Why Ivy Bridge Is Still Quad-Core?

[ncalipari]

Kristian's article is very interesting but I think it miss to outline well enough a critical question:

Intel didn't make IB Hexacore becuase there is no competitive pressure, while there is always a demand for more core. AMD missed the shot, and this put INTEL in position to milk this market with an older and more expensive architecture (SBE).

Intel's monopoly position is hurting technological development, and if this continues it will start to hurt prices too. We can only hope that AMD can bring out something competitive as soon as possible.

 

[Avalon]

I don't feel that Intel's position is hurting technological development at all. With their tick tock strategy, they've pretty much got no choice but to bring improvements year by year.

On top of that, since SB/IB are native quad core chips, it's reasonable to expect a hex core derivative would lag behind.

Not to mention, the market that most of these chips are aimed at, do not require many cores at all. If someone really needs some serious threading power, there's a 6 core with hyperthreading to take care of that for you. Being that IB is a refresh, it makes sense we're still at quad cores for the mainstream.

 

[MrX8503]

Maybe we'll see hexcore soon, but not yet. As of right now there isn't a use for it.

 

[thilanliyan]

^Yes there is, video encoding, which in my case I do quite often, but maybe not others of course.

 

[MrX8503]

Well then your option is to buy an Ivy with hyperthreading. Right now Intel is concerned with power draw. More cores means more power. Once we get to a low enough TDP, they'll make a hexcore.

 

[Hulk]

^Yes there is, video encoding, which in my case I do quite often, but maybe not others of course.

Me too.

 

[grkM3]

^Yes there is, video encoding, which in my case I do quite often, but maybe not others of course.

My gpu encodes 3x faster than my sandy setup using its cuda cores,you should try encoding using your gpu

 

[sm625]

I find it absurd that anyone would actually argue intel is not milking. Of course they are. The only people who wouldnt think so probably also dont think 17% a year increase in health care costs and tuition costs isnt a direct result of the political class's criminal attempts to cover up rampant inflation. Some people just love being bent over, be it by politicians or their corporate masters. Look at the latest atom debacle. Like they couldnt get drivers working if they wanted to... just what kind of bs is too nasty for the american consumer to swallow?

 

[Avalon]

I find it absurd that anyone would actually argue intel is not milking. Of course they are. The only people who wouldnt think so probably also dont think 17% a year increase in health care costs and tuition costs isnt a direct result of the political class's criminal attempts to cover up rampant inflation. Some people just love being bent over, be it by politicians or their corporate masters. Look at the latest atom debacle. Like they couldnt get drivers working if they wanted to... just what kind of bs is too nasty for the american consumer to swallow?

Sorry, but my healthcare costs have been relatively flat for the past few years, as has my wife's post grad tuition.

Intel is for sure going to strive for profits, but it doesn't mean they're going to abandon their roadmaps to spoon feed people crap just to squeeze every last dollar out of them.

P&N is this way
<------

 

[superccs]

No need for faster processors

Lol we just got a i7 2600 in our lab so we can handle some genomics software and actually get some data analyzed. Had Intel had a faster CPU with more cores available in a desktop we would have probably got that instead. We do not have a good cluster to access, so this is the only way some of us will graduate in time.

 

[Arachnotronic]

superccs, it's called the Intel Core i7 3930K, 3960X, and the 990X

 

[AdamK47]

Maybe I'm reading it wrong, but the article seems to imply that it's possible for Intel to release a hex core for their mainstream socket 1155 platform if they wanted to. Is it possible?

 

[Denithor]

Maybe I'm reading it wrong, but the article seems to imply that it's possible for Intel to release a hex core for their mainstream socket 1155 platform if they wanted to. Is it possible?

Possible, yes, if they hadn't decided to take up 25% of the space on the die with GPU...

 

[Puppies04]

Kristian's article is very interesting but I think it miss to outline well enough a critical question:

Intel didn't make IB Hexacore becuase there is no competitive pressure, while there is always a demand for more core. AMD missed the shot, and this put INTEL in position to milk this market with an older and more expensive architecture (SBE).

Intel's monopoly position is hurting technological development, and if this continues it will start to hurt prices too. We can only hope that AMD can bring out something competitive as soon as possible.

Intel haven't make IB hexcore because there just isn't the need. If you "need" a hex go get your wallet shredded on a SB-E system or buy an X6 rig.

Intel wouldn't make any profit on a 6 core IB chip because the volumes sold just wouldn't be large enough so the R+D costs wouldn't be covered. This would mean that they would want to make more profit on the other chips in the range. Why should everyone else have to pay more for their lower level chips just because you want to tell all your buddys you have a hex core sat at home that gives you no performance gain in 99% of what you do and uses more power at the same time.

So you do a little video encoding sometimes, who cares, go get a cup of coffee or surf the net for 5 minutes while it finishes off.

I guess it is true what they say, some people are never happy, intel have marketed a pair of chips (I5 2500k + I7 2600k) at never before seen performance per $ levels and some of you are still moaning about what you haven't got.

 

[pelov]

Maybe I'm reading it wrong, but the article seems to imply that it's possible for Intel to release a hex core for their mainstream socket 1155 platform if they wanted to. Is it possible?

Given it's a die-shrink of SB with lower TDP, same clocks but heavily boosted graphical performance, I find that IB is Intel pushing for a great ultrabook chip. I highly doubt that this is going to be the first gen > 2nd gen core i3/5/7 boost we saw previously. Yes they could have put 6 cores and increased the TDP, but given that the chip isn't meant to be a big performer in relation to SB and that AMD has failed to deliver, they really don't have the need to.

The inevitably higher OC headroom should be quite nice, but I highly doubt that upgrading from SB > IB will be worth it for the desktop folk unless you're going from an i3 to an i5 or i7.

 

[Puppies04]

Possible, yes, if they hadn't decided to take up 25% of the space on the die with GPU...

Which of course they were forced into because AMD decided that the only way they could produce a "better" chip than intel was to pick up on the weakest part of the intel chip (graphics) and design a chip specifically designed to target this weakness.

Sure in an ideal world the top end SB + IB chips would have no on die GPU which would leave space for a couple more cores but keep in mind the only reason you "k" chip isn't twice the price is because intel made all the I5 and I7 chips from the same design to save money.

 

[pelov]

Which of course they were forced into because AMD decided that the only way they could produce a "better" chip than intel was to pick up on the weakest part of the intel chip (graphics) and design a chip specifically designed to target this weakness.

Sure in an ideal world the top end SB + IB chips would have no on die GPU which would leave space for a couple more cores but keep in mind the only reason you "k" chip isn't twice the price is because intel made all the I5 and I7 chips from the same design to save money.

Don't forget that Apple originally planned to go with Llano for their future laptops. They weren't happy with Intel nor the graphical performance, which on a laptop isn't surprising given that they're not exactly meant to be number-crunching machines, and Intel took that as advice. Keep TDP low, keep performance roughly the same (minor IPC bump) but improve on the graphical performance (the one side where AMD is still way ahead) to make your products more appealing for the mobile market.

I hate batteries. Why can't we all just walk around with extremely long extension cords plugged in somewhere...

 

[ed29a]

Maybe we'll see hexcore soon, but not yet. As of right now there isn't a use for it.

Wow, that's just pure ignorance. Because you can't see people needing 4+ cores, there can't be a use for it.

I run 4+ virtual machines on my 1090T. I don't need massive speeds, just separate cores. I also don't want to spend 800$+ on a CPU + motherboard just so that I can get my work done when I can spend half of that on a competitor.

There are a lot of people who would jump on a 6 core IB because the platform would be much cheaper than IB-E.

 

[ncalipari]

So you do a little video encoding sometimes, who cares, go get a cup of coffee or surf the net for 5 minutes while it finishes off. .

this mentality slow down progress. Someone said that 640 kb of ram was enough for everybody.

 

[ed29a]

So you do a little video encoding sometimes, who cares, go get a cup of coffee or surf the net for 5 minutes while it finishes off.

Another ignorant post. You do realize people do other things on their machines than a little encoding here and there that could require more cores?

 

[Puppies04]

Another ignorant post. You do realize people do other things on their machines than a little encoding here and there that could require more cores?

Ha,you are calling me ignorant, maybe you need to realise that those people you are talking about make up >1% of private pc owners and as they have "special" needs there are "special" products out there that they can use if they are willing to pay for it. Why should I pay more for my CPU because you want to do something a little faster that most people don't give 2 hoots about.

 

[ncalipari]

Ha,you are calling me ignorant, maybe you need to realise that those people you are talking about make up >1% of private pc owners and as they have "special" needs there are "special" products out there that they can use if they are willing to pay for it. Why should I pay more for my CPU because you want to do something a little faster that most people don't give 2 hoots about.

actually you are already paying more due to the lack of competition.

In case Bulldozer would have been more competitive, an hexacore IB would have been cheaper, and quad core even more.

 

[MrX8503]

Wow, that's just pure ignorance. Because you can't see people needing 4+ cores, there can't be a use for it.

I run 4+ virtual machines on my 1090T. I don't need massive speeds, just separate cores. I also don't want to spend 800$+ on a CPU + motherboard just so that I can get my work done when I can spend half of that on a competitor.

There are a lot of people who would jump on a 6 core IB because the platform would be much cheaper than IB-E.

Did you even read Anandtech's article? There isn't a need for a hexcore Ivy because there's SNB-E. Why would Intel decimate their own sales? Think dude.

 

[ed29a]

Ha,you are calling me ignorant, maybe you need to realise that those people you are talking about make up >1% of private pc owners and as they have "special" needs there are "special" products out there that they can use if they are willing to pay for it.

Strange. AMD can make a sub 200$ 6 core CPU yet Intel with 6+ times the R&D budget can't? Oh and pay more for CPU? R&D is done on it.

Why should I pay more for my CPU because you want to do something a little faster that most people don't give 2 hoots about.

You think the Phenom II x4, Llano and x6 are different beasts? Same damn core with some minor updates for the x6 and a graphics core stuck to Llano. No one is paying extra for it.

Also, you are shortsighted as well. If Intel makes an affordable 6 core CPU, developers will start coding/changing software for it and before you know, lot of more threaded software will be available.

If AMD can do it, why can't Intel? Here is a hint: they don't want cheap hexa cores cutting into the extreme line. That happens when you got no competition in a market.

 

[ed29a]

Did you even read Anandtech's article? There isn't a need for a hexcore Ivy because there's SNB-E. Why would Intel decimate their own sales? Think dude.

Thank you Captain Obvious! Care to explain how AMD can do it? Release a nice six core chip that costs about the same as their top end quad core? If Intel had real competition, you think their 6 core chip would cost 550$+?