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Intel Officially Reveals Post-8th Generation Core Architecture Code Name: Ice Lake, Built On 10nm+ (anandtech.com)

Intel has confirmed the existence of a new processor family called Ice Lake that will be made on Intel's 10nm+ process. The company published basic information on the Ice Lake architecture on their codename decoder. AnandTech reports: This is an unexpected development as the company has yet to formally detail (let alone launch) the first 10nm Core architecture -- Cannon Lake -- and it's rare these days for Intel to talk more than a generation ahead in CPU architectures. Equally as interesting is the fact that Intel is calling Ice Lake the successor to their upcoming 8th generation Coffee Lake processors, which codename bingo aside, throws some confusion on where the 14nm Coffee Lake and 10nm Cannon Lake will eventually stand. As a refresher, the last few generations of Core have been Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge, Broadwell, Haswell, Skylake, with Kaby Lake being the latest and was recently released at the top of the year. Kaby Lake is Intel's third Core product produced using a 14nm lithography process, specifically the second-generation '14 PLUS' (or 14+) version of Intel's 14nm process.

Working purely on lithographic nomenclature, Intel has three processes on 14nm: 14, 14+, and 14++. As shown to everyone at Intel's Technology Manufacturing Day a couple of months ago, these will be followed by a trio of 10nm processes: 10nm, 10nm+ (10+), and 10++. On the desktop, Core processors will go from 14 to 14+ to 14++, such that we move from Skylake to Kaby Lake to Coffee Lake. On the Laptop side, this goes from 14 to 14+ to 14++/10, such that we move from Skylake to Kaby Lake to Coffee Lake like the desktops, but also that at some time during the Coffee Lake generation, Cannon Lake will also be launched for laptops. The next node for both after this is 10+, which will be helmed by the Ice Lake architecture.

58 of 95 comments (clear)

  1. Go to FUD when you don't have the goods by Crashmarik · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Coffee Lake is looking like a loser vs Ryzen only thing it's holding its own is single thread performance
    Not surprising that Intel would try to shift the focus to things that don't exist yet.

    1. Re:Go to FUD when you don't have the goods by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 5, Funny

      It's even funnier that they're trying to focus on things past their own next-future product which isn't even out either.

      Can you imagine Toyota telling us about their new 2019 cars in mid-2017? ... or is it already happening and Intel are just copying car companies now? I have no idea since I don't have cable or satellite, I don't read newspapers. And to continue with the stereotyping, I'm also a vegan.

      --
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    2. Re:Go to FUD when you don't have the goods by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Funny

      And to continue with the stereotyping, I'm also a vegan.

      You forgot to mention that you don't have a Facebook account.

    3. Re:Go to FUD when you don't have the goods by Richard_at_work · · Score: 1

      Its not as if Intel is the only one playing this game - we had been hearing about Zen from AMD more than a year before it was released, with significant PR done on it with the resulting drum beating from the usual corners, including many users here on Slashdot.

      Heres a Slashdot article from August 2016, nearly a year before the release of the first Zen architecture chips, where AMD are definitely beating their own drum:

      AMD Says Upcoming Zen CPU Will Outperform Intel Broadwell-E

    4. Re:Go to FUD when you don't have the goods by Kjella · · Score: 3, Informative

      It's even funnier that they're trying to focus on things past their own next-future product which isn't even out either. Can you imagine Toyota telling us about their new 2019 cars in mid-2017?

      Well the devil's advocate could say that you want them to only focus on next quarter's profits. Intel has always talked to investors and technology analysts about their road map, their code names and process architecture has never been directed at consumers. Let's compare them to the competition, how long before the release of an actual Zen processor did AMD start to hype it up? Announced in May 2015, released in March 2017. Or if you want to do the car analogy, how long from Musk announced the Model 3 until the first one rolled off the assembly line? July 2014 to July 2017.

      The reason we are discussing Intel's road map now is that we don't quite believe them anymore. They used to have a tick-tock, now it's like 2014 14nm, 2015 14nm, 2016 14nm+, 2017 14nm++. Those two years that were supposed to become three (process-architecture-enhancement) is now four, sure it's damage control. But it's not really damage control directed at consumers, this is talking to the stock market saying we've been enhancing the product we have and we got a plan. Nothing particularly unexpected here, but exclude the 10nm and redraw the progress lines and they're slipping...

      --
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    5. Re:Go to FUD when you don't have the goods by Bearhouse · · Score: 1

      What's Facebook?

    6. Re:Go to FUD when you don't have the goods by drinkypoo · · Score: 2

      Can you imagine Toyota telling us about their new 2019 cars in mid-2017?

      Yep. Happens all the time. It takes years to spin up a new architecture.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    7. Re:Go to FUD when you don't have the goods by Hazelnut · · Score: 2

      Intel's business practices should be all you need to decide to support their competition.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

    8. Re:Go to FUD when you don't have the goods by TimothyHollins · · Score: 1

      - Threadripper repeats the same pattern. Intel's HPDT was overrun. 1950X has 60% more cores than 7900X (16x/32t vs 10c/20t). It is a small miracle that 7900X is putting up the fight it does. 7900X is much more competitive with 1920X. Also, Intel has not yet managed to make price corrections in HPDT (nor bring out the reactionary 12/14/16 core CPUs).

      How is it competitive against a 1920X? The 7900X costs a lot more and is outperformed in almost all tests. It requires a significantly more expensive platform, and doesn't even provide additional PCIe lanes. How is that competitive?

    9. Re:Go to FUD when you don't have the goods by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      Facebook hasn't reached Vega yet. Too many lightyears.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    10. Re:Go to FUD when you don't have the goods by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 1

      That's true. No Facebook, Twitter or whatever. Heck I don't even have a Slashdot account!

      --
      #DeleteFacebook
    11. Re:Go to FUD when you don't have the goods by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 1

      I'm still waiting for a 40nm quad-core VIA C7.

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      #DeleteFacebook
    12. Re:Go to FUD when you don't have the goods by PeeAitchPee · · Score: 2

      only thing it's holding its own is single thread performance

      Yet, this is an incredibly important metric at least until software development catches up with the hardware. Know thy use case and use the right tool for the job.

    13. Re:Go to FUD when you don't have the goods by haruchai · · Score: 1

      "Can you imagine Toyota telling us about their new 2019 cars in mid-2017? ... or is it already happening and Intel are just copying car companies now?"

      That's pretty much what most automakers are telling us about their electric car roadmap.
      "We have fuck-all now but we'll own the segment after 2020. #KickTeslaAss"

      --
      Pain is merely failure leaving the body
    14. Re:Go to FUD when you don't have the goods by ChrisMaple · · Score: 1

      Take a look at http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-ryzen-threadripper-1950x-cpu,5167.html. Depending on the test, i7-7700K, i9-7900X, Ryzen 1950X and Ryzen 1920X trounce the competition.If speed is important to you, you'll have to look at the specific application to determine which processor is best.

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    15. Re:Go to FUD when you don't have the goods by torkus · · Score: 1

      If they had to build a whole new multi-billion dollar, research-intensive car plant every time they refreshed a car line, then yes.

      Intel is talking a bit further out than usual but each litho generation is being stretched longer now as well. They're talking about fab plans they're finishing research on and/or starting to build NOW so they're online and working in 2019.

      --
      You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.
    16. Re:Go to FUD when you don't have the goods by Khashishi · · Score: 1

      Can you imagine Toyota telling us about their new 2019 cars in mid-2017

      But cars don't really change much from year to year. We certainly don't see a doubling of performance in a couple years. There's nothing exciting about a car from 2019 to someone in 2017.

    17. Re:Go to FUD when you don't have the goods by Mr.CRC · · Score: 1

      Which is why I'm happy with my i4790K.

  2. Ice Lake.. by intellitech · · Score: 4, Funny

    ..because winter is coming.. err.. here?

    --
    vos nescitis quicquam, nec cogitatis quia expedit nobis ut unus moriatur homo pro populo et non tota gens pereat.
  3. What's with those names?! by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 4, Funny

    Coffee Lake? Ice Lake?

    What's next? Iced Coffee Lake?

    --
    #DeleteFacebook
    1. Re:What's with those names?! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Ice Ice Baby!

    2. Re:What's with those names?! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Many years ago I worked for a big name company (not Intel), and our product road maps were all based on places near the company HQ in California. The names made perfect sense to people in California because they grew up seeing the locations in national parks, etc, but our lab wasn't anywhere near California, and most of us had never even been there, so we had no clue of the cultural significance of the names.

      My suggestion: Starting near Intel's HQ, find a real world map with the existing code names. When you find that, you'll probably be able to guess what the next code name will be. The names may follow an actual road (e.g. Interstate ##), a geographic boundary (e.g. mountain range or river), or they might just follow a squiggly line that some upper-level manager thought looked cool.

    3. Re:What's with those names?! by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 1

      Because of the heat dissipation requirements, Intel is actually going to have to name this processor series Waimangu Cauldron:
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    4. Re:What's with those names?! by freeze128 · · Score: 1

      Placid Lake! Err.. Lake Placid.

    5. Re:What's with those names?! by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 4, Funny

      Coffee Lake? Ice Lake?

      What's next? Iced Coffee Lake?

      If you look at the naming history, it's "Bridge", "Well", "Lake" and soon "Creek". They haven't announced the name but it's clear by the time they offering "Ice Lake" they'll be really far up "Shit Creek" sans paddle. ;)

      --
      Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
    6. Re:What's with those names?! by viperidaenz · · Score: 1

      My suggestion: Google it
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    7. Re:What's with those names?! by BLToday · · Score: 1

      10nm++ and 10nm+++:
      Ice Cube Lake. Vanilla Ice Lake.

      On 7nm will be:
      Lava Lake. Lava Chocolate Cake Lake.

    8. Re:What's with those names?! by Per+Wigren · · Score: 1

      Lake Eat-a-lot.

      --
      My other account has a 3-digit UID.
    9. Re:What's with those names?! by Big+Hairy+Ian · · Score: 1

      Wake me when we get to Chocolate Lake

      --

      Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.

    10. Re:What's with those names?! by Hydrian · · Score: 1

      Mocha Lake? Latte Lake? Triple, Venti, Half Sweet, Non-Fat, Caramel Macchiato Lake?

      --
      No good deed goes unpunished.
    11. Re: What's with those names?! by Brockmire · · Score: 1

      They're not even picking the Great ones!

  4. Name should be "Octium" by Grishnakh · · Score: 2

    Since it's the 8th-generation, "Octium" would be fitting. There was even a Lone Gunmen episode about it...

    1. Re:Name should be "Octium" by sexconker · · Score: 1

      Since it's the 8th-generation, "Octium" would be fitting. There was even a Lone Gunmen episode about it...

      Yes, there was.

  5. Intel 10 nm+ by Snufu · · Score: 3, Funny

    They go to 11.

  6. Intel's Problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Intel has two "problem" architectures - Broadwell and Cannonlake. Both suffer from debuting on a new and untested process. Broadwell took forever and a day to make it out of the mobile sector, eventually finding its way into Xeon-D, Xeon, and HEDT products as well (not counting the mostly-unsupported and barely-mentioned Broadwell-C and Broadwell-R processors). Skylake and Kabylake were basically on the same process with uarch tweaks. Okay, Kabylake is on 14nm+ but whatever.

    If you will recall, delays in the 14nm process caused Intel to re-release Haswell as Devil's Canyon, otherwise known as the i7-4790k and i5-4690k processors or "Haswell Refresh".

    Intel is experiencing delays with 10nm and Cannonlake which is meant to be its debut architecture. They are using Coffeelake as a "Kabylake Refresh" since it uses the same core architecture as Kaby (and Skylake; in fact, both Kabylake and Coffeelake are Skylake refreshes). It uses a respun version of 14nm+ - 14nm++ or whatever you want to call it - and it features up to two more cores than what you can get with Kabylake.

    So Cannonlake is only a definite go for mobile whenever Intel is finally ready to start selling 10nm CPUs. That could be a bit.

    We may eventually see Xeon-D products, Xeon products, and HEDT products based on Cannonlake. On the desktop, we should not expect Cannonlake at all, not even a successor to the controversial Broadwell-C. So just as most Intel buyers made the jump from Haswell to Skylake, now we're going to make the jump from Skylake/Kabylake/Coffeelake to Icelake. They skipped Broadwell on the desktop (mostly), and now they're skipping Cannonlake.

    The other thing that's really confusing is that Intel hasn't actually released a new uarch in awhile. Their last "new" uarch was Skylake. Skylake-X - the HEDT/server version of Skylake - is nothing but Skylake with bolt-on AVX512 functionality and a rejiggered cache configuration to make it more competitive in certain server workloads (as a consequence, Skylake-X is slower in games at any given clockspeed than Skylake/Kabylake at the same clock). All signs point to Coffeelake being planned all along as a die-shrink of Skylake to 10nm. So Skylake, Kabylake, Coffeelake, and (probably) Coffeelake ARE ALL ACTUALLY THE SAME UARCH. Weird huh?

    Icelake will be the first "new" uarch Intel will have released since the debut of Skylake.

    1. Re:Intel's Problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Probably with the AVX512 instructions. Dribbling vector instrucitons out into consumer products years after they were built into Xeon is Intel's way of touting enhanced performance. (It is, for a small handful of libraries tweaked to use them - basically Intel MKL and video libraries.) It is painfully hard to make architectural improvements these days.

    2. Re:Intel's Problem by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      I'd think there was a jump when they went for AMD64. Twice the registers, some other ISA changes as well. Granted, there have been more physical registers even before that, but I imagine some tweaks were necessary anyway.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    3. Re:Intel's Problem by TheRaven64 · · Score: 1

      The scatter and gather instructions in recent Intel chips were specifically designed to make it possible to autovectorise a lot more normal loops.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  7. Re:What's a decent upgrade for my 2600k? by kactusotp · · Score: 1

    I'm pretty happy with my 7820x, massive jump from the 3820 particularly for VR. Really depends what you want to do with it.

  8. Re:What's a decent upgrade for my 2600k? by Z80a · · Score: 1

    Wait for the benchmarks and stuff, but at least in terms of single core performance, intel been stuck for quite a while, most likely because AMD had nothing to actually threat em with.

  9. Re:What's a decent upgrade for my 2600k? by alvinrod · · Score: 5, Informative

    Ryzen 1700. It's about the same price as the 2600K was when it launched but you get twice as many cores and threads. It won't overclock as well as a 2600K, but the performance per clock is going to be slightly better in most cases. Really though, a 2600K is still going to be a fine CPU and unless you have any real need to upgrade you can stick with it. The 2600K also has onboard graphics that the Ryzen CPU lacks if that's a deal breakerl.

    Intel sat on their hands for multiple generations while AMD had nothing to offer and now they're getting bit in the ass now that they have to compete again. They really should have made 6-core mainstream parts several generations ago.

  10. AMD by markdavis · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Translation of the whole thing comes down to: "We are officially a little scared by what AMD is able to do right now, so we are going to lay out our future plans to kick butt."

    1. Re:AMD by zlives · · Score: 1

      i wonder if AMD will also respond with some (currently vaporware) "advanced marketing" material.

  11. Great plan by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    When someone else starts to eat your lunch, announce vaporware. That old dodge still works.

  12. Blowing hot air. by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It's quite clear that none of Intel's offerings can compete with what AMD has just released which leaves Intel playing the game it knows best: deceit. This display is merely a ploy to save face by talking about a theoretical processor they may make. I have no doubt that Intel is up to it's old anti-competitive tricks again and paying off companies to not sell computers with AMD chips and such. My only hope is that this time around they get their asses handed to them.

    --
    Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
  13. As a person who doesn't follow this stuff by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 1

    Could someone explain (or point to an explanation of) the significance of the "+" and "++" in the nomenclature?

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    1. Re:As a person who doesn't follow this stuff by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      This mentions 14+ and 14++ - https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/14_nm_lithography_process

    2. Re:As a person who doesn't follow this stuff by mentil · · Score: 4, Informative

      Pluses means 'slightly smaller' and/or more mature/stable, generally allowing greater chip yield and higher clock speed.

      --
      Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
    3. Re:As a person who doesn't follow this stuff by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 1

      Thank you!

      --
      #DeleteChrome
    4. Re:As a person who doesn't follow this stuff by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 1

      Thanks!

      --
      #DeleteChrome
    5. Re:As a person who doesn't follow this stuff by Rockoon · · Score: 1

      Pluses means 'slightly smaller' and/or more mature/stable, generally allowing greater chip yield and higher clock speed.

      14nm - Tri-Gates - oops
      14nm+ - FinFETs - tick
      14nm++ - FinFETs - tock

      --
      "His name was James Damore."
  14. Plus plus by Togden · · Score: 1

    Op doesn't understand the meaning of ++

  15. Global Warming by thegarbz · · Score: 1

    should make a great name for a future AMD product.

  16. Re:Nodes getting harder by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

    I thought they were already at tick-tock-tock-tock-tock... ?

    --
    Ezekiel 23:20
  17. "Post-8th Generation"? by Chris+Mattern · · Score: 1

    So, 9th generation, then?

  18. What kind of fresh marketing bullshit is this? by HyperStasis · · Score: 1

    Of course there's something else after the latest and greatest. Its not like intel is just going to say "Whoops, no more chips! Sorry!"

    With this much of a marketing tie in lead, are they going to start funding new processors via presales at gamestop?

  19. Re: What's a decent upgrade for my 2600k? by Brockmire · · Score: 1

    Why the fuck was this +5 informative? He admits it's not really a decent upgrade after all and adds nothing new.

  20. Re:What's a decent upgrade for my 2600k? by toddestan · · Score: 1

    Basically if you're willing to spend the money to get more than 4 cores, you might consider upgrading. But if you would get another quad core (which is what you would get for the same amount of money that you spent on the 2600K), don't bother.