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Intel Hits 50 Years and Its CPUs Hit 5.0 GHz (venturebeat.com)

Intel will turn 50 next month, so to celebrate that, its CPUs are hitting 5.0 GHz for the first time, it said. At Computex event in Taiwan this week, the chipmaker announced the limited edition 8th Gen Intel Core i7-8086K processor, the first-ever CPU from the company with a 5.0GHz turbo frequency. From a report: Intel, of course, is the world's biggest chip maker, and its fortunes are wedded to the success of the personal computer. "As we transition to the data-centric era, the PC remains a critical facet of Intel's business, and it's an area where we believe there are still so many opportunities ahead," Bryant said. "Today, at Computex in Taipei, I shared our vision for the future of the PC and introduced a wide range of new technologies that will help us and the broader ecosystem make this future a reality. One that transforms the PC from a simple computer into a platform that can power every person's greatest contribution."

161 comments

  1. Oracle already has a 5.0 GHz chip on the market by NFN_NLN · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "SPARC T8-2 Server Specifications
    ARCHITECTURE
    Processor
      Thirty-two core, 5.0 GHz SPARC M8 processor
      Up to 256 threads per processor"

    1. Re:Oracle already has a 5.0 GHz chip on the market by phantomfive · · Score: 3, Informative

      That's cool, but comparing clock speed between different processor architectures is mostly meaningless.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    2. Re:Oracle already has a 5.0 GHz chip on the market by Junta · · Score: 4, Insightful

      This is true, but the claim verbatim is 'first-ever 5.0 ghz', so it's correct to call them out on not hitting the front.

      --
      XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
    3. Re:Oracle already has a 5.0 GHz chip on the market by oic0 · · Score: 2

      Think he's referring to how the article calls is the first 5ghz chip. AMD also made a 5.0ghz vishera, the FX 9590.

    4. Re:Oracle already has a 5.0 GHz chip on the market by omnichad · · Score: 4, Informative

      If that's verbatim, where is it?

      The article says "first-ever CPU with a 5.0GHz turbo frequency" which was crafted to be correct on a technicality (it's not the base clock rate).

      The summary says "its CPUs are hitting 5.0 GHz for the first time"

      And Intel doesn't make SPARC chips, so that's also correct.

    5. Re:Oracle already has a 5.0 GHz chip on the market by ebrandsberg · · Score: 4, Informative

      There isn't a direct quote on this point, so it may be the writer that said this wording, not the person being quoted. Meanwhile, the title is accurate, with "its CPUs hit 5.0 GHz", not it is the first to hit 5.0Ghz. As mentioned, the Sparc has had 5.0ghz, but AMD also has: https://www.anandtech.com/show/8316/amds-5-ghz-turbo-cpu-in-retail-the-fx9590-and-asrock-990fx-extreme9-review.

    6. Re:Oracle already has a 5.0 GHz chip on the market by NFN_NLN · · Score: 4, Informative

      Intel: https://newsroom.intel.com/edi...
      "the first Intel processor with a 5.0 GHz turbo frequency"

      Intel actually qualifies their statement and all the reporters parroted it without the qualification. So basically, just another news day.

      Venturebeat: https://venturebeat.com/2018/0...
      "the first-ever CPU with a 5.0GHz turbo frequency, said Intel’s Gregory Bryant"

      CNET: https://www.cnet.com/news/inte...
      "the first-ever CPU with a 5.0GHz turbo frequency." ...

    7. Re:Oracle already has a 5.0 GHz chip on the market by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's cool, but comparing clock speed between different processor architectures is mostly meaningless.

      Oh, that's cool. But was anyone comparing processor architectures?

    8. Re:Oracle already has a 5.0 GHz chip on the market by OneHundredAndTen · · Score: 1

      The Power6+ also got there before 2010.

    9. Re:Oracle already has a 5.0 GHz chip on the market by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But it's CISC with RISC underneath!!1!

      As in, if that's a valid comparison, why isn't this, hm?

      Oh, and IBM has been shipping 5+ GHz chips for a bit now too.

    10. Re:Oracle already has a 5.0 GHz chip on the market by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      "Intel will turn 50 next month, so to celebrate that, its CPUs are hitting 5.0 GHz for the first time, it said. At Computex event in Taiwan this week, the chipmaker announced the limited edition 8th Gen Intel Core i7-8086K processor, the first-ever CPU from the company with a 5.0GHz turbo frequency. "

      Noone is claiming "first ever", they are claiming " Intel's first ever".

    11. Re:Oracle already has a 5.0 GHz chip on the market by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is true, but the claim verbatim is 'first-ever 5.0 ghz', so it's correct to call them out on not hitting the front.

      No, the claim verbatim is so to celebrate that, its CPUs are hitting 5.0 GHz for the first time.

      The "its" I've bolded for you is Intel.

      Or you probably even meant the first-ever CPU from the company with a 5.0GHz turbo frequency.

      Sorry, but either quote is qualified in such a way as to mean Intel's chips, and isn't claiming nobody else has ever had a 5GHz chip.

      Put on your glasses.

    12. Re:Oracle already has a 5.0 GHz chip on the market by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      LOL, yeah, what you said. I'm sure someone could come up with a 5GHz version of a 6502, too, but while cool it wouldn't really mean anything.

    13. Re:Oracle already has a 5.0 GHz chip on the market by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Just remember to turn on the turbo button.

    14. Re:Oracle already has a 5.0 GHz chip on the market by sexconker · · Score: 3, Interesting

      WRONG!

      AMD gave us the FX-9590 with 4.7 GHz base and 5.0 GHz turbo clocks FIVE years ago.

    15. Re:Oracle already has a 5.0 GHz chip on the market by Megol · · Score: 1

      No that's not the claim, where did you get that idea?

      It's the first Intel processor with a specified 5GHz clock frequency (turbo) but of course not the first 5GHz processor (see IBM POWER 8 for that). So what is claimed that this is the first Intel processor at 5GHz clock frequency - which is correct.

    16. Re:Oracle already has a 5.0 GHz chip on the market by omnichad · · Score: 1

      But they call the max speed a "boost" clock (even if they call the feature in general "turbo core"). It's literally all semantics.

    17. Re:Oracle already has a 5.0 GHz chip on the market by pak9rabid · · Score: 1

      I'm pretty sure did that over 10 years ago.

    18. Re:Oracle already has a 5.0 GHz chip on the market by pak9rabid · · Score: 3, Informative

      And IBM gave that to us over 10 years ago with their POWER6 CPUs:

      https://hardware.slashdot.org/...

    19. Re:Oracle already has a 5.0 GHz chip on the market by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      can you even READ?

      "first-ever CPU from the company with a 5.0GHz turbo frequency"

      which is absolutely correct. it is *INTEL'S* first ever 5.0ghz retail processor.

    20. Re:Oracle already has a 5.0 GHz chip on the market by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sun used to be great, but I wouldn't touch an Oracle product with a dead jellyfish tentacle.

  2. Skylake again by Artem+S.+Tashkinov · · Score: 2

    It's the same Skylake uArch which debuted three years ago and naturally this particular CPU is affected by both Meltdown and Spectre. It's still an accomplishment though since it's the first ever consumer CPU to run at a such an insane clockrate.

    Oh, and it will be available in very limited quantities.

    1. Re:Skylake again by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      and naturally this particular CPU is affected by both Meltdown and Spectre

      Yeah, but it does it faster. So....there is that.

    2. Re:Skylake again by omnichad · · Score: 1

      I'm sure they shrunk it down to 7nm to hit 5GHz. And the very limited quantities is probably because they already anticipate production problems.

    3. Re:Skylake again by arth1 · · Score: 0

      It's still an accomplishment though since it's the first ever consumer CPU to run at a such an insane clockrate.

      It does not sound insane to me. I mean, back in 2002, we had Pentium III running at 1.4 GHz, and not long after, the P4 3.06 GHz.
      16 years later, and we haven't been able to double the PIII clock rate twice or the P4 clock rate once?

      For perspective, in the same time span, we have gone from 133 MHz SDRAM and 533 MHz RDRAM to 3200 MHz DDR4. That's a far more impressive clock rate increase.
      If this trend continues, we'll soon have to offload cycle dependent calculations from the CPU to the RAM controller because it's going to be faster... :p

    4. Re:Skylake again by EvilSS · · Score: 2

      These are just binned 8700K's which already run a 4.7Ghz boost. They didn't change die sizes for some one-off run.

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    5. Re:Skylake again by Artem+S.+Tashkinov · · Score: 2

      3200MHz DDR4 doesn't run at 3200MHz - its actual clock rate is 1600MHz. 3200 here denotes its data transfer rate in millions of transfers per seconds. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    6. Re:Skylake again by omnichad · · Score: 1

      Do they not create a die for an existing CPU when testing a new process? Seems like you wouldn't want to troubleshoot a new design and a new size at the same time. This might be just a die created for R&D.

    7. Re:Skylake again by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      5GHz is only the turbo frequency though, meaning it can only do it on one or two cores and only for a limited amount of time without extreme cooling.

      Given that it's crippled by Meltdown I think I'll take much cheaper Ryzen or Threadripper with more cores and especially more PCIe lanes.

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    8. Re:Skylake again by EvilSS · · Score: 4, Informative

      Or you can get the Workstation Xeon they just showed off that runs 28 cores at 5GHz on all cores. https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-cpu-28-core-5-ghz,37201.html

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    9. Re:Skylake again by Entrope · · Score: 2

      You will almost certainly be able to buy two or even three nicely outfitted Threadripper 2 workstations for the cost of that CPU alone. Intel sells 28-core Xeons now, but they aren't anywhere near 5 GHz, and they cost about $10k each.

    10. Re:Skylake again by EvilSS · · Score: 2

      Highly unlikely. They might base a new process of an existing design but there is still a bunch of retooling that needs to be done. I doubt they would release some one-off chip based on an existing design as their first chip. This is just a 0.3ghz increase in the base and boost clocks so it's not like it's a massive increase.

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    11. Re:Skylake again by EvilSS · · Score: 1

      Coffee Lake, not Skylake. It's most likely just a binned 8700K with slightly higher factory clocks. Also, again, this is just the single-core turbo boost clock speed, the base clock is 4GHz.

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    12. Re:Skylake again by arth1 · · Score: 1

      That's still a substantial improvement over the fastest RAM available when the PIII 1.4 came out, 133 MHz SDRAM. If both the CPU and RAM clock cycle speeds had increased at the same rate, we'd have 16.8 GHz CPUs to go with the 1600 MHz clocked RAM.

      To make it worse, the speed increases we did get also came with an increase in pipeline length, which makes the CPU substantially slower whenever branch prediction fails and the pipeline has to be refilled. So the 5 GHz of tomorrow isn't going to run all code 3.5 times as fast as a 1.4 GHz PIII CPU. Optimized code for the newer CPUs, with compiler assisted branch prediction is certainly helping, but it won't run old code 3.5 times as fast, and in some clinical cases (small operations called through jump tables) probably not much faster at all.

    13. Re:Skylake again by Type44Q · · Score: 1

      Oh, and it will be available in very limited quantities.

      I guess that's a good thing considering there's going to be very limited demand.

    14. Re:Skylake again by EvilSS · · Score: 1

      Probably, but if you are looking at 28 core CPUs, it's because you have a highly multi-threaded workload and nothing AMD can currently touch this new chip. It's not always about price.

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    15. Re:Skylake again by robi5 · · Score: 2

      CPU and memory clock rates used to be identical, then CPU speeds grew way more rapidly than memory speeds, leading to the misnomer: memory multiplier. So the upside of what you note is that we're slowly moving away from ridiculously high multipliers. Yes, the end game would be processing integrated with memory.

    16. Re:Skylake again by David_Hart · · Score: 1

      It's still an accomplishment though since it's the first ever consumer CPU to run at a such an insane clockrate.

      It does not sound insane to me. I mean, back in 2002, we had Pentium III running at 1.4 GHz, and not long after, the P4 3.06 GHz.
      16 years later, and we haven't been able to double the PIII clock rate twice or the P4 clock rate once?

      For perspective, in the same time span, we have gone from 133 MHz SDRAM and 533 MHz RDRAM to 3200 MHz DDR4. That's a far more impressive clock rate increase.
      If this trend continues, we'll soon have to offload cycle dependent calculations from the CPU to the RAM controller because it's going to be faster... :p

      While it's true that Intel hasn't doubled the clock rate yet of a P4, efficiencies gained in additional cache, predictive algorithms, out of order processing, faster memory, faster and larger PCI lanes, multi-core processors, etc. has improved performance by multitudes.

      The one thing that I have noticed is that with the rise in mobile computing, it seems that building more powerful CPUs has taken a backseat to building more power efficient CPUs.

    17. Re:Skylake again by Entrope · · Score: 1

      To be honest, nothing Intel can currently touch this new chip either, because they won't be selling it for about six months.

      If your workload is that parallel, there's a reasonable chance you can farm it out to multiple machines.

    18. Re: Skylake again by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Those new chips are nothing more cherry picked overclocked cpus. Some Sandy Bridge 2600Ks reached 5Ghz, in 2011. I simply don't see what the big deal is.

      If anything, it shows tech stagnation.

    19. Re:Skylake again by fisted · · Score: 1

      Pretty sure 3200MHz DDR4 runs at 400 MHz, not 1600. The "effective" clock speed of 3200 MHz comes from 4 bytes per access times two (since it acts on both the rising and the falling clock edge).

    20. Re:Skylake again by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Farmed out to a server room or cloud, unless you like sitting next to something that sounds like a vacuum cleaner...

    21. Re:Skylake again by arth1 · · Score: 1

      The one thing that I have noticed is that with the rise in mobile computing, it seems that building more powerful CPUs has taken a backseat to building more power efficient CPUs.

      Not just mobile computing, but data centers where parallel processing is more important than raw speed, and the cost of a year of electricity multiplied by several thousand CPUs makes a difference.
      But when you need linear computing power, the advances haven't been all that great over the last twenty years. That 3.06 GHz Pentium 4 from 2002 isn't all that much slower for that than today's CPUs.

    22. Re:Skylake again by jwhyche · · Score: 2

      In most consumer applications it isn't the speed of the memory or cpu that causes slowdown. It's the I/O. When I'm doing "real work" on my desktop my cpu hardly breaks 20% and I'm waiting on I/O to catch up. An this is with a Samsung 960 Pro NvME card.

      With games its GPU. My cpu barely breaks 30% even with the most demanding game.

      Faster CPU's are nice but they are not what determines overall computer power any more.

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    23. Re:Skylake again by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      N00bs don't even know what wait states are either.

    24. Re: Skylake again by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you add up all the cores and do a couple shot, face north, and let the hooker finish her job, itâ(TM)s more that 16gigatjings

    25. Re: Skylake again by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I waited 3 minutes to call you an asshole. Asshole.

    26. Re: Skylake again by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Iâ(TM)ve been running my 2600k at 5.3 GHz. But itâ(TM)s submerged in ice water.

    27. Re:Skylake again by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, the difficulty in increasing processor speed is that it gets so dang HOT.

      Much easier to just add additional processors.

    28. Re: Skylake again by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You both need to look up numa. Farming to multiple machines rarely is the solution with complex work. Ever over fiber, itâ(TM)s so much slower than local memory. 28 cores in one cou is exactly this type of work. Localized, in memory processing.

      To an exercise to see this. Just make (program) a password cracker (pros do this in the gpu).

      Make a billion sha-512 hashes. Do it concurrently. Not try to divide up that work one just one other machine.

    29. Re:Skylake again by dublin · · Score: 1

      The more things change, the more they stay the same - Here's my post reacting to a similar 1.0GHz CPU announcement nearly 20 years ago:
      https://hardware.slashdot.org/...

      --
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    30. Re: Skylake again by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Depends on the source that I'm hashing. Is it computed? Is it a file? Why can't I just transfer half the file to the second machine. Sure, might take longer to transfer (think multi TB or PB files) than hash locally, but it's a trivial implementation.

    31. Re:Skylake again by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But you can't get it, because it's not yet released.

    32. Re:Skylake again by samwichse · · Score: 1

      I mean, except for the AMD 9590 from June 2013...

      https://www.amd.com/en/product...

    33. Re:Skylake again by samwichse · · Score: 1

      From your link:

      "EDIT: According to this image we sourced from Engadget's compressed keynote video on YouTube, Intel apparently was running some sort of closed-loop cooling that required insulating material around the tubing. This could be a multi-stage phase cooler (sub-zero cooling), or possibly a more mundane water chiller, under the table."

      Either way, it's probably not even close to ready for deployment in actual servers at 5 ghz across the board if they need a cooling system with insulation on it to get there right now.

    34. Re: Skylake again by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It was a standard aquariam water chiller. It's unclear if they needed the 1hp version, or if that was just what they had.

    35. Re:Skylake again by EvilSS · · Score: 1

      To be honest, nothing Intel can currently touch this new chip either,

      How so? Since this is just a unlocked 28 core Xeon re-purposed for workstations. A chip you can buy today if you have $10K burning a hole in your pocket.

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    36. Re:Skylake again by Entrope · · Score: 1

      Intel's current 28-core Xeon runs at 2.1 GHz (3.8 GHz turbo), not 5 GHz. Intel said that this CPU would be released in Q4 of this year. Take off your fanboi hat for a moment and pay attention.

    37. Re:Skylake again by EvilSS · · Score: 1

      This chip doesn't run at 5GHz either! That demo was an OC'd chip being cooled by a chiller unit. All smoke and mirrors.

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  3. 5GHz too late... by The+Fat+Bastard · · Score: 0

    Funny how it took AMD to produce a line of processor to goose Intel into updating their line of processors. The 5GHz processors should have come out years ago.

    1. Re:5GHz too late... by danomac · · Score: 4, Funny

      Yep, they held them back at least 5 years so it would coincide with their anniversary. Idiots.

    2. Re:5GHz too late... by CastrTroy · · Score: 2

      People have been running Intel processors at 5GHz for years. They may have needed aftermarket cooling solutions, but it's been something that's possible for quite a while. I guess the question is how high people will be able to overclock this 5GHz CPU. If it costs more than the current 8700k and doesn't actually provide any level of overclocking, then I don't really see it as big news.

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    3. Re:5GHz too late... by fisted · · Score: 1

      8086K will allow overclocking, that's what the 'K' means.

    4. Re:5GHz too late... by sexconker · · Score: 1

      What’s so special about this processor?
      This processor is Intel’s first 5Ghz out of the box consumer desktop processor, featuring 6 cores and 12 threads, and is unlocked for overclocking*.

      *Altering clock frequency or voltage may damage or reduce the useful life of the processor and other system components, and may reduce system stability and performance. Product warranties may not apply if the processor is operated beyond its specifications. Check with the manufacturers of system and components for additional details.

    5. Re:5GHz too late... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      8086K will allow overclocking, that's what the 'K' means.

      is not what he or she meant and you know it. they were referring to overclock potential, will an 8086k overclock to a higher frequency than a 8700k.

    6. Re:5GHz too late... by fisted · · Score: 1

      Yes, overclocking means operating out of spec.

      News at 11.

  4. Yay! Progress! by NoNonAlphaCharsHere · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Intel celebrates 50 years, and the 8086 Instruction Set Architechure celebrates 45 years.

    1. Re:Yay! Progress! by religionofpeas · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Compatibility is a nice feature, and it's a testament to the design that they could remain compatible for so long.

    2. Re:Yay! Progress! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Compatibility *was* important in the past. Overrated and not relevant now.

      We can compile our own programs for any CPU now. Some operating systems are even delivered from source code that is compiled during installation.

      I don't see anyone using the same CPU in their PC and their coffee-maker, and only very few Intel CPUs in cellphones and tablets.

    3. Re:Yay! Progress! by kiminator · · Score: 1

      While true, computer chips today would likely be significantly higher-performing if Motorola had came ahead in the early microprocessor days, with its 68000 series processors. A good fraction of modern x86 designs is dedicated to instruction translation. The Motorola 68000's instruction set was much more forward-looking, and requires less translation. If the research and money that had been dumped into x86 had instead been dumped into improving the 68000, computing might be pretty different today.

      But that's water under the bridge now. Hopefully as Windows and binary compatibility become less critical moving forward (with the rise of mobile), we'll be able to get away from the need to have backwards-compatible instruction sets, opening the way to much more performant designs.

    4. Re:Yay! Progress! by NoNonAlphaCharsHere · · Score: 1

      Myself, I was a big fan of the Z8000 ISA. Orthagonal, well thought out, great register set, almost pre/early-RISCish, word-sized instructions, not some random mixture of 1,2,3,4,8-byte instructions, none of that REPNE SCASB bullshit...

  5. Back to 8086 by sky_khan72 · · Score: 1

    Great! After 50 years, they're back to 8086, without real memory protection thanks to meltdown and spectre.

    1. Re:Back to 8086 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      yeah, but think how quickly these chips will be able to be pwned. It's going to make exploiting these a much more pleasant experience.

    2. Re:Back to 8086 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The 8086 didn't have any memory protection, either... Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose (accents omitted because Slashdot doesn't understand Unicode)

      I'd have thought it would have been apt to commemorate the 8088 more than the 8086, but maybe the i7 8088 will come in July 2019 (40 years from the first 8088). Cute that the new chip does 5GHz, just over 1000 times 4.77MHz. I wonder if the new chip will ship with 640GB of RAM; after all, that should be enough for anyone :-)

      So we have 10 times as many CPU cores, 1000 times the clock speed, 1000000 times the memory addressability, 1000000 the local storage (a PC XT with a 10MB hard drive vs a modern PC with a 10TB hard drive), 1000000 times the connectivity speed (300 baud vs 300Mbps fibre), and infinitely more the lolcat videos. Should we count that as progress?

  6. more's law by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    How many will they ship, though? And at what price?

    Interesting how only when AMD starts shipping something competitive with their chips, does Intel roll up its sleeves and get busy on breaking new ground. There almost seems to be a correlation ...!

    1. Re:more's law by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If only. This isn't breaking any new ground. It's just better binned samples of the cpus they already have, factory over-clocked, sold with a hefty mark-up to the gullible to have something which nominally "one-ups" AMD. I bet the overclocking headroom to be zero for all intents and purposes.

      It's a pathetic marketing ploy, nothing else. Intel is furiously spinning its wheels ATM.

    2. Re:more's law by NoNonAlphaCharsHere · · Score: 1

      Correlation is not causation. (This being Slashdot, someone had to say it.)

    3. Re:more's law by Entrope · · Score: 1

      The fallacy you were looking for is "post hoc ergo propter hoc" (after this, therefore because of this), not "correlation implies causation".

  7. AI Implications by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    With the rapid advancements in CPU technology and performance, will we see a commensurate rapid advancement in AI, or will AI continue to advance at an even more rapid rate than the underlying hardware technology?

    1. Re:AI Implications by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm willing to consider buying a new Intel processor, but it ain't gonna happen until they put some tail fins on 'em. Have you seen the '59 Cadillac? Now that's a car!

  8. Turbo frequency by MrL0G1C · · Score: 5, Funny

    Will I need to hit the turbo button on the front of the PC to get this 'Turbo frequency'?

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    1. Re:Turbo frequency by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It would seem that way, but on the contrary, you will need to open your front vent to allow the computer to force extra air into the combustion chamber.

    2. Re:Turbo frequency by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, that's not a "turbo" button, and it's only for "Nitrous Mode," which won't be out until next year.

    3. Re:Turbo frequency by Bryansix · · Score: 1

      I'm both old enough to remember those and young enough to remember how I thought it was a dumb idea. Thankfully processors change clock speed based on actual load now.

    4. Re:Turbo frequency by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      I'm both old enough to remember those and young enough to remember how I thought it was a dumb idea. Thankfully processors change clock speed based on actual load now.

      Turbo button was for legacy compatibility, A lot of old games used cycle based timing, so on a faster cpu the game ran too fast. Hit the turbo button to slow down cpu and voila, scaling based on load wouldn't work for that use.

    5. Re:Turbo frequency by Bryansix · · Score: 1

      This makes sense. Cycle based timing. What a quaint concept.

    6. Re:Turbo frequency by ledow · · Score: 2

      Lots of games did a lot of similar things, right into this decade.

      Go run the original C&C or Red Alert on a PC. Despite being available for Windows 95 (and thus much faster chips than anything a Turbo button was designed to cope with), you still have to play with "scroll speed" at the very bottom and "game speed" somewhere about half-way (top is way too fast, and the graduations are enormous between settings)

      The timing was nowhere close to actually being based on wall-clock time, despite things like processors having timing, and vsync etc information being readily available to time against (even if you didn't wait around to draw frames at that point).

      Even the unofficial hacks and patches can't make it consistent on a modern machine.

      (P.S. Origin sell all the C&C and Red Alert in one package - don't bother, because they don't even run on modern Windows without applying the same unofficial patches as everyone else did to their original disks, and even after that you still have these kinds of speed problems).

    7. Re:Turbo frequency by micahraleigh · · Score: 1

      So that's where the unrefined coaxium goes !

    8. Re:Turbo frequency by dfghjk · · Score: 1

      This is true, but legacy compatibility also meant hardware support. Peripheral hardware would frequently not work at higher speeds either, including hardware supported in the BIOS.

    9. Re:Turbo frequency by sconeu · · Score: 1

      Similarly, the old SCO Unix (back when SCO was merely stodgy and not evil) had a timing loop in the Adaptec 1540 and 1740 drivers, and would fail on boot on a 486/DX-66 (and probably others, but I'm just going from personal experience)

      The fix was to take the system out of turbo mode, boot from the floppy, patch the driver image; reboot in turbo mode and install. Patch the driver image on the hard drive and relink the kernel; and then reboot in turbo mode.

      The key thing is that the turbo switch was necessary to deal with this shit.

      --
      General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
    10. Re:Turbo frequency by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Try warcraft 1 on a new PC.

      TOTALLY unplayable against AI.

      Mostly unplayable period.

    11. Re:Turbo frequency by toddestan · · Score: 1

      A while ago, Origin (I think they owned it at the time), released the original C&C for free. So if you're getting nostalgic, you can get your fix for free.

      With that said, the game did run much better on my old 700MHz Celeron system than it did my more modern system, though part of that may have been because that computer has Windows 98SE on it. As it was, I originally played the game on a Pentium 75, and while that was a long time ago, I don't remember any performance issues.

    12. Re:Turbo frequency by ledow · · Score: 1

      That's the EXACT re-release I'm talking about.

      No, it still needs patching to even run on some systems, using the some 10+ year old third-party patches, and still has the speed problems.

  9. Finally! by Quirkz · · Score: 1

    In 2000, when I was still getting used to saying Gigahertz instead of Megahertz, and they'd bounded up from triple digits to quadruple digits in the span of just a couple of years, it seemed like 3, 4, and 5, GHz processors ought to be just around the corner. I can remember being mystified and disappointed as the path to 2 GHz became increasingly asymptotic. That had been the key metric for so long, watching computer manufacturers re-spin their marketing to talk about other features, or start plugging dual processors instead, was a big shift.

    1. Re:Finally! by Octorian · · Score: 1

      Oh, they got up there quite quickly. But they had to make some bad architectural shifts to do it (the P4), which actually hurt overall performance. When they finally recovered from that, the march became a lot slower.

    2. Re:Finally! by toddestan · · Score: 1

      It was only a few years between the 1 GHz PIII and the single core 3.8 GHz P4, which held the x86 clock speed crown for close to decade. Of course, that wasn't the plan. Intel knew the P4 wasn't very efficient, but they thought they could ramp it up to 10 GHz and beyond so it wouldn't matter than the initial sub-2.0 GHz P4's weren't that impressive next to the final generation PIII's. Obviously that didn't work out for Intel.

  10. I though we got off the mhz (Ghz) myth. by jellomizer · · Score: 2

    Is this the early 2000's where we were all drooling over the faster hertz speed of the clock.

    We have been parallelizing the chips and software for over a decade now to reach meaningful speed improvements, while not really caring much about the clock speeds. This approach actually has been a good thing, it allowed great improvements in mobile chip design which cannot draw tones of power and doesn't need a radiator to keep it from melting itself.

    --
    If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    1. Re:I though we got off the mhz (Ghz) myth. by phantomfive · · Score: 2

      A doubling in clock speed is always better than a doubling in cores (all other things equal). The only reason we're focusing on cores now is because single-threaded speed hasn't been able to increase much.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    2. Re:I though we got off the mhz (Ghz) myth. by MrL0G1C · · Score: 1

      Silicon is the limiter, other elements heat up less with current going through them and could potentially reach speeds up to 100ghz AFAIK.

      --
      Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
    3. Re:I though we got off the mhz (Ghz) myth. by MrL0G1C · · Score: 1
      --
      Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
    4. Re:I though we got off the mhz (Ghz) myth. by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

      Yea, but now I have to fire up my gas heating in winter all the time! You insensitive clod!

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
    5. Re:I though we got off the mhz (Ghz) myth. by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The higher the clock speed, the higher the wasted power to heat. And if the chips get to hot, they work faulty anyway, the smaller they get, the more faulty they get, too.

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
    6. Re:I though we got off the mhz (Ghz) myth. by Boh00711 · · Score: 1

      Then I've got the perfect product for you! A 7M/0Hz single core processor. Actually, it's a boulder, but I call it a processor. Since it's so big, so slow, and doesn't actually do anything, there are no faults, ever!

    7. Re:I though we got off the mhz (Ghz) myth. by religionofpeas · · Score: 1

      More cores also waste power to heat.

    8. Re:I though we got off the mhz (Ghz) myth. by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

      But far less than a higher frequency, and they can be disabled if not in use.
      Double the frequency, square the power loss.
      Double the cores, double the power usage. Keep in mind: in case of frequency increase it is simple loss, the power does not anything useful, in case of core doubling, the core is performing calculations.

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
    9. Re:I though we got off the mhz (Ghz) myth. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      For what its worth there are fast silicon-based transistors that switch at 100 or more ghz. google "fastest silicon transistor"
      Hard to compare graphene processors to silicon ones since they don't exist.
      Potentially? Sure, potentially.

    10. Re:I though we got off the mhz (Ghz) myth. by fisted · · Score: 1

      Should also add that faster frequencies means faster switching, which means parasitic capacitances have to be charged faster which is generally achieved by higher voltage. Double the voltage, quadruple the power loss.

    11. Re:I though we got off the mhz (Ghz) myth. by ChrisMaple · · Score: 2

      Double the frequency, square the power loss.

      Wrong. Power dissipation is proportional to frequency if the voltage is unchanged.

      --
      Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
    12. Re:I though we got off the mhz (Ghz) myth. by Raenex · · Score: 1

      while not really caring much about the clock speeds

      Speak for yourself. I'm still waiting for my 10GHz CPU. Decades of exponential clock speed improvements were a glorious thing.

      I'm typing this comment on a machine from 2008, and the only thing it really needs is more RAM. Of course I don't use it for gaming, as that would be a graphics card issue.

      It used to be desktop computers were considered outdated after 3 years.

    13. Re:I though we got off the mhz (Ghz) myth. by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

      You must be living in an interesting universe then:

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
    14. Re:I though we got off the mhz (Ghz) myth. by Xnet+Project · · Score: 1

      Technically Cores, Threads, and PCI-E Lanes is the more sought-after requirement. Single threading performance is becoming a thing of the past with more applications supporting multi-core/multi-thread design. Sure, single-threaded performance still has it's merits, but nowhere near what it used to. Realistically, even at 6 GHz or even 7 Ghz it will realistically make the difference on the single-threaded spectrum. Not so much on the more load intensive processes more people are seeking.

    15. Re: I though we got off the mhz (Ghz) myth. by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      Technically and realistically, single threaded performance is the most sought out requirement. The only reason processors switched to adding cores is because they couldn't get much higher performance in a single core. Adding a core improves performance of some tasks: speeding single thread improves performance for all tasks.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  11. But .... by Insanity+Defense · · Score: 1

    The Pentium IV was supposed to take us to 10 ghz. What happened?

    1. Re:But .... by omnichad · · Score: 1

      They probably tried 10GHz on a Pentium IV, but melted down the facility in the process.

    2. Re:But .... by Bryansix · · Score: 2

      The engineers and the marketing department got locked in a room and battled it out to the death. I'll let you figure out who won.

    3. Re:But .... by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 1

      The engineers and the marketing department got locked in a room and battled it out to the death. I'll let you figure out who won.

      Tricky question. The Marketing people won. At least in the US. Netburst was a huge engineering failure.

      Luckily, some folks at Intel Israel had been working on making the PIII more energy efficient. When Intel's fortunes looked very bleak, somebody noticed this work and from there the Core line was born and AMD got set back a decade in terms of competitiveness.

      P4 was the end of the line for that technology.

      --
      My God, it's Full of Source!
      OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
  12. spectre, meltdown, rowhammer by AlleyTrotte · · Score: 1

    no comments, so I guess same old same old J

  13. Bah! by cruff · · Score: 1

    I remember when all we had was a paltry 1 GHz clock speed, and we were happy to have that. Get off my lawn!

    1. Re:Bah! by F.Ultra · · Score: 1

      I remember when 7.14Mhz was insanely fast

    2. Re:Bah! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I will deny it even under duress: I am still young!

    3. Re:Bah! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You jest. But I cut my teeth on the 1 MHz 6800 chips that were fast for their day, and had a damn sight better architecture than the 8088s they competed against.

  14. Re: Oracle already has a 5.0 GHz chip on the marke by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    POWER6 was at 5 GHz in 2008

  15. They missed an opportunity by tadas · · Score: 4, Funny

    I really wish they'd built a chip that ran at 4.77 GHz...

    --
    This page accidentally left blank
    1. Re:They missed an opportunity by EvilSS · · Score: 1

      The 8700K that this one is based on hits 4.7ghz turbo (vs 5.0 for this one)

      --
      I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
    2. Re:They missed an opportunity by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 1

      If it makes you happy, I'm pretty sure you could hand-tweak the CPU clock PLL to put out at least very close to 4.77Ghz, but you might have to also tweak it's reference clock to get it. ;-)

    3. Re:They missed an opportunity by dublin · · Score: 1

      640 GB should be enough for anybody, then...
      https://quoteinvestigator.com/...

      --
      "The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last ./ post
  16. 50, 50, 50 by Tablizer · · Score: 1

    and has 50 security holes

  17. Some specs since linked article sucks by EvilSS · · Score: 1

    These are 6 core/12 thread CPUs running at 4.0ghz base clock and 5.0 ghz SINGLE CORE boost. Basically it sounds like they are binned 4700K's. Run is limited to 50,000 units. https://www.anandtech.com/show/12875/intel-announces-the-core-i78086k-coffee-lake-at-5-ghz

    --
    I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
    1. Re:Some specs since linked article sucks by EvilSS · · Score: 1

      8700K not 4700K. DOH

      --
      I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
  18. P4 hit 5G 20 years ago by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That is progress?

    1. Re:P4 hit 5G 20 years ago by fisted · · Score: 1

      You had a 5GHz P4 in 1998? Makes me wonder why as a teen I spent all my money on a P3 600 Mhz in 2000...

  19. average cycles per second per second by sugar+and+acid · · Score: 2

    Obviously the growth in clock speed has been exponential (moores law) and goes in major steps process and design changes, but for fun, the linear average increase in clock speed since the launch of the intel 4004 in 1971 (740khz) to the present top line chips (~4.3 Ghz) is 3 Hz per second. Or 3 more cycles per second per second.

    1. Re:average cycles per second per second by iggymanz · · Score: 2

      no, clock speed the one thing that flattened out years ago, about 2004

    2. Re:average cycles per second per second by sugar+and+acid · · Score: 1

      Intel top line CPU speeds have gone from 3.8 to 4.3 ghz in the last 10 years. That is still 2 hz per second increase over the last 2 years.

    3. Re:average cycles per second per second by iggymanz · · Score: 1

      of course the important thing is how much work a CPU can do, a phrase that could give a notion of that graph's increase over the years would be more meaningful

    4. Re:average cycles per second per second by JohnStock · · Score: 1

      What is this 2006?

    5. Re:average cycles per second per second by JohnStock · · Score: 1

      Which is *very* far from the continuation of an exponential increase you mentioned

    6. Re:average cycles per second per second by sugar+and+acid · · Score: 1

      OK, it's more sigmoidal and not exponential. This is actually true of all exponential growth in real life, they eventually hit another limit that stops the growth. Google bacterial growth curve for an example.

  20. This answers my questions. by Grog6 · · Score: 1

    This still has the NSA-required flaws, so they are unlikely to actually 'fix' any of the pending issues until people stop buying servers.

    I'm done with intel for a while.

    --
    Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
  21. Giving away for all they've STOLEN from us? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Fuck Intel, and fuck all the Big Brother fanbois who dwell here. You're fucking morans.

    1. Re:Giving away for all they've STOLEN from us? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I've never even visited East Africa!

  22. Buh buh but AMD. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    There. We knew it was necessasary.

    Derp out!

  23. I Love Competition by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    AMD Ryzen processors pushed Intel to get off their ass and start innovating again. I love competition. Great chips from both makers. If you run a large organization, please try to support both to keep competition alive.

  24. Re: Oracle already has a 5.0 GHz chip on the marke by Joce640k · · Score: 1

    (facepalm)

    Not even the summary says this is the first 5GHz CPU ever.

    --
    No sig today...
  25. Thermal Loads by ytene · · Score: 2

    This is going back a bit, but the 5GHz threshold is important for another reason... I'm trying to find the exact reference, but back around the time that AMD first released the Athlon CPU, I recall someone from the technology press writing an article which extrapolated what would happen to processor TDPs as clock speeds increased. Obviously we have to bear in mind that die shrinks and improved lithography, better materials and the like all help to drive up the performance-per-watt scale, but this magazine projected that if CPUs [of the day] were ever to scale up to 5GHz, then the thermal-output-per-square inch, extrapolated from the CPU die size, would actually exceed what is found inside a fully-active nuclear reactor.

    The amazing thing, then, is not simply that Intel have managed to ship a 5GHz part, but they have done so whilst essentially keeping the thermal profile of the chips more-or-less uniform for a good part of the last few years. In some ways this thermal efficiency is even more impressive than the outright clock speed; it talks to the materials science, packaging design and overall cooling effectiveness, that we've now come to expect from our current crop of processors.

  26. Wtf by stroxor · · Score: 0

    Where are the days of promises. Netburst will have 20ghz...

  27. Re: Oracle already has a 5.0 GHz chip on the marke by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    And in 2006, I overclocked a dozen Pentium IVs to 5 GHz, and eight of them were stable. Intel has been able to make faster processors for well over a decade. They just decided to screw us by refusing to sell them so we would have to keep upgrading to make the Windows slow hell less worse.

  28. I did this in the early 00's with an AMD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Seriously,
        I held a stable overclock of the AMD X4 Phenom II at 5.1 ghz, for a long time. I know many people did overclocks similar to that speed on Intel processors too. Now I am locked out, I don't play with voltages and multipliers as much, but still this isn't new. Now if Intel claims the first ever 5ghz with an Amd64/X86 stack running say at X voltage, then I could see it making a claim of the soft sort. DDR2 actually was great at overclocking, as well on that board.

  29. Re: Oracle already has a 5.0 GHz chip on the marke by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    And it is single core to reduce heat.

  30. Moore's Law is broken. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I don't have to give money to them (Intel) due to the polemical word "contribution" that replaces "computer".

    It did try to change the minds of the users's "Personal Computer" by one monopolized mind that did satisfy Intel and co.

  31. And a few patches down the road... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ... it will perform as the world first 486 at 5GHz

  32. Biggest Chip Maker by Tough+Love · · Score: 1
    --
    When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
  33. I get the point of the article.. by alaskana98 · · Score: 1

    that these are the first Intel chips to come *out of the box* running at 5 GHz, but I've been running my i7 7700K Kaby Lake at 5 GHz stably for more than a year now, so somehow doesn't seem like that big of a 'wow' to me. Now run them at 6 GHz, now we're talking.

    1. Re:I get the point of the article.. by Xnet+Project · · Score: 1

      The irony to it is now is going back 10, maybe 15 years ago faster was always better. The current consensus now is more PCI-E Lanes, Cores, and Threads are the way to go.

  34. Single-thread performance doubling: 7.5 years! by Savantissimo · · Score: 1

    PassMark - CPU Mark Single Thread Performance
    AMD Athlon XP 2800+ @ 2.25 GHz / rel. October 1, 2002 / Score: 627
    Intel Core i7-8700K @ 3.70GHz (4.7GHz turbo) / rel. October 5, 2017 / Score: 2708 (highest-scoring processor for single thread performance as of June 5, 2018)

    Single thread performance ratio: 4.01

    **Single thread performance doubling time: 7.5 years**

    Note: it's not clear what the best-performing processor was in the early 2000s, the performance doubling time may be even greater.

    Moore's law ceased to hold for computing performance quite a while back. Lots of cores doesn't speed up sequential computing tasks (Amdahl's Law).

    --
    "Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
    1. Re:Single-thread performance doubling: 7.5 years! by arth1 · · Score: 1

      AMD Athlon XP 2800+ @ 2.25 GHz / rel. October 1, 2002 / Score: 627

      P4 3.06 which came out at the same time scores 656 according to that table.

    2. Re:Single-thread performance doubling: 7.5 years! by scottragen · · Score: 1

      Except Moore's law wasn't about compute performance, it was about how the density of transistors in an IC doubles every 2 years.

  35. Smoke and Mirrors? by Xnet+Project · · Score: 1

    After looking into this .. it looked like Intel scrambled to put something together rather than have something readily available. A closer look reveals it uses the same socket set as the 8176 and 8180 Intel Xeon Platinum Socket LGA 3647 at 28 Cores and 56 Threads. It's basically a Xeon server CPU overclocked to 5Ghz and rigged with an extreme cooling solution to keep from frying the chip. Considering this socket type and CPU, this will be a very niche market for people that want to spend $7,000 to $10,000 on a server CPU if this is the case versus maybe $1600 to $1700 for the new Threadripper 2? I also found it to be very sketchy that Intel wouldn't show the physical processor where AMD gladly flashed it's product. Does Intel really have a next generation processor to compete with AMD or is this a smoke screen to buy time for Q3.

  36. Re: Oracle already has a 5.0 GHz chip on the marke by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    No, it says a first from Intel.