Intel Broadwell for desktops

[eastmen]

surface pro 3 on ars technica shows that it still uses haswell but have better battery life and thinner body. With broadwell, maybe smaller surface can surface

it can't get much thinner and keep the full sized usb port.

The thickness isn't the problem of the new surface , weight still is though and if a broadwell and skylake after it allow them to trim a bit of that 45wh battery we could see it get close to a pound and a half.

 

[homerdog]

I've heard some crazy rumors about future Intel desktop CPUs having stricter segmentation between models with differing numbers of PCIe lanes and whatnot. Is any of that true? A desktop CPU with only 16 PCIe lanes would be a travesty given the future of PCIe SSDs.

 

[Scott_Arm]

I hate this Broadwell delay. I want a new laptop. Mine is on its last legs. Now I have to choose between buying a Haswell based laptop now, or dealing with an f'ed up display and some other problems for another five months or so.

 

[Wynix]

I hate this Broadwell delay. I want a new laptop. Mine is on its last legs. Now I have to choose between buying a Haswell based laptop now, or dealing with an f'ed up display and some other problems for another five months or so.

You're not alone.
I'm looking at getting either a laptop or a 2 in 1(cheap one with windows); Currently, cheap laptops have garbage battery life(5-6hrs) but at the same time cheap 2 in 1's have mediocre CPU perf, rubbish GPU perf and only slightly better battery life (6-9hrs).
Please Broadwell save me from these devices, you are my only hope!

 

[Grall]

Skywell (or better) for me please. I want to see what intel's done with their new GPU tech in that chip. Broadwell only has a warmed-over haswell GPU IIRC.

 

[homerdog]

You're not alone.
I'm looking at getting either a laptop or a 2 in 1(cheap one with windows); Currently, cheap laptops have garbage battery life(5-6hrs) but at the same time cheap 2 in 1's have mediocre CPU perf, rubbish GPU perf and only slightly better battery life (6-9hrs).
Please Broadwell save me from these devices, you are my only hope!

5-6 hours is garbage! We are so spoiled

Skywell (or better) for me please. I want to see what intel's done with their new GPU tech in that chip. Broadwell only has a warmed-over haswell GPU IIRC.

How are they planning to tackle bandwidth for Skylake? More and faster eDRAM or something completely different?

 

[Grall]

Dunno, nothing has leaked so far AFAIK... That's what makes it so exciting, heh.

They're not adding more cores or cache it would seem (it's been 256k L2/4MB L3 per core pair since i-series started, so most additional transistors allowed by the new process beyond the new vector FPU extension would logically end up with the GPU. Not sure how much that will be though.

Intel seems to have decided that the external 64MB L4 is more than enough really, so probably won't be expanded - this generation anyway. Caches have always tended to grow over time though, so some day it'll undoubtedly happen.

 

[Blazkowicz]

I've heard some crazy rumors about future Intel desktop CPUs having stricter segmentation between models with differing numbers of PCIe lanes and whatnot. Is any of that true? A desktop CPU with only 16 PCIe lanes would be a travesty given the future of PCIe SSDs.

Intel was speaking of "lane flexibility" already, so for example a PCIe lane can go to an SSD, a SATA port or something else.
A motherboard or laptop vendor will make these choices, or the user is left with some currently on high end 1150 motherboards : use either the SATA Express or the M2 slot, not both. Which is peeving if you have slot OCD, but not entirely terrible.

Mainstream will stay at 16 lanes in the CPU, that's unmoved since the 1156 socket years ago?, the additional lanes between CPU and chipset (DMI) will stay the same too but go from PCIe 2.0 to 3.0 in socket 1151. (motherboard can include a bridge chip to put more 2.0 lanes out of these 3.0 ones I think. or if you can have the single graphics card at 8x, and second "graphics" slot at 8x with a card full of M2 slots plugged in, that's somewhat good)

True, Intel is segmenting lanes. That's for the socket above (2011-3) where cheaper CPU will have only 24 lanes out of 36 activated (not counting again the lanes gone through chipset). The bait is it's 6-core.
So, be thankful for the king's largesses lol.

 

[Raqia]

Skywell (or better) for me please. I want to see what intel's done with their new GPU tech in that chip. Broadwell only has a warmed-over haswell GPU IIRC.

The CPU is warmed over, but the GPU should see substantial gains:

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=intel_broadwell_linux&num=2

Intel Broadwell graphics should be a terrific upgrade. Ben Widawsky in publishing the initial Broadwell support said, "Broadwell represents the next generation (GEN8) in Intel graphics processing hardware. Broadwell graphics bring some of the biggest changes we've seen on the execution and memory management side of the GPU. There are equally large and exciting changes for the userspace drivers."

 

[eastmen]

Skywell (or better) for me please. I want to see what intel's done with their new GPU tech in that chip. Broadwell only has a warmed-over haswell GPU IIRC.

I'll be waiting for skywell also if only because my surface pro is still going strong and i'd really like a quad core in my surface and I bet the first 15w apu's from broadwell will still be dual core

 

[Andrew Lauritzen]

Skylake* guys... we've already had the two "*wells"

 

[homerdog]

I'll be waiting for skywell also if only because my surface pro is still going strong and i'd really like a quad core in my surface and I bet the first 15w apu's from broadwell will still be dual core

Wouldn't you prefer a fast dual core with longer battery and less heat?

 

[fellix]

Errata prompts Intel to disable TSX in Haswell, early Broadwell CPUs

 

[3dilettante]

According to a link in the comments to the errata from Intel, the issue is described as follows:

"Under a complex set of internal timing conditions and system events, software using
the Intel TSX (Transactional Synchronization Extensions) instructions may result in
unpredictable system behavior."

Maybe the unfixed chips can in certain circumstances miss that a transaction should have failed, or maybe something can cause transactions to become visible in a non-atomic manner.

 

[eastmen]

Wouldn't you prefer a fast dual core with longer battery and less heat?

A lot of stuff can take advantage of more cores , i'm hoping with skydale they are able to disable cores on the fly and clock the others higher.

 

[homerdog]

A lot of stuff can take advantage of more cores , i'm hoping with skydale they are able to disable cores on the fly and clock the others higher.

That seems to be the direction Intel is going.

Broadwell is looking to be some kind of amazing in terms of perf/watt, can't even imagine what they'll do with Skylake.

 

[Alexko]

A lot of stuff can take advantage of more cores , i'm hoping with skydale they are able to disable cores on the fly and clock the others higher.

I'm pretty sure Intel's chips have been able to do that for a while.

 

[Wynix]

I'm pretty sure Intel's chips have been able to do that for a while.

I thought they only underclocked, not disabled.

 

[Alexko]

As far as I know they're power-gated.

 

[Grall]

Intel turbomode disables cores (via clock and power gating, as mentioned) completely so that the remaining cores can run faster. I don't think individual cores can clock at different rates though; the original AMD Phenom had that capability (and it tripped up certain software that did not expect that behavior, like 3dmark), but maybe we'll see that feature again some day. It would pretty much require separate voltage regulators for each core/pair of cores at least though, as merely adjusting clock speed has such a minor impact on power consumption...