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Intel Kills a Top-of-the-Line Processor

Posted by timothy on from the they-also-killed-the-electric-car dept.

itwbennett writes: In June of this year, Intel announced a processor branded as Broadwell-C. Now, the company has confirmed that the part was cancelled but would not give an official reason. Why did Intel kill the Broadwell-C? ITworld's Andy Patrizio speculates that it's a 'combination of increased cost, lower yield and potential product cannibalization' — cannibalization of the company's newly-launched Skylake processor, which the Broadwell-C outperformed.

12 of 99 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Maybe they found a backdoor by denis-The-menace · · Score: 5, Informative

    FYI: In theory, all newer Intel chips have Backdoors:

    http://libreboot.org/faq/#inte...

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  2. Re:Is this news? by Austerity+Empowers · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I think it's news because many people feel the Broadwell-C was the better chip and that possibly SkyLake would be eclipsed. The things you can do when you're a monopoly are bad for the customer. I

  3. Re:They don't want Skylake to be fast by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 5, Informative

    The large cloud providers have already shifted to "consumer" hard drives to save money, knowing that their failure rates will be more than compensated for by lower unit costs.

    Consumer drives do NOT have higher failure rates. The myth that "enterprise" drives are more reliable has been debunked by research done by Backblaze and Google.

  4. Lies by Tailhook · · Score: 4, Informative

    Benchmarks of Skylake i7-6700K vs Broadwell i7-5775C show the Skylake CPU to be faster. Cheaper too. The Broadwell chip can perform better on some OpenCL tasks due to the Iris Pro integrated GPU, but non-GPU tasks handled by integer and floating point units, cryptography and media extensions are always faster on the Skylake CPU. The "which the Broadwell-C outperformed" part is stupid sour grapes from an unhappy little malcontent.

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    1. Re:Lies by aliquis · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Skylake outperformed in doing the same instructions over and over in benchmarks but Broadwell outperformed in games.

    2. Re:Lies by Kjella · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yes, pretty much the only thing it did better was integrated gaming though at a $2-300 premium you could use that for a significantly better discrete GPU. The only thing it was good for was a stylish AIO where you couldn't fit anything bigger, my guess is Apple didn't want it for any iMac so volume would be too small. Also Skylake is really small when it comes to die size, so I guess the profit margin is actually better than selling Broadwells.

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    3. Re:Lies by rtb61 · · Score: 3, Funny

      Perhaps they might make a much smarter move like redesigning the CPU. Discrete GPU process, "hey I noticed you have a separate GPU doing the work I was designed to do, do you want me to do something else, like crunch numbers or do AI stuff".

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  5. Re:Maybe they found a backdoor by Hadlock · · Score: 3, Informative

    It's called Intel vPro technology, which lets you run a hardware session of VLC from the BIOS, on the wall side of the power control. It's pretty impressive shit for enterprise but you can do a whole lot more with it obviously.

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  6. Better question by Moof123 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    A better question is why we have plateaued on performance so badly. 7700k vs 4770k is a wash at best after 2 years for power and performance (way less than a Moore's law cycle would lead you to expect). Consumer grade processors are stuck at 4 cores, and now we get to pay for a bunch of low end GPU die area that will never get used. I don't get it.

    Give me a 6 core with no GPU over a 4 core with a low end GPU any day.

  7. Intel denies chip line being killed by Fallen+Kell · · Score: 3, Informative

    Intel responded to Anandtech's inquiry into the killing of the chip line and denies that it is dead and in fact is wondering where the bad information has come from:

    http://www.anandtech.com/show/9639/the-death-of-intels-broadwell-is-greatly-exaggerated-socketed-broadwell-continues

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  8. Re:Is this news? by tsotha · · Score: 3, Informative

    It isn't news because it's pure speculation. There's no support for the idea Intel killed it for nefarious monopolist (as if Intel were a monopoly) reasons. If they were really playing those kinds of games they would never have greenlighted the project to start with. It's far more likely either the project wasn't meeting expectations or they have some nearly-finished technology they want to incorporate into the next top-of-the-line part.

  9. Re:Is this news? by GigaplexNZ · · Score: 4, Informative

    They didn't, IT World got it wrong.