Intel Skylake Platform

[Thorburn]

Examples:

U series: Core i5 4300U and Core i7 4600U
Y series: Core i5 4300Y and Core i7 4610Y

Where you see equal/higher clocks than 3rd gen core predecessors, lowering the TDP while including the PCH. In case of the 4610Y, its 13% higher clocked in Base and 11.5% in Turbo. That, when including perf/watt gains, equals to 25% power reduction with 10% performance increase in U and 28% power reduction with 20% performance increase in Y!

You're biassing your comparison by going i5 to i7 - there are 3rd gen i7 U and Y parts as well.

Top-bin i7 U series is:
i7-3687U - 2.1GHz base, 3.3GHz turbo
i7-4650U - 2.1GHz base, 3.3GHz turbo

Top-bin i7 Y series is:
i7-3689Y - 1.5GHz base, 2.6GHz turbo
i7-4610Y - 1.7GHz base, 2.9GHz turbo

Turbo of course makes it hard to have a fair comparison as well - just because two chips have the same max turbo frequency doesn't mean they can spend the same amount of time there. Really the only metric you can compare on is perf/watt where the Haswell parts should win by varying degrees in terms of CPU performance and easily on GPU performance. Testing I've done shows HD4200 (10W) GPU performance to typically be quicker than HD4000 at 17W, and that was comparing an i5-4300Y to an i7-3687U...

 

[DavidC]

You're biassing your comparison by going i5 to i7 - there are 3rd gen i7 U and Y parts as well.

Top-bin i7 U series is:
i7-3687U - 2.1GHz base, 3.3GHz turbo
i7-4650U(Actually 4600U) - 2.1GHz base, 3.3GHz turbo

Top-bin i7 Y series is:
i7-3689Y - 1.5GHz base, 2.6GHz turbo
i7-4610Y - 1.7GHz base, 2.9GHz turbo

I have no idea where you derived that. It's easy to check the specifications of the 3rd Gen Core chips and find out my point is right on. My point is that unlike Desktops and SV chips that increased TDP while staying at same frequency, U and Y series chips either stayed same or increased in frequency while lowering TDP, all the while integrating the PCH. That's a significant difference.

That, when including perf/watt gains, equals to 25% power reduction with 10% performance increase in U and 28% power reduction with 20% performance increase in Y!

I'm talking in relation to 3rd Gen Core i7 Y to 4th Gen Core i7 Y above, not going against Core i5 and Core i7.

That's the change with 22nm process. CPU itself was too late in design to optimize for low voltage operation(which means room for optimization on Skylake) but for process based on IEDM numbers its performance is optimized for low voltages and leakages, but in sacrifice the high performance chips don't do as well.

 

[Thorburn]

Urgh yes so you are - replied to this first thing in the morning and thought you were looking 3rd gen to 4th gen. Should have had a coffee before posting.

 

[DavidC]

Ahh, I see the reason, I think.

That, when including perf/watt gains, equals to 25% power reduction with 10% performance increase

"perf/watt" should be "perf/clock".

 

[Thorburn]

Yeah I'll pretend that's the reason and not that I misread the model numbers.

 

[iMacmatician]

From VR-Zone: "Evolutionary DDR4 but maintains PCIe 3.0, Intel will push Greenlow Platform in 2015" (original).

First SkyLake CPU side, Intel Xeon processors, will be the E3-1200 v5 (Core i 6th), this is the continuation of the current naming tradition. Pin aspects will be somewhat know better, this will transform Broadwell's LGA 1150 LGA 1151. As for the number of cores, the changes do not have any, will still remain at 2C4T or 4C8T.

I can't say I'm too surprised.

 

[Blazkowicz]

About DDR4 : can you mix and match DIMMs of different capacity, and still somehow get the full bandwith? i.e. a solution similar to the mixed density on nvidia 192bit boards.

DDR4 being point-to-point, one DIMM per channel, I find it cumbersome to have to fill all the slots and replace all DIMMs when you want to upgrade memory - though if you don't use the IGP, running single channel for a while ought to be reasonable.

The above article says :

Dual likewise remain unaffected, so only 4 Dimm memory slots for a maximum memory capacity of 64GB, the memory used will be DDR4-2400MHz.

This might be a mistake, from my understanding you will only get two DIMMs as the max on any Skylake motherboard.
Instead we might get stacked dies on the DIMMs so I would expect 32GB, and even 64GB or 128GB on a single stick.

 

[Wynix]

So how many generations of 4C/8T i7's are we up to now?

 

[Thorburn]

So how many generations of 4C/8T i7's are we up to now?

4th, but we're also on our 3rd generation of 6C/12T ones...

 

[Alexko]

So how many generations of 4C/8T i7's are we up to now?

Mainstream quad cores go back to Conroe, really. So:

[strike]Conroe[/strike] Kentsfield, Penryn, Nehalem, Westmere, Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge, Haswell, most likely Broadwell and apparently, Skylake.

So [strike]8[/strike] 9, although there were only 4 threads before Nehalem, and I don't think Intel ever bothered to actually make a 4C Westmere.

 

[Thorburn]

It goes back to Conroe, really. So:

Conroe, Penryn, Nehalem, Westmere, Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge, most likely Broadwell and apparently, Skylake.

So 8, although there were only 4 threads before Nehalem.

Careful with your codenames, Westmere was available all the way up to 10c/20t. Even Nehalem had 8c/16t variants.

For most users you'll see little to no benefit chucking them more cores - I run an 8c/16t SNB-E and for the majority uses a 6c/8t i7-3960X would actually be a quicker chip (and has a 20W lower TDP). For those that do need (or want more) then the option has been available for years.

 

[Alexko]

Careful with your codenames, Westmere was available all the way up to 10c/20t. Even Nehalem had 8c/16t variants.

For most users you'll see little to no benefit chucking them more cores - I run an 8c/16t SNB-E and for the majority uses a 6c/8t i7-3960X would actually be a quicker chip (and has a 20W lower TDP). For those that do need (or want more) then the option has been available for years.

Yes but I'm referring to the mainstream chips, the ones you can get for ~$200 or less and that make up over 90% of the Intel's sales.

 

[Thorburn]

Yes but I'm referring to the mainstream chips, the ones you can get for ~$200 or less and that make up over 90% of the Intel's sales.

For the mainstream users they offer little or no benefit. Tbh for most people the money spent on a quad-core is better spent on the I/O subsystem and getting an SSD in there.

 

[Alexko]

For the mainstream users they offer little or no benefit. Tbh for most people the money spent on a quad-core is better spent on the I/O subsystem and getting an SSD in there.

No argument there. But on the other hand, as long as mainstream chips don't get more than 4 cores, bigger CPUs will remain very expensive for the rest of us.

 

[pjbliverpool]

Highly dissapointing but not really unexpected. The problem is how are desktop/consumer level applications ever going to make use of more than 4 cores if Intel don't release CPU's into the mainstream with more than 4 cores. AMD are doing it yes but their 8 core CPU's make up a very small fraction of the market.

There were no apps which took advantage of 4 cores when they first came out (and dual cores before them) but the software caught up, as I believe it would if 8 cores became the standard.

Oh well, I guess I won't need to fork out on a CPU upgrade for a few more years anyway. My 3.3Ghz Sandybridge based 2500K should still offer ~60-70% of the equivilent Skylake CPU 2 years from now and 4 generations newer (ignoring AVX2/3 performance). Ridiculous!

 

[Albuquerque]

Highly dissapointing but not really unexpected. The problem is how are desktop/consumer level applications ever going to make use of more than 4 cores if Intel don't release CPU's into the mainstream with more than 4 cores. AMD are doing it yes but their 8 core CPU's make up a very small fraction of the market

While hyperthreading is certainly not equivalent to another full core, it can still be used in that way. There are certainly consumer-grade applications out there today which can take advantage of more than four cores, Most video compressors that are worth a damn will use more than four cores, if you've got a machine so equipped.

The trick is this: quad cores (with or without hyperthreading) have only recently become pervasive, but even now are not ubiquitous. How much time should a developer spend tuning their game for more than four hardware threads, when the installed base of computing rarely sees more than four hardware threads (hyperthreading included in this conceptual list.)

The only more-than-four-thread processors out there are the top of the AMD FX line (three moduole, four module) and the very top of the Intel line (core i7's with HT, and the Core i7 39x0/49x0-series.) That's an incredibly small component of the incredibly large installed base.

Even if Intel released octal core, 16 thread CPU's starting in January of last year, the cost would still be ridiculously high, and the installed base would be lucky to hit a full percentage point (i even doubt that much) by the end of this year.

 

[rpg.314]

Highly dissapointing but not really unexpected. The problem is how are desktop/consumer level applications ever going to make use of more than 4 cores if Intel don't release CPU's into the mainstream with more than 4 cores.

This is backwards. Apps don't use 4 cores today, why would they use 8 tomorrow?

 

[eastmen]

While hyperthreading is certainly not equivalent to another full core, it can still be used in that way. There are certainly consumer-grade applications out there today which can take advantage of more than four cores, Most video compressors that are worth a damn will use more than four cores, if you've got a machine so equipped.

The trick is this: quad cores (with or without hyperthreading) have only recently become pervasive, but even now are not ubiquitous. How much time should a developer spend tuning their game for more than four hardware threads, when the installed base of computing rarely sees more than four hardware threads (hyperthreading included in this conceptual list.)

The only more-than-four-thread processors out there are the top of the AMD FX line (three moduole, four module) and the very top of the Intel line (core i7's with HT, and the Core i7 39x0/49x0-series.) That's an incredibly small component of the incredibly large installed base.

Even if Intel released octal core, 16 thread CPU's starting in January of last year, the cost would still be ridiculously high, and the installed base would be lucky to hit a full percentage point (i even doubt that much) by the end of this year.

I would imagine with both consoles having 8 x86 cpu cores there will be a lot of game software out there rather quickly that can take advantage of 8 cores.

I was really hoping that intel would have an 8 core cpu with broadwell or skylake even if it started out at $600 .

 

[Thorburn]

I would imagine with both consoles having 8 x86 cpu cores there will be a lot of game software out there rather quickly that can take advantage of 8 cores.

Problem is they are 8 piss-poor x86 cores

 

[Alexko]

Problem is they are 8 piss-poor x86 cores

They're low-power, not piss-poor. And if anything, that's a good thing: it means developers will have to optimise their engines for 8 threads in order to get good performance. This optimisation work may then carry over to the PC.