Intel Skylake / Kaby Lake

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Hans de Vries

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May 2, 2008
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www.chip-architect.com
BTW, the die size has also grown quite a bit.

Broadwell-E 10C die is like 240; Skylake-X 10C die is around 325.

By my totally reliable estimations by looking at the die pict, the core size (inc L3) is about 17 mm2. Kaby Lake is by the same estimation 12.2 mm2.

It has very significantly grown to 17.0 mm2 indeed.

Ryzen_vs_Skylake_core_detail_small.jpg
 

coercitiv

Diamond Member
Jan 24, 2014
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Do you really need to post this here considering it was mentioned in the other thread?
I did need the post, following mainly this thread in regard to SKL-X info. It's very good news, but it also highlights one of the painful subjects we had to discuss (repeatedly) with another recent launch.

Hardware Canucks said:
Feel like this is gonna be another Ryzen w/ many optimizations after launch. Sigh. :(
Back in March some more enthusiastic and less experienced fans were very surprised by the amount of last minute changes before review publish time, going even as far as entertaining the idea that "this had never happened before with a CPU launch".

Maybe this will open some eyes and help more people understand that although it is an unpleasant and unwanted occurrence (mostly for reviewers and maybe early adopters), it is to be expected with new CPU launches in a competitive environment.
 

mikk

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May 15, 2012
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Does he refer to the cache structure or what does he man? He also implies he can't update the benches with the new bios till launch, that would be disappointing for Anandtech.
 
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tamz_msc

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Jan 5, 2017
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Hard to say, but my interpretation is that there probably won't be software-level optimizations to the extent Ryzen had, mostly stability updates and bugfixes.
 
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TheLycan

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Mar 8, 2017
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Am I the only one who thinks that last 100 posts didnt say anything really? Why this overrated intel launch? Wait fo the reviews guys

(Spam removed)
 
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mikk

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May 15, 2012
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Could be a microcode update.


Yes this is what he said in his last tweet:
The main optimizations for Zen required software code adjustments was what I was referring to. The BIOS adjustments aren't uArch based


Makes sense because the base uarch is unchanged to Skylake Mainstream, all the software should work from the beginning without issues, developers don't have to tweak anything. The only difference is AVX512 if they want. We have to check which reviews did use the newest bios in their review, this is an important info.
 
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jpiniero

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It has very significantly grown to 17.0 mm2 indeed.

Well, if that is the case then my other observation is probably true - the mesh,uh, switch? is at least 1.3 mm2 per core PLUS the memory blocks have one too. It's getting pretty expensive to do this interconnect. And then AVX-512 costs somewhere around 1-2 mm2 per core.
 

Nothingness

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Jul 3, 2013
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Makes sense because the base uarch is unchanged to Skylake Mainstream, all the software should work from the beginning without issues, developers don't have to tweak anything. The only difference is AVX512 if they want. We have to check which reviews did use the newest bios in their review, this is an important info.
Cache sizes, inclusiveness and so on often have more impact than instruction scheduling so optimized software will care a lot about changes in cache hierarchy of Skylake-X vs Skylake.

Of course lazy and incompetent programmers don't care optimizing for cache hierarchy :rolleyes:
 

Shivansps

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Sep 11, 2013
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Yeah that whould make sence, cheap boards for KBL-X, 7800X and 7820X...

But at least they need to keep quad channel memory, ditching that does not sound smart at all, just put 4 ram slots, KBL-X only uses 2 of these.
 
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TheF34RChannel

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May 18, 2017
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Yeah that whould make sence, cheap boards for KBL-X, 7800X and 7820X...

But at least they need to keep quad channel memory, ditching that does not sound smart at all, just put 4 ram slots, KBL-X only uses 2 of these.

It would if they sell the KBL-X parts as pure OC parts for benchers who don't use quad channel anyway - and only release those boards for KBL-X.
 

Shivansps

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It would if they sell the KBL-X parts as pure OC parts for benchers who don't use quad channel anyway - and only release those boards for KBL-X.

That whould be a niche, at best, to me it does not seem right from a market POV to release boards only for the most irrelevant 2 CPUs ever.

Now releasing cheapper boards for both KBL-X and 7800X, 7820X seems to be a better choice. They really dont need much, 140W max, just 1 PCI-E 16x, two at most, 2 PCI-E x1, 4 ram slots, 1 or 2 M2 and 6 satas... They can do that whiout too much problem.
 
Aug 11, 2008
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https://videocardz.com/70338/intel-core-i7-7740x-overclockability

Sounds like 5 Ghz is doable with Kaby-X, maybe even a bit more. Good chance you would only need a tad more than 1.2V to get there.

It will of course be a heat monster so YMMV.
Lets hope that means 4.5+ is a reasonable expectation for the 6 and 8 core parts. A couple hundred extra mhz is not in any way a game changer for the quad parts, but if the six and eight core parts clock accordingly, would give them a nice boost over Ryzen. Personally, I no matter how many cores you can get for cheap, I would never give up the single core performance that one has to sacrifice with Ryzen. But then again, I dont do any heavily multi-threaded productivity apps.
 

TheF34RChannel

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May 18, 2017
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That whould be a niche, at best, to me it does not seem right from a market POV to release boards only for the most irrelevant 2 CPUs ever.

Now releasing cheapper boards for both KBL-X and 7800X, 7820X seems to be a better choice. They really dont need much, 140W max, just 1 PCI-E 16x, two at most, 2 PCI-E x1, 4 ram slots, 1 or 2 M2 and 6 satas... They can do that whiout too much problem.

From that point of view you'd be spot on. As for niches, both KBL-X parts already are some awkward niche by themselves.
 
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wildhorse2k

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May 12, 2017
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It would make sense to get coffeelake-x on X299 to replace the kabylake-x. Keep Z270/Z370 only for mainstream cheap CPUs.