Intel Broadwell-E, Apollo Lake, and Kaby Lake Details Emerge In Leaked Roadmap

bigwophh writes: In Q4 2016, Intel will release a follow up to its Skylake processors named Kaby Lake, which will mark yet another 14nm release that's a bit odd, for a couple of reasons. The big one is the fact that this chip may not have appeared had Intel's schedule kept on track. Originally, Cannonlake was set to succeed Skylake, but Cannonlake will instead launch in 2017. That makes Kaby Lake neither a tick nor tock in Intel's release cadence. When released, Kaby Lake will add native USB 3.1 and HDCP 2.2 support. It's uncertain whether these chips will fit into current Z170-based motherboards, but considering the fact that there's also a brand-new chipset on the way, we're not too confident of it. However, the so-called Intel 200 series chipsets will be backwards-compatible with Skylake. It also appears that Intel will be releasing Apollo Lake as early as the late spring, which will replace Braswell, the lowest-powered chips Intel's lineup destined for smartphones.

Comments

We're almost at the end with current tech

[tkrotchko]

14nm for these chips puts us close to the end of currently deployed technologies for transistor densities.

"The path beyond 14nm is treacherous, and by no means a sure thing, but with roadmaps from Intel and Applied Materials both hinting that 5nm is being research, we remain hopeful. Perhaps the better question to ask, though, is whether itâ(TM)s worth scaling to such tiny geometries. With each step down, the process becomes ever more complex, and thus more expensive and more likely to be plagued by low yields. There may be better gains to be had from moving sideways, to materials and architectures that can operate at faster frequencies and with more parallelism, rather than brute-forcing the continuation of Mooreâ(TM)s law."

http://www.extremetech.com/com...

Re:We're almost at the end with current tech

[JoeMerchant]

We've been moving sideways for 10 years. In the 20 years before that, clock speeds were doubling every year or two. For the last 10, we've moved from a norm of single cores to a norm of 4 (or 2 + "Hyperthreads"), rotating hard drives to SSD, and specialized architectures to support HD video, but clock speed has been basically stagnant while the processors are getting fatter, more parallel, and not just in core count.

10 years ago, Intel was hinting at a massively parallel future (80 core processor rumored in development at the time), they've been slow to deliver on that in terms of core count, but are making progress on other fronts - especially helping single cores perform faster without a faster clock.

Re:We're almost at the end with current tech

[Kjella]

The real problem is that we're mostly redistributing the watts.

4 core @ 4GHz (i7-4790K) = 91W, 4*4/91 = 0.175 GHz/W
4 core @ 3.2GHz (i7-4790S) = 65W, 4*3.2/65 = 0.197 GHz/W
4 core @ 2.2GHz (i7-4790T) = 35W, 4.*2.2/35 = 0.251 GHz/W

So from top to bottom we're seeing 40% better perf/W with perfect linear scaling. Neat, buit not exactly revolutionary when you subtract overhead. We've already got so much scale out capability that power is clearly the limiting factor:

8 core @ 4GHz (doesn't exist) = ~185W
8 core @ 3.2GHz (1680v3) = 140W
8 core @ 2.2GHz (2618Lv3) = 75W
16 core @ 4GHz (doesn't exist) = ~370W
16 core @ 3.2GHz (doesn't exist) = ~280W
16 core @ 2.2GHz (E7-8860v3) = 165W

We can't go faster or wider unless we find a way to do it more efficiently, either that or we need extremely beefy PSUs and water cooling.

Re:native USB 3.1 is not that big of a thing

[blankinthefill]

One of the issues that I've been running into for a long while, and expect to be running into even more with the expansion of the M.2 and related slots, has been the serious lack of PCI-E lanes that Intel supports. It's very easy, running SLI and one of two other things that use PCI-E, to run out of PCI-E lanes on today's boards, especially if you're a power user. And with new expansion slots for SSDs and other applications starting to enter the market, using multiple PCI-E lanes (up to 4 for a single M.2 slot), it's going to be even easier to suck all those lanes up and still need more. Honestly, for some power users, Intel could probably double the number of PCI-E lanes natively supported, and still not provide enough.

Re:Nor is HDCP 2.2

[mrchaotica]

No. People want to play media. They have no desire whatsoever to have it "protected" against them.