What will happen when Intel brings core counts greater than four to mainstream?

[coercitiv]

Personally, if Intel started selling 4 core CPUs at $100, I'd probably still get the dual core + HT at $50 for most of my builds.

Hello voice of reason.

 

[TheELF]

Most importantly, yes we need AMD to force this into a reality by delivering a competitive solution.

Yeah sure ,just like amd forced it into reality way back in 2011...
First gen fx where competitive to intels offering just like current fx is competitive to todays intels (in multithreaded workloads at least)
so no matter what amd might bring to the market intel has a business plan and will stick to it.

 

[cbn]

Could a dual-channel MC feed 6 cores? Maybe thats a reason why Intel hasn't done it..adding more channels is more complex and expensive.

Xeon-D is a low clocked Broadwell octocore with dual channel memory. Also, ASRock made a X99 Mini-ITX with only two DIMM slots (so dual channel). Furthermore, Broadwell Xeon is reported to be 24 cores using quad channel (so a lower amount of cores should work with dual channel).

 

[cbn]

tenks,

Another thing to think about:

Dual channel DDR4 3200 yields 51.2 GB/s bandwidth. That is a lot of bandwidth available once DDR4 speeds rise.

Eventually we would have a choice on how we want to spend that bandwidth: More cores or quad core + iGPU?

 

[cbn]

That and because of the cadence, the HEDT line would become useless, or would have to move to 8c/10c or 8c/12c to be relevant. If skylake came out with a mainstream hex, no one would buy Broadwell-E.

I don't think it has to be like that.

Intel would just give Broadwell-E higher clocks, higher TDP, higher PCIe lanes, etc.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Personally, if Intel started selling 4 core CPUs at $100, I'd probably still get the dual core + HT at $50 for most of my builds. Quads are overkill for a vast majority of the tasks.

^^ This. And its not going to change anything anytime soon. Even if Intel sold 20 cores Skylake CPUs for 50$ tomorrow it would still be the exact same issues as today. And the 99% crowd gets absolutely nothing besides more idle cores.

 

[cytg111]

What will happen when Intel brings core counts greater than four to mainstream?

Here is one thing I think could happen:

Microsoft adds limited multi-user capability to certain home versions of Windows 11 (Maybe a hint of this to come is the virtual desktops feature in Windows 10). This begins to process of desktops becoming a server hub for various devices used by the family and home.

1. Not much, the software is still not there
2. One household, one compute-powerhouse everyone hooks up to? I dont see it - and the mobile trend (laps, nettops, ultrabooks, tablets, fablets and phones) seem to point the opposite direction, everything with its own cpu(s) and more to the point gpu(s).

 

[Enigmoid]

I could see intel bumping up (or at least adding a 6 core mainstream like skylake chip). On 14 nm, adding two cores is on the order of ~20 mm^2 which is pretty insignificant for a 50% core bump.

Doing so would greatly increase the attractiveness of the xeon e3 line and prompt a massive upgrade throughout the desktop community. With 14nm and considering how low power current laptop chips are intel could probably squeeze a 6 core laptop variant in with aggressive turbo (ivy and haswell can run 3.2-3.4 ghz multicore loads indefinitely as long as AVX2 is not being used) so I could easily see 6C + HT @ 2.6 base with 3.2-3.4 boost at 45W (no igp load). A six core skylake chip would be a preemptive move against zen which is at the absolute best going to tie (8 core zen vs. 6 core skylake with 4 ghz clocks) which intel seems to like doing (xeon-D against ARM).

Broadwell 2C GT2 is 83 mm^2. I would expect a small die increase for skylake, perhaps on the order of 5-10%, similar to ivy vs. haswell. Therefore I estimate 4C and 6C GT2 skylake at most 113 mm^2 and 135 mm^2 which are exceedingly tiny dies. Dual channel memory should be plenty with high speed DDR4.

Moving the mainstream to 6C also allows the server cutdown chips to be cutdown less. Skylake will have up to 28C on the server side. Adding a much smaller 6C mainstream chip reduces the number of cures that need to be cut on the upper end of the spectrum.

Disregarding xeon-D and atom I could see

Skylake Consumer
-2C GT2 (i3)
-2C GT2/3 U (mobile U)
-4C GT2/3/4 (desktop 4C, mobile 4C, iris and iris pro chips for apple)
-6C GT2 (high end desktop and mobile)

Server
-12C quad channel
-20C quad channel
-28C hex channel

It is possible that intel may consolidate the E5 and E7 lines and create 4 separate server chips due to the large spread in core counts.

- 10C quad channnel (workstation, HEDT, high frequency, low power)
-16C quad channel
-22C quad channel
-28C hex channel (top end lower frequency)

Then again 1 Core is ~10-14 mm^2 with L3 so even cutting 4-6 may be cost effective compared to having another die.

 

[gbeirn]

Forget more cores, what we need is more I/O native to the CPU (PCI-Express lanes). 16 isn't going to cut it now that we are finally seeing things that can take advantage of it. With USB 3.1, discrete graphics, wireless AC and M.2 PCI-E storage the minimum I'd like to see is 28 lanes on chip.

More consumers would benefit from faster storage and removable devices than extra cores, IMHO.

 

[imaheadcase]

NO reason to go over 4 cores, till programmers/developers/mainstream tools are used to take advantage of more cores. You have games/apps made today not multithreaded.

 

[Arachnotronic]

Mainstream DT chips are based on the same silicon as high end laptop silicon. I don't think six cores in laptops will make sense anytime soon, so I doubt we'll see "mainstream" six core chips anytime soon.

 

[Dave2150]

^^ This. And its not going to change anything anytime soon. Even if Intel sold 20 cores Skylake CPUs for 50$ tomorrow it would still be the exact same issues as today. And the 99% crowd gets absolutely nothing besides more idle cores.

The 99% crowd are not buying desktop PC's anymore. They use their smartphones or tablets to web browse.

 

[Dave2150]

NO reason to go over 4 cores, till programmers/developers/mainstream tools are used to take advantage of more cores. You have games/apps made today not multithreaded.

There are plenty of mainstream applications that take advantage of more than 4 cores. Have you not heard of editing video or encoding?

 

[scannall]

There are plenty of mainstream applications that take advantage of more than 4 cores. Have you not heard of editing video or encoding?

It's debatable as to whether those are mainstream or not. But yes, if you do video encoding more cores does help. Though having more cores usually means you have to sacrifice some single threaded performance.

 

[Enigmoid]

It's debatable as to whether those are mainstream or not. But yes, if you do video encoding more cores does help. Though having more cores usually means you have to sacrifice some single threaded performance.

With smart aggressive turbo this can be completely mitigated.

 

[Khato]

Well, depending upon which definition of mainstream you take I'd re-phrase the original question to "What will happen when Intel brings quad cores to the mainstream." due to mainstream mobile still being stuck on dual core. I mean, mobile is a larger market segment than desktop and there's markedly more usage scenarios which benefit from the 2->4 core transition than 4->8.

That said, I expect that we'll get the answer to both questions with Cannonlake.

 

[TheELF]

There are plenty of mainstream applications that take advantage of more than 4 cores. Have you not heard of editing video or encoding?

Thats why you got quicksync with haswell even on the celerons,screen recording and trans-coding as if you had a lot of cores without the cost of the extra cores.

And don't kid yourselves, computer science established the fields of distributed computing decades ago,other than those the benefits of multiple cores are minimal.

 

[scannall]

With smart aggressive turbo this can be completely mitigated.

In theory sure. But not in any existing desktop, laptop or server parts.

 

[Fjodor2001]

What will happen when Intel brings core counts greater than four to mainstream?

More SW will be optimized for higher core counts. So it'll bring a huge performance boost compared to the ~5% yearly performance increase we've been seeing the last few years.

But I think AMD Zen is what will bring about this revolution, not Intel.

 

[Yuriman]

Well, depending upon which definition of mainstream you take I'd re-phrase the original question to "What will happen when Intel brings quad cores to the mainstream." due to mainstream mobile still being stuck on dual core. I mean, mobile is a larger market segment than desktop and there's markedly more usage scenarios which benefit from the 2->4 core transition than 4->8.

That said, I expect that we'll get the answer to both questions with Cannonlake.

Valid point. However, the largest benefits currently in the Intel lineup for 95% of tasks today are found when going from 2c2t to 2c4t. After that, it's diminishing returns in everything except those few (consumer) programs that scale linearly with core count.

Arguably 2c6t/8t and a really wide core could be a more effective use of die space, since most programs are heavy on just one or two threads.

More SW will be optimized for higher core counts. So it'll bring a huge performance boost compared to the ~5% yearly performance increase we've been seeing the last few years.

But I think AMD Zen is what will bring about this revolution, not Intel.

Chicken and egg.

 

[Fjodor2001]

Chicken and egg.

Exactly. And if we get the chicken (8+ CPU cores) we'll probably get the egg (SW that utilizes it).

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Imagine how many would buy it. You make a loss that doesn't matter due to sheer volume.

That's not how loss leaders work. If you're selling something at a loss, the more you sell, the more money you lose.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Exactly. And if we get the chicken (8+ CPU cores) we'll probably get the egg (SW that utilizes it).

We already got the chicken the last ~6½ years. But there is no eggs.

 

[jpiniero]

Exactly. And if we get the chicken (8+ CPU cores) we'll probably get the egg (SW that utilizes it).

It's quite clear that consumers want lower power and less/no fans. It makes sense considering that the average Core processor is so much of an overkill for what people use their computer for. Plus it enables smaller form factors for desktops and lighter laptops.

 

[Fjodor2001]

We already got the chicken the last ~6½ years. But there is no eggs.

Really, what mainstream chicken are you talking about?