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Intel Launches 8th Generation Core CPUs (anandtech.com)
Reader joshtops writes: Today Intel is launching its new 8th Generation family of processors, starting with four CPUs for the 15W mobile family. There are two elements that make the launch of these 8th Gen processors different. First is that the 8th Gen is at a high enough level, running basically the same microarchitecture as the 7th Gen. But the key element is that, at the same price and power where a user would get a dual core i5-U or i7-U in their laptop, Intel will now be bumping those product lines up to quad-cores with hyperthreading. This gives a 100% gain in cores and 100% gain in threads. Obviously nothing is for free, so despite Intel stating that they've made minor tweaks to the microarchitecture and manufacturing to get better performing silicon, the base frequencies are down slightly. Turbo modes are still high, ensuring a similar user experience in most computing tasks. Memory support is similar -- DDR4 and LPDDR3 are supported, but not LPDDR4 -- although DDR4 moves up to DDR4-2400 from DDR4-2133. Another change from 7th Gen to 8th Gen will be in the graphics. Intel is upgrading the nomenclature of the integrated graphics from HD 620 to UHD 620, indicating that the silicon is suited for 4K playback and processing.
Intel is claiming a 40% performance gain based on the additional cores. But the fact is that most apps use only a single thread, so with a lower clock rate, most apps will actually run slower! Yes, for the few apps designed to use all available threads there should be an improvement, but only if the memory architecture has enough bandwidth to keep all those CPUs fed with data. The limiting factor in most high performance computing is not CPU cycles, it's delays in getting data to each CPU. In other words memory bandwidth is more important than total available CPU cycles. Also, these processors slow down the clock rate as each additional CPU is utilized to avoid overheating.d Short summary: Your Mileage May Vary.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Intel has new labels for the same processors at the same price. AMD must really have Intel executives crapping their pants.
Intel has lost the crown for performance, never had the crown for being low power and has even discarded all attempt to enter the IoT market. It seems like all these releases are Intel's attempt at throwing everything at the wall and hoping something sticks. Meanwhile, I wonder how much cash they are doling out to prevent people from selling systems with AMD chips.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
"Obviously, nothing is free" [so speed had to go down to pay for other improvements].
I assure you, sir, that in the past, we got stuff for free all the time. Basically, every new generation had more complex circuitry (oh, man, that jump from 16-bit to 32!) with more instructions and a drop in cycles/operation, **A*N*D** the chip ran faster.
The curve has been bending for some time, of course - I read these things because I got a high-end i7 in 2013 that had come out in 2012, (i7-3930K CPU @ 3.20GHz) and I'm still not sure if I would *notice* the speedup if I bought a 2017 system to replace it. A gamer friend tells me I will notice, but only if I get the latest thing in RAM and the latest thing in SSD disks, each on the latest thing in buses. All of that together will not double the performance of my early-2013 purchase, and "double" used to be every couple of years.
But, anyway, it was that "of course" that got to me. It means that the psychology has changed; the lack of automatic silicon progress has been accepted at a deep level, and people are planning around an era of Limits To Growth. "Moores Law" as a *social* era, has ended. We no longer expect next year's progress to solve this year's problems. We'll have to make some Hard Choices, give up something, to solve a resource lack.
I honestly would've liked to see Intel keeping Atom development going to see next generations to Cherry Trail... low powered small PCs seemed to have a good future there if only Atom kept going for some more years.