Discussion Intel current and future Lakes & Rapids thread

[mikk]

What the hell is your obsession with reputation? If you think I'm very wrong then its just one person that's wrong so for the most part its irrevalent what you think.

Label it as speculation the next time and not as a fact, otherwise it's more a troll posting. You have nothing beside some comical 3dmark leaks, everyone with some knowledge should be aware that the current leaks can't be representative. You didn't taken into account the memory which is crucial for a fast iGPU,. Even worse you don't even know what DDR4 memory speed the 1185G7 was running with, this is a joke. Comparing premium Icelake devices with faster LPDDR4x and possibly higher TDP, your postings are really low lately. Tigerlake supports LPDDR4x-4266! One more thing for you: You might have noticed that the newer Renoir-U scores are quite a bit better than the leaks we got some weeks or months ago. Performance can vary from device to device and one or two 3dmark entries without system details can't be representative, the sample base is way too low. As I said everyone with some knowledge is aware of this.

You do not know more than I do.

If your observation is based on 3dmark and nothing more which seems the case then I have more than you.

 

[jpiniero]

Well, historically Intel's IGP has done far better on 3dmark than actual games, mostly because driver optimizations in actual games has been lacking. Reniorish performance in actual games would be a good development.

 

[uzzi38]

From what I hear, the situation is the exact opposite. The Atom team is very, very proud of Gracemont. My source has been hyping it up without much subtlety, though I've been unable to weasel out numbers. I've also gotten the impression that they feel they've had to fight tooth and nail to get the recognition they deserve, and Gracemont is their opportunity to flaunt their potential a little. Supposedly Keller himself is responsible for pushing the Atom team into the limelight, partly due to some frustration with the Core team.

More practically speaking, why would they be using Gracemont at all if it were so bad? Hybrid is certainly a non-trivial amount of work to support.

See that's what gets me. As I noted above, Gracemont seems like a seriously impressive product to me, actually it fixes the one thing I'd have thought to be a major limitation with Atom so far in the lack of AVX support. That's one of the reasons I called my original post weird and why I was bamboozled, however decided to post it anyway because I know some people here have a lot of faith in what Sharkbay posts.

I can't think of a reason in the slightest to view Gracemont negatively myself, which is why that latest leak made no sense to me. Then on top of that there was the insinuations of MCM and so on... yeah, thanks for that confirmation on Gracemont at least.

Probably best to just disregard this one.

 

[IntelUser2000]

Wouldn't be surprised if there was some resistance from C2DG towards Atom.

Seems almost like evidence for articles saying Intel is divided because they pit their teams against each other

Competition works for short term, but I believe harmony along with true inspiration and hard work is better. Competition not only creates redundancy and waste but causes social issues as the idea becomes #1 or nothing and leaves everyone/everything not number 1 as trash when oftentimes there are useful knowledge to be shared even if its not the best implementation.

@uzzi38 For me I take credit in Sharkbay's information not his opinions. Intel's Lakefield presentation is already an indicator that their hybrid implementation isn't just slapping Gracemont cores and say "we're done". They're doing WAY more work to make sure they work asynchronously. This also is a strong indicator why putting the two core types in a separate chiplet would invalidate that because there are things you can't do unless its on-die.

 

[Exist50]

Seems almost like evidence for articles saying Intel is divided because they pit their teams against each other

I swear, if even half the stories I've heard are true, it would absolutely explain some of Intel's stagnation despite their resources. Teams that outright throw out their counterparts' work because they either don't care about it or don't trust it, platform turmoil over different priorities (FIVR was given as an explicit example), rampant NIH syndrome (where "Here" means their group, not Intel), and even some project casualties along the way. Apparently at one point they were just going to split it outright, with C2DG handling the high power market and DDG the low power one, but it's been a while since I've heard anything about that.

Anyway, back to the topic of Alder Lake.

This also is a strong indicator why putting the two core types in a separate chiplet would invalidate that because there are things you can't do unless its on-die.

I highly, highly doubt that Alder Lake will have an 8c Atom-only chiplet for cost reasons alone. That said, I could theoretically see them splitting the CPU portion into two chiplets, along Core/Atom lines or symmetrically, and I see no fundamental problem with that. Sure they'd have to change up their cache structure a bit (maybe forbid allocation between chiplets?), but Ryzen works fine with significantly worse latency than Intel would have with Foveros or EMIB.

Edit:

Come to think of it, having separate Core/Atom chiplets could enable some cool possibilities. They could use one or two 16, 24, or even 32 core Atom chiplets for low-end, throughput-oriented servers (storage, maybe networking?), pair a big core chiplet and an Atom chiplet for mobile, and pair two big core chiplets for certain desktop segments (with full ISA compatibility). Could be really neat.

 

[Cardyak]

Given the rate of improvement in the Atom cores, and the rumoured addition of AVX in Gracemont, I wouldn't be surprised if future Lakefield-esque products discard the "Large" core and simply have more atom cores.

A future Lakefield like product could potentially consist of 8 Gracemont cores, as opposed to 4 Gracemont cores and 1 Golden Cove core.

 

[DisEnchantment]

Given the rate of improvement in the Atom cores, and the rumoured addition of AVX in Gracemont, I wouldn't be surprised if future Lakefield-esque products discard the "Large" core and simply have more atom cores.

Banias encore? Sounds like familiar circumstances

 

[jpiniero]

Given the rate of improvement in the Atom cores, and the rumoured addition of AVX in Gracemont, I wouldn't be surprised if future Lakefield-esque products discard the "Large" core and simply have more atom cores.

A future Lakefield like product could potentially consist of 8 Gracemont cores, as opposed to 4 Gracemont cores and 1 Golden Cove core.

ISA compatibility is one thing... performance is another. You'd still want the big core for single thread workloads.

 

[coercitiv]

Yeah, let's go full Atom, especially considering Apple already started their transition towards small cores. /s This new found faith in the power of Atom is weird to say the least.

A quick recap on performance numbers from Intel:



So LKF 1+4

• 100% ST perf relative to SNC core
• 300% MT perf relative to SNC core /w SMT if running 6 threads

Hypothetical LKF 2+0

• 100% ST perf
• 200% MT perf if running 4 threads

Hypothetical LKF 0+8

• almost 70% ST performance
• 400% MT perf if running 8 threads
• 300% MT perf if running 6 threads
• 200% MT perf if running 4 threads

This is what 8 Atom cores deliver: a 30% drop in ST performance relative to LKF 1+4 in exchange for the possibility of 30-40% higher MT performance if running more than 6 threads.

Good luck running 8 threads in consumer workloads often enough to compensate for the 30% loss in ST performance.

 

[DrMrLordX]

@coercitiv

That's Tremont though. Anyone know how much better Gracemont is supposed to be vs. Tremont?

 

[lobz]

Label it as speculation the next time and not as a fact, otherwise it's more a troll posting. You have nothing beside some comical 3dmark leaks, everyone with some knowledge should be aware that the current leaks can't be representative. You didn't taken into account the memory which is crucial for a fast iGPU,. Even worse you don't even know what DDR4 memory speed the 1185G7 was running with, this is a joke. Comparing premium Icelake devices with faster LPDDR4x and possibly higher TDP, your postings are really low lately. Tigerlake supports LPDDR4x-4266! One more thing for you: You might have noticed that the newer Renoir-U scores are quite a bit better than the leaks we got some weeks or months ago. Performance can vary from device to device and one or two 3dmark entries without system details can't be representative, the sample base is way too low. As I said everyone with some knowledge is aware of this.



If your observation is based on 3dmark and nothing more which seems the case then I have more than you.

Wow, you're not even talking to me, yet you've earned a full fat blocking here. This full blown pompous juanrga style of arguing can only achieve 2 things: either take away your recipient's every intention to even write here again or stir up flaming. Both of them are toxic to a forum.

 

[coercitiv]

That's Tremont though. Anyone know how much better Gracemont is supposed to be vs. Tremont?

It's not a question of how much better Gracemont gets vs Tremont, but a question of how Gracemont stands vs. Golden Cove.

 

[DrMrLordX]

It's not a question of how much better Gracemont gets vs Tremont, but a question of how Gracemont stands vs. Golden Cove.

I guess? Allegedly IPC uplift for Tremont over Goldmont+ was 30%. If intel can pull that off again for Gracemont, it might not be that bad.

A J5005 @ 2.8 GHz gets somewhere around 82 in CBR15 ST. Tremont should be ~106 and maybe Gracemont would score ~138? Assuming 2.8 GHz. An R5 1400 @ 3.4 GHz scores 139:

AMD Ryzen 5 1400 Benchmark, Test and specs

AMD Ryzen 5 1400 benchmark results and review of this cpu with specs including the number of cores, threads, memory bandwidth, pcie lanes and power consumption. Benchmarks in Cinebench R23 and Geekbench 5

www.cpu-monkey.com

(according to one source)

That's all speculation though! I don't know if the Atom team can pull another IPC increase like that, or even if Tremont is as good as folks say it is . . .

 

[naukkis]

Intel has to adopt to Atom-derivates:

The Acer Swift 3 SF314 Notebook Review: Swift Gets Swifter With Ryzen 4000

www.anandtech.com

SNC performance/watt is ridiculously low. 25W Icelake has trouble of keeping up with 15W Picasso in some MT workloads. They have to adopt big.little approach because their big cores are so awful.

 

[ondma]

Intel has to adopt to Atom-derivates:

The Acer Swift 3 SF314 Notebook Review: Swift Gets Swifter With Ryzen 4000

www.anandtech.com

SNC performance/watt is ridiculously low. 25W Icelake has trouble of keeping up with 15W Picasso in some MT workloads. They have to adopt big.little approach because their big cores are so awful.

It is more like the 10 nm process is bad. Very little if any power savings from 14 nm.

 

[uzzi38]

Intel has to adopt to Atom-derivates:

The Acer Swift 3 SF314 Notebook Review: Swift Gets Swifter With Ryzen 4000

www.anandtech.com

SNC performance/watt is ridiculously low. 25W Icelake has trouble of keeping up with 15W Picasso in some MT workloads. They have to adopt big.little approach because their big cores are so awful.

If what has leaked of Tiger Lake so far - for example the 1185G7 being capable of maintaining 3GHz all-core base clock in 15W as per Intel spec for base clock - is accurate, then I don't believe this will be an issue at all for Tiger Lake.

 

[naukkis]

It is more like the 10 nm process is bad. Very little if any power savings from 14 nm.

Icelake idle power consumption is fine, as is iGPU performance. And problem isn't little power savings from 14nm but enermously worse power efficiency on cpu core load - even AMD Picasso is better.

And if problem is process nothing can save it. But if problem is cpu cores being power hogs cure is easy - replace those with ones with better efficiency. Isn't that just what Intel is doing?

 

[ksec]

I am going to ask here instead of opening another thread.

What is the current status of Intel 7nm CPU ?

Intel promised in one of their easier investor meeting that 7nm will arrive in 2021. While we can all sort of guess that means "late" 2021, I try looking up and it dont see any lake or cove launches that arrives in that timeframe.

Do we have details on ANY Intel 7nm CPU?

 

[Hitman928]

I am going to ask here instead of opening another thread.

What is the current status of Intel 7nm CPU ?

Intel promised in one of their easier investor meeting that 7nm will arrive in 2021. While we can all sort of guess that means "late" 2021, I try looking up and it dont see any lake or cove launches that arrives in that timeframe.

Do we have details on ANY Intel 7nm CPU?

From what I know, 7nm in 2021 is their enterprise GPU which they are under a lot of pressure to deliver by the end of the year because there is a supercomputer that needs it delivered by then in order for the builders to meet their own schedule. More 7nm products are supposed to come at some point in 2022 but it is unknown when, what volumes, and the scope of products that will launch. There's a lot of rumors out there about timelines and such but nothing firm outside of the 7 nm enterprise GPU at the end of 2021.

 

[jpiniero]

I am going to ask here instead of opening another thread.

What is the current status of Intel 7nm CPU ?

Intel promised in one of their easier investor meeting that 7nm will arrive in 2021. While we can all sort of guess that means "late" 2021, I try looking up and it dont see any lake or cove launches that arrives in that timeframe.

Do we have details on ANY Intel 7nm CPU?

Late 2021 is just Ponte Vicchio IIRC. Granite Rapids is the first CPU but that's more like early 2022.

 

[dmens]

From what I know, 7nm in 2021 is their enterprise GPU which they are under a lot of pressure to deliver by the end of the year because there is a supercomputer that needs it delivered by then in order for the builders to meet their own schedule. More 7nm products are supposed to come at some point in 2022 but it is unknown when, what volumes, and the scope of products that will launch. There's a lot of rumors out there about timelines and such but nothing firm outside of the 7 nm enterprise GPU at the end of 2021.

Nah Intel isn’t going to use their own busted process to satisfy a must-deliver contract, they will use something that actually works.

Intel's High-End 2nd Generation Xe DG2 GPU To Be Based On TSMC's 7nm Process Node

Intel is rumored to be producing their next-generation Xe graphics architecture based DG2 GPU on TSMC's 7nm process node.

wccftech.com

 

[ksec]

Ok, that means there is some possibility that intel repeat their mistake again prioritising 7mn for other products or contract and completely missed capacity planning for others.

The Apple ARM transition is increasing likely not because of anything, but Intel simply cant deliver, and not willing to compromise with price.

 

[Hitman928]

Nah Intel isn’t going to use their own busted process to satisfy a must-deliver contract, they will use something that actually works.

Intel's High-End 2nd Generation Xe DG2 GPU To Be Based On TSMC's 7nm Process Node

Intel is rumored to be producing their next-generation Xe graphics architecture based DG2 GPU on TSMC's 7nm process node.

wccftech.com

I remember seeing this rumor, I have a hard time believing it but if it is true, that says that Intel's problems will only be getting worse over the next few years.

 

[Ajay]

I am going to ask here instead of opening another thread.

What is the current status of Intel 7nm CPU ?

Intel promised in one of their easier investor meeting that 7nm will arrive in 2021. While we can all sort of guess that means "late" 2021, I try looking up and it dont see any lake or cove launches that arrives in that timeframe.

Do we have details on ANY Intel 7nm CPU?

Nope. Well, aside from Intel saying it's on track; which is worth the cost of the bits required to display this post.

 

[dmens]

I remember seeing this rumor, I have a hard time believing it but if it is true, that says that Intel's problems will only be getting worse over the next few years.

Thankfully I don't work at that clown show any more so I am totally unburdened to comment on publicly available rumors. But it's true, bank on it.