Intel To Expand Core M Broadwell Line With Faster Dual-Core Processors

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Intel To Expand Core M Broadwell Line With Faster Dual-Core Processors

Posted by Soulskill on Monday November 3, 2014 @05:20PM from the harder-better-faster-stronger dept.

MojoKid writes: Intel didn't waste much time following-up on its initial Core M lineup launch. The company has added 4 more Core M models to its roster. Like the launch chips, these four are dual-core designs that support HyperThreading to enable an effective four logical threads for processing. Also like those earlier chips, these are spec'd with a TDP of 4.5W. These new chips, however, are generally faster than the launch models, with a new top-end processor called the M-5Y71. This chip has a base clock speed of 1.2GHz, but is burstable through Turbo up to 2.9GHz. What really sets these chips apart from the initial Core M models is that their TDP is scalable, based on what the builder is looking to do with it. If the chip is set to be used in a notebook with very little free space, the OEM could opt to drop the chip down to 3.5W and lose 600MHz in the process. By contrast, a bulkier notebook could handle a hotter chip better, so a higher TDP could be decided upon. If that route's taken, any one of these new chips could peak at 6W and add 200MHz to the base and top-end clocks.

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Nice by rrohbeck · 2014-11-03 17:34 · Score: 1

How much can they do with overvolting and watercooling?

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1. Re:Nice by Wing_Zero · 2014-11-03 18:24 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  Well, if the peak (judging from the last sentence of the summary) is 6w, that is easily in the power envelope of USB. (6w = 5v@1.1a) so, all they mean is a larger Passive cooler. You probably don't need a Heat-sink-fan unit until about 10-15w
2. Re:Nice by TubeSteak · 2014-11-03 18:56 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Well, if the peak (judging from the last sentence of the summary) is 6w, that is easily in the power envelope of USB. (6w = 5v@1.1a) so, all they mean is a larger Passive cooler. You probably don't need a Heat-sink-fan unit until about 10-15w
  There might not be much room for overclocking, since we know Intel has been having lots of trouble with their 14nm yields.
  It's possible that they're rolling out low power dual core chips because that's all they can produce in any significant volume.
  
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Intel's new Tock-Tick release cycle ... by systemBuilder · 2014-11-03 17:35 · Score: 4, Funny

For so many years in a row, Intel has been making faster and faster processors. This year, for a change, they have decided to focus on making only slower processors, and the Broadwell series is the result! This year they are slowing down the CPUs, next year they will slow down the system bus ...
1. Re:Intel's new Tock-Tick release cycle ... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-03 17:46 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  all to better compete head on with amd
2. Re:Intel's new Tock-Tick release cycle ... by WarJolt · 2014-11-03 18:28 · Score: 2
  
  AMD? Arm is the real competition.
3. Re:Intel's new Tock-Tick release cycle ... by ArcadeMan · 2014-11-03 18:40 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  If they keep lowering their CPU clock speeds like that, their competition is going to be Atmel.
  
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4. Re:Intel's new Tock-Tick release cycle ... by WarJolt · 2014-11-03 18:48 · Score: 1
  
  Like I said ARM. Atmel licenses cores from ARM.
5. Re:Intel's new Tock-Tick release cycle ... by Narishma · 2014-11-03 21:41 · Score: 1
  
  They license ARM cores from ARM. They use their own AVR cores in their AVR microcontrollers. That's obviously what the parent was talking about.
  
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6. Re:Intel's new Tock-Tick release cycle ... by hairyfeet · 2014-11-03 23:16 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  You make a funny but frankly there realy is no reason for AMD to follow Intel down the rabbit hole of ever lower nm sizes (which if rumors are true is ending up with worse yields and lower clocks do to leakage with each rev) because what Intel doesn't want to admit that AMD seems to have accepted is that CPUs have gone waaay past "good enough" and into insanely overpowered for all but the handful that are doing jobs that stress a CPU to its limit and those folks would be better off with a dual socket workstation anyway.
  What jobs do Joe and Jane Average have that won't be well served by a C2Q or Phenom X4 from 7 years ago? None, not a damned thing, in fact many can get by just fine on a C2D or Athlon X2 and never notice any difference because they just aren't stressing the chips. Hell its even true of the gamers who traditionally were the first adopters, with the first gen i5s and Phenom II X4s and X6s able to play pretty much any game out there when paired with a $150 GPU. When the MHz war was in full swing I was getting rid of my PC for a new one every other year with a major upgrade at the halfway point, but now why bother? I got 8GB of RAM, a 6 core CPU, a board that will take up to 4 GPUs in crossfire and 3TB of storage for my games so why waste money when it'll already play everything and do everything I want?
  This is why I'm not worried about what Intel does even though I'm an AMD exclusive shop, because a dual or quad APU laptop or an APU or CPU based desktop does everything my customers want it to do and will last them for many years. this is why I've branched into home networking and HTPC setups as the days of the 3 year upgrade cycle are well and truly over. Intel can fill their bins with bad chips chasing 0nm all they want, the simple fact of the matter is computers have become like washers and dryers, no need to replace 'em until the previous one dies. I predict ARM will be in the same boat in 2 years or less as like X86 they are ramming into the thermal/power wall and soon won't have anywhere else to go, hence why we are seeing 8 core phones and tablets and the local Walmart is selling dual core tablets for $48. ARM devices are already becoming overpowered compared to the jobs ordinary folks have so all they can do is throw more cores or lower the prices. But that will only take you so far before you are in the same boat as X86, more cores than most need and prices so cheap everybody has more than they can use.
  
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7. Re:Intel's new Tock-Tick release cycle ... by diga33 · 2014-11-03 23:48 · Score: 1
  
  Just answering to undo wrong moderation.
8. Re:Intel's new Tock-Tick release cycle ... by RyuuzakiTetsuya · 2014-11-04 00:26 · Score: 1
  
  The point of lowering clock speeds is lower thermal profile and better battery life. Something Intel can't manage until they either scrap x86 or radically alter their chip design process
  If they can get similar total performance and better clock for clock performance, going with lower clock speeds is the right thing to do.
  
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9. Re:Intel's new Tock-Tick release cycle ... by spire3661 · 2014-11-04 01:08 · Score: 1
  
  Battery life is WAY more important than raw clockspeed right now.
  
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10. Re:Intel's new Tock-Tick release cycle ... by schlachter · 2014-11-04 03:27 · Score: 1
  
  Agreed. Part of the reason this is possible, though, is due to faster SSDs and RAM and efficiency gains in caching, algorithms, etc, and the push to do lots of processing in the cloud. The processor stopped being the bottleneck long ago.
  
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11. Re:Intel's new Tock-Tick release cycle ... by mlts · 2014-11-04 03:31 · Score: 2
  
  What I think we will see once Intel and ARM start hitting a wall with nm sizes is a race to throw as many cores on a die as possible.
  Next step after that will be bigger caches and better caching algorithms.
  After that, the next step will be to have special purpose cores. For example, some phones have two low-power/low-speed cores, and two faster/more energy using cores. I wouldn't be surprised to see that, as well as cores that are dedicated to specific tasks, but general tasks can be put on those cores if need be. For example, a core for AES, cores that are optimized for floating point operations, but can do integer math, GPUs, a specialty core that is intended to be just for security sensitive processes (perhaps even running a Harvard architecture so that heap smashing is not possible), maybe even FPGAs.
  Having a lot of special purpose cores in addition to general purpose tasks, perhaps with a scheduler that can tell the OS to use proper weighting when selecting core affinities will be the next performance gain. However, this will come later, as it requires "knowledge" of tasks to not just be at the CPU branch prediction level, but at the OS scheduler level.
12. Re:Intel's new Tock-Tick release cycle ... by FlyHelicopters · 2014-11-04 03:52 · Score: 2
  
  What jobs do Joe and Jane Average have that won't be well served by a C2Q or Phenom X4 from 7 years ago? None, not a damned thing, in fact many can get by just fine on a C2D or Athlon X2 and never notice any difference because they just aren't stressing the chips.
  That is true to a point...
  Tossing a SSD and more RAM into such a machine, Windows 8 runs just fine on it, for most people...
  Except, it also would suck down more power than it needs to... The same performance that took 65w or 95w of power in 2006 today can be had at 15w of power...
  Those AMD chips you love so much suck down power like it was going out of style...
13. Re:Intel's new Tock-Tick release cycle ... by FlyHelicopters · 2014-11-04 04:00 · Score: 1
  
  When the MHz war was in full swing I was getting rid of my PC for a new one every other year with a major upgrade at the halfway point, but now why bother?
  The upgrades back when were coming faster than they do today.
  Yes, the chips do improve today, but not as much as they once did. The improvements are happening in the areas of features, energy efficiency, and cost, rather than outright performance.
  That being said, C2D (Conroe) was a major improvement in performance over Netburst, and Ci7 (Nehalem) was a major improvement over Conroe.
  Since Nehalem came out, they have been small improvements in outright performance, but huge improvements in feature sets, energy efficient, and cost.
14. Re:Intel's new Tock-Tick release cycle ... by tlhIngan · 2014-11-04 04:31 · Score: 2
  
  After that, the next step will be to have special purpose cores. For example, some phones have two low-power/low-speed cores, and two faster/more energy using cores. I wouldn't be surprised to see that, as well as cores that are dedicated to specific tasks, but general tasks can be put on those cores if need be. For example, a core for AES, cores that are optimized for floating point operations, but can do integer math, GPUs, a specialty core that is intended to be just for security sensitive processes (perhaps even running a Harvard architecture so that heap smashing is not possible), maybe even FPGAs.
  Most ARM SoCs already have that, actually.
  AES cores are called "security accelerators" and practically all modern ARM SoCs have them for security - either with full disk encryption or just offloading the crypto tasks. Floating point - ARM has the Vector Floating Point (VFP) unit for some time, though most people use NEON, the SIMD version of same.
  Security sensitive processes? ARM has that too - TrustZone, and many SoCs even have a low-end ARM7 or ARM11 that stays in secure mode and handles everything involved in bringing the system up. It's the first processor that starts up, which then initializes peripherals, RAM, then boots the big powerful cores that you associate with the SoC. The big powerful cores handle the user level stuff, while system level stuff like power control is often passed to that system controller core.
15. Re:Intel's new Tock-Tick release cycle ... by FlyHelicopters · 2014-11-04 04:34 · Score: 1
  
  When the MHz war was in full swing I was getting rid of my PC for a new one every other year with a major upgrade at the halfway point, but now why bother?
  Just to follow up on this...
  Core i7 920, the first 4 core, 8 thread Nehalem processor, was rated TDP of 130W running at up to 3.33 GHz.
  Core i7 4790K, the top end 4 core, 8 thread Haswell chip, is rated TDP of 88W running at up for 4.4 GHz.
  That is a 32% jump in performance with a 32% reduction in max power draw.
  I don't think you can call that "no difference".
  Taking it another way...
  Core 2 Duo E6600, (Conroe), when it launched in 2006, ran at 2.4 GHz and had a TDP of 65W with 2 cores. It cost $316
  Today, you can get a Haswell based Celeron G1820T running at 2.4 GHz and it has a TDP of 35W with 2 cores. It costs $42.
  Almost half the power consumption, 87% lower price, is not a "small improvement".
16. Re:Intel's new Tock-Tick release cycle ... by chmod+a+x+mojo · 2014-11-04 05:06 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  What jobs do Joe and Jane Average have that won't be well served by a C2Q or Phenom X4 from 7 years ago? None, not a damned thing, in fact many can get by just fine on a C2D or Athlon X2 and never notice any difference because they just aren't stressing the chips.
  Bullshit. Maybe, MAYBE they are not stressing the C2D / C2Q chips if they only browse the net / read and reply to emails. Otherwise stuff like watching 1080P, and to a lesser extent 720P H.264 10bit videos ( or even 8bit, without GPU acceleration ), which more and more videos are in now, pushes a C2D into the 80-90% utilization range. Then they can't do any background tasks on the CPU when watching movies.
  Even if it does do everything you need, the thermal profile is horrid... I moved away from my Prescott that did everything I needed to a C2D simply because I didn't want the thermal profile of the throat of an active volcano on my motherboard anymore, or the fans that sounded like jet engines that cooled it. The benefits of less heat output and less power input by far outweighed the performance gains ( those had been only a bonus ).
  No one can know if we are going to hit a thermal wall anytime soon, the next breakthrough could be happening right as we discuss. Add that to the fact that Intel is reaching ARM power profiles with similar, or higher, clocks, and that x86 / x86_64 vastly outperforms ARM on a per clock-cycle basis and Intel has nothing to fear.
  And congratulations on being an AMD only shop, heaven forbid your customers have any kind of choice in the matter. AMD hasn't made anything more than an "adequate" chip since the K6. Can you name one x86 based laptop / net-top / tablet that uses AMD chips and boasts long battery life made in the last few years? I've seen quite a few Intel based ones that boast 6-7+ hours VS. the AMDs that are usually rated at ~5+.
  You may think I'm "trolling" asking that, but I am actually quite serious, if there is some AMD chip out there that is really power efficient I would like to know, it's just that the only really efficient stuff I have seen recently was all Intel.
  
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17. Re:Intel's new Tock-Tick release cycle ... by Kjella · 2014-11-04 05:57 · Score: 1
  
  You make a funny but frankly there realy is no reason for AMD to follow Intel down the rabbit hole of ever lower nm sizes (which if rumors are true is ending up with worse yields and lower clocks do to leakage with each rev)
  Yields are a matter of process tuning, if one CPU works well it means the others will too eventually. And the new Core Ms are down to 82mm^2 from 131mm^2, meaning more dies per chip which translates directly to higher margins for Intel. It would mean lower prices, but there's no competition. And eventually they will have tuned it while AMD haven't, it's only a win if AMD never ever has to do the same job.
  
  What jobs do Joe and Jane Average have that won't be well served by a C2Q or Phenom X4 from 7 years ago? None, not a damned thing, in fact many can get by just fine on a C2D or Athlon X2 and never notice any difference because they just aren't stressing the chips.
  Yes. Which leaves the question, why should they buy a new machine from AMD rather than some second hand machine that used to be state of the art 5 years ago? While the people who do want to push the envelope in performance/features/battery life/whatever buy new Intel machines instead.
  
  This is why I'm not worried about what Intel does even though I'm an AMD exclusive shop
  Not even that Intel seems to have been taking the gloves off and fights hard and dirty in the tablet/convertible market with contra revenue? ARM is a big enough threat to Intel they might not care much about keeping their x86 competition alibi alive anymore. AMDs CPU revenue keeps going down and losing money, it's a volume business and if they can't step up pretty soon they'll have to get out.
  
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18. Re:Intel's new Tock-Tick release cycle ... by hairyfeet · 2014-11-04 14:24 · Score: 1
  
  To steal a line from the Spoony one...BUUUUULLLLLSSSSSSSSHHHHHIIIIITTTTTT!"
  TechReview did a test of the AMD octocore versus the middle of the line i5 and for the power bill to make the i5 a better buy would mean you would have to keep the i5 in service FOR EIGHTEEN YEARS!! Using Kilawatt they found the yearly power bill difference? less than the cost of a deep dish at Little Caesar's pizza. And again this was using the 125w octocore against the middle of the road i5, with the more common quads and hexacores you aren't even saving the cost of a 2 liter Diet Coke a year.
  So quite buying bullshit and try looking up some actual numbers and you'll find that Intel TDP numbers are based on "theoretical loads" while AMD tends to set their numbers higher than what you'd get IRL to allow for OCing. I've found this to be true as the system I'm typing this on has an excellent set of OCing tools and according to the board the Phenom II X6 is only puling between 6.8w and 14w on average with basic web surfing and YouTube watching, the highest I've managed to get this supposedly "95w" chip is 68w and that was slamming all 6 cores for more than 4 hours doing X264 transcodes. I'm sure i could get to 95w if I wanted to crank the clocks but why bother?
  
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19. Re:Intel's new Tock-Tick release cycle ... by FlyHelicopters · 2014-11-04 14:40 · Score: 1
  
  TechReview did a test of the AMD octocore versus the middle of the line i5 and for the power bill to make the i5 a better buy would mean you would have to keep the i5 in service FOR EIGHTEEN YEARS!!
  And I've seen comparisons that put the number closer to 3 years.
  There are a lot of ways to make those numbers move, depending on what you're trying to say.
  Besides, a Haswell Core i5 will beat the 8 core (that really isn't) AMD chip most of the time anyway.
  The fact is, the top end AMD chips use between 50% to 100% more power than similar performance Intel chips. The total amount of power may not be huge, but it does add up over time.
  It somewhat depends of course on what you pay for power. I pay 11 cents per kw/h, so it is minor to me. My brother-in-law in Australia pays 26 cents per kw/h, so it matters more to them.
  Then there is the fact that if you have to run AC in your house, the hotter your machine, the more AC you have to run. The extra heat from the hotter chip does increase your cooling bills.
  Maybe not a lot, but it does add something.
  If you like AMD, more power to you. Their Athlon XP days and Thunderbird days were very nice, but since Core 2 Duo came out, they have not kept pace in the performance or power use dept.
20. Re:Intel's new Tock-Tick release cycle ... by FlyHelicopters · 2014-11-05 04:55 · Score: 1
  
  That is a very large wall of text...
  You are a true believer and honestly I don't think you'll listen to anything at this point...
  If the AMD CPU was so good, why aren't more selling?
  Even down at your $82 price they aren't selling.
21. Re:Intel's new Tock-Tick release cycle ... by Shirley+Marquez · 2014-11-05 06:11 · Score: 1
  
  New process technology always has low yields at the beginning. But making chips smaller eventually leads to lower manufacturing costs.
  Intel has been pushing out some faster chips at the high end. But they aren't going to sell a lot of those Extreme processors, and I agree that the vast majority of users already have a desktop system that is Fast Enough. (Exceptions include gamers who want bragging rights, video editors, and scientists.) The real action is in low power CPUs for ultraportable laptops, tablets, and phones, and that is where Intel is focusing the initial work with 14mm.
22. Re:Intel's new Tock-Tick release cycle ... by darkmeridian · 2014-11-06 10:43 · Score: 1
  
  The problem with your logic is that die shrinks, if yield problems can be resolved, also provide cheaper costs per chip (thus boosting profits) and lower energy consumption. I have AMD chips that heat up the room when I use the computer for extended periods of time. A comparable Intel Core processor does not have this problem. The problem can become more pronounced with server farms and mobile devices.
  Desktops will also be a smaller piece of the puzzle as everyone starts to buy more and more mobile devices. Thus, Intel is first focusing getting Broadwell into mobile devices such as tablets and convertibles. The desktop and server versions will follow later. I have a Dell Venue Pro 8, which runs Windows 8 on a tablet. It's not a perfect device, but there's something astounding and unholy about running a full on operating system on a freaking tablet. Once we start cramming Broadwells onto tablets, then we'll start to see AMD start getting more and more irrelevant.
  
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Ouch by harryjohnston · 2014-11-03 18:03 · Score: 4, Interesting

Very cool technically speaking, and good for system designers ... it will, however, make it that much harder to comparison shop, if the same CPU has a different speed depending on how it's wired up.
1. Re:Ouch by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-03 18:41 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  Realistically speaking... designs with constrained cooling options have been thermally limited for quite a time now. This is most obvious on thin (and of course fanless) tablets (where ARM rules), but becomes increasingly visible also on thin laptops. Thus, you can't really judge all performance measures of a sub-laptop device by CPU model number alone; it is already a puzzle which involves understanding thermals on a level no consumer can be prepared to look at.
Don't get too excited by Solandri · 2014-11-03 19:20 · Score: 3, Interesting

This chip has a base clock speed of 1.2GHz, but is burstable through Turbo up to 2.9GHz.
If it's like their first M processor, the turbo boost mode only works when using a single core. i.e. You can run one core at 2.9 GHz, or you can run both cores at 1.2 GHz. That's the price you pay for the extremely low TDP. In contrast, an i5-4250U has a base clock of 1.3 GHz, can turbo boost to 2.3 GHz on two cores, and 2.6 GHz on a single core.
Re:Does anyone else wish... by spire3661 · 2014-11-04 01:12 · Score: 1

Tell me why you think clockspeed is more important than very low power draw at this point in the game. What do you need more speed for? To me, increasing battery life and reducing power consumption is far more important.

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Intel Maths by rossdee · 2014-11-04 01:53 · Score: 4, Funny

"(6w = 5v@1.1a)"
Are Intel still having problems with their floating point maths?
5V x 1.1A = 5.5 W
Re:Not USB powerable by Khyber · 2014-11-04 02:31 · Score: 2

Uhh, USB 3.0 has a battery charge specification that allows for 1.5A

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Motherboards by the+eric+conspiracy · 2014-11-04 03:31 · Score: 1

So if I want a real low power consumption desktop small form factor are there motherboards that I can get that will use these?
1. Re:Motherboards by MachineShedFred · 2014-11-04 04:30 · Score: 1
  
  If Intel follows what they did with Ivy Bridge and Haswell, they will release a NUC based on these designs.
  
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Re:Not USB powerable by Ottibus · 2014-11-04 10:11 · Score: 1

Uhh, USB 3.0 has a battery charge specification that allows for 1.5A
Yes it does, but that is designed for charging batteries and doesn't allow data transfer at that current. So while you can technically power one of these chips using a cable with a USB connector on it, that isn't what I would call a USB-powered device.
Re:Does anyone else wish... by Sloppy · 2014-11-04 10:51 · Score: 1

Dwarf Fortress.

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Re:The Question I Want Answered... by Blaskowicz · 2014-11-04 15:16 · Score: 1

The circuitry was never additional. This thing is just a Core i3 chip, desktop version will probably support ECC, other versions will not - save for desktop Pentium if they do as on Haswell. It's crippled with microcode and fuses.
Re:Does anyone else wish... by spire3661 · 2014-11-04 16:16 · Score: 1

You choose a poor example, considering the mac mini form factor wouldn't even be possible without Intel's focus on low power draw. IM typing this on a mac mini (2011) right now and while it great, its still a little heater. If you want power you can get it, but you will have to have a bigger case, more cooling etc.

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