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Intel Unveils Full Details of Kaby Lake 7th Gen Core Series Processors (hothardware.com)

Posted by msmash on from the new-processor-delights dept.

Reader MojoKid writes: Intel is readying a new family of processors, based on its next-gen Kaby Lake microarchitecture, that will be the foundation of the company's upcoming 7th Generation Core processors. Although Kaby Lake marks a departure from Intel's "tick-tock" release cadence, there have been some tweaks made to its 14nm manufacturing process (called 14nm+) that have resulted in significant gains in performance, based on clock speed boosts and other optimizations. In addition, Intel has incorporated a new multimedia engine into Kaby Lake that adds hardware acceleration for 4K HEVC 10-bit transcoding and VP9 decoding. Skylake could handle 1080p HEVC transcoding, but it didn't accelerate 4K HEVC 10-bit transcoding or VP9 decode and had to assist with CPU resources. The new multimedia engine gives Kaby Lake the ability to handle up to eight 4Kp30 streams and it can decode HEVC 4Kp60 real-time content at up to 120Mbps. The engine can also now offload 4Kp30 real-time encoding in a dedicated fixed-function engine. Finally, Intel has made some improvements to their Speed Shift technology, which now takes the processor out of low power states to maximum frequency in 15 milliseconds. Clock speed boosts across Core i and Core m 7th gen series processors of 400-500 MHz, in combination with Speed Shift optimizations, result in what Intel claims are 12-9 percent performance gains in the same power envelope as its previous generation Skylake series, and even more power efficient video processing performance.

12 of 95 comments (clear)

  1. HALT by negRo_slim · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Isn't Cannonlake coming out in the second half of 2017? Why not wait a bit for these to drop in price or make the jump to 10nm if the performance is there.

    --
    On the Oregon Cost born and raised, On the beach is where I spent most of my days
    1. Re:HALT by Solandri · · Score: 2

      Broadwell was originally supposed to be released 2014Q3, but (aside from Core M) was delayed until 2015Q1 for mobile and 2015Q2 for desktop processors due to problems Intel had getting enough yield out of the 14nm process. It was delayed so long that most manufacturers (and Intel for some of their product lines) skipped it entirely and moved straight from Haswell to Skylake which came out 2015Q3.

      Despite the extra year Intel has budgeted, I wouldn't count on 10nm being ready by the second half of 2017. We're getting really close to the atomic limits of die shrinking - 5-7 nm is probably the limit. As we get closer to that limit, quantum tunneling effects (basically atoms jumping from one place to another) cause all sorts of problems like power leakage. That was what led to the delays at 14nm (Intel) and 16nm (other fabs). It will probably be worse at 10nm.

  2. AMD May Nearly Catch Up by BrendaEM · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It's an interesting time in CISC processors. With fabs having to spend exponential amounts of money for incremental gains in performance and power savings, a smaller company like AMD may be able to make a chip that's 90% as fast, at a much lower price, which I hope it does because it's good for customers on both sides.

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
    1. Re:AMD May Nearly Catch Up by BrendaEM · · Score: 2

      ...And I applaud Intel for supporting VP9.

      --
      https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
    2. Re:AMD May Nearly Catch Up by dfghjk · · Score: 2

      There are no CISC processors, only CISC instruction sets. That ignorant fanboy feud died back in the 90's. Processor architecture is not driven by instruction set.

      Nor are the "interesting times" unique to CISC. All processors have this issue unless they are uncompetitive.

      AMD hasn't been competitive in quite a while and there's nothing new there. What has changed is the inherent need for x86 processors at all. Intel's threat is from ARM, not AMD.

  3. Big disappointment anymore by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It's like telling me the Sun will be brighter tomorrow. Nothing is so outstanding in improvements anymore in chips. It's just more claims and numbers that most people don't even care about. Who cares about Intel graphics? If your a gamer your not using Intel for graphics and probably never will. My SkyLake was a incredible disappointment and I could have saved a hundred or more dollars buying a Hazwell and got almost as good performance. Its really not the chip anymore because OS's have improved to accommodate tablets and slower CPU's. Windows 10, Linux versions, OS X have all improved resource consumption and power use. It's really not a issue anymore, and Intel can improve slightly those numbers. But any dramatic claims are not happening.

  4. Microarchitectural details? by Theovon · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'm sure the graphics and video playback specs are important, but I'd like to know what changes they've made architecturally in the processor core. Maybe I missed it, but this article seems light on those details.

    1. Re:Microarchitectural details? by Freedom+Bug · · Score: 4, Interesting

      According to Anandtech, there are no core architectural improvements, the IPC is the same as Skylake. Clocks per watt is substantially improved, though.

    2. Re:Microarchitectural details? by dinfinity · · Score: 2

      Nope. Officially it's now: Process-Architecture-Optimization, but tick-tack-tock is what some people are calling it, with the tack having been tacked on there to allow selling 'refreshes' of processors with the same architecture and process whilst giving the impression of meaningful progress.

  5. Kaby Lake by johnsmithperson123 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Is still Skylake Refresh. Slightly tweaked GPU (software mostly, I suspect) slight clock boost, and new chipset. My expectations for IPC increases are 0%, or maybe 3% if they bothered to create a new wafer. Trust me, Kaby Lake will underwhelm.

  6. Re:What did they do to their processors? by Bengie · · Score: 2

    Skylake doesn't "need" special support, unless you want to take advantage of it's special clocking ability, which makes it more responsive. Normally the OS tells the CPU what speed to run at, but the OS can only update this on context switch, which can take several milliseconds per change and many changes to ramp-up the frequency. When the CPU controls itself, it can change frequency in response to load up to 2x faster. For long sustained tasks, this shows up as a about 2% increase in performance, but for short bursty tasks, this shows up as a 25% improvement, all the while only consuming about 0.8% more power under load.

    Summary based on benchmarks:
    1) Makes the CPU 25% "faster" for very short lived workloads by quickly ramping up from idle
    2) Makes the CPU 2% faster for sustained workloads
    3) Only consumes 0.8% more power under load and saves power for the short lived loads by completing them more quickly.

  7. Re:Graphics! by sexconker · · Score: 2

    Actually, how does Kaby Lake's graphics compare to the latest from either NVIDIA or AMD?

    Intel : Real GPU :: potato gun : howitzer