIe/iGPU part. You are talking about the PCH maybe? If it is that's a plausible explanation.

I wonder why they can't go with something like 22FFL? Is it simply because they are that bound by capacity constraints?

I also think we'll see the XMM 8160, but on PCs. This being part of the "evaluating options" they mentioned before.
 

jpiniero

Lifer
Oct 1, 2010
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I don't get what you mean by "front end"?

Everything that's not the CPU cores/L3 and the IGP that they want to put. So yeah mostly the memory controller and PCIe but it could be more than that if they want. I'm presuming that you can have Rocket Lake with just CPU only.