Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Intel: We 'Forgot' To Mention 28-Core, 5GHz CPU Demo Was Overclocked (tomshardware.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the how-convenient dept.

At Computex earlier this week, Intel showed off a 28-core processor running at 5GHz, implying that it would be a shipping chip with a 5.0GHz stock speed. Unfortunately, as Tom's Hardware reports, "it turns out that Intel overclocked the 28-core processor to such an extreme that it required a one-horsepower industrial water chiller." From the report: We met with the company last night, and while Intel didn't provide many details, a company representative explained to us that "in the excitement of the moment," the company merely "forgot" to tell the crowd that it had overclocked the system. Intel also said it isn't targeting the gaming crowd with the new chip. The presentation did take place in front of a crowd of roughly a hundred journalists and a few thousand others, not to mention a global livestream with untold numbers watching live, so perhaps nerves came into play. In the end, Intel claims the whole fiasco is merely the result of a flubbed recitation of pre-scripted lines, with the accidental omission of a single word: "Overclocked." Maybe that's the truth, but there's a lot of room for debate considering how convenient an omission this is.

6 of 165 comments (clear)

  1. Really? by orlanz · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I was pretty sure it was way overclocked. Kind of thought it was obvious. They aren't working on anything in the 4GHz range so why would they suddenly jump to 5 for release?

    1. Re:Really? by Narcocide · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Pointy-haired bosses will nonetheless believe this is what they're getting when they buy their next round of office desktops without even considering AMD solutions.

    2. Re:Really? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Maybe because it is unknown how long this system will be stable? You know - You can drive electronic devices like processors beyond their limits for a certain time, but operating all time beyond limits shortens the life expectancy dramatically. On top of that, the number of hardware faults will also increase. You certainly do not want to have that that in production/reliable environments.

      And third (and this is important) - If they do such a thing, it is obvious they choose a "perfect" sample from the batch, but it is very likely that "standard" users will get an average processor, that will never reach that performance. In that sense it is completely misleading. They present something that a "standard" user is not able to do, even if they use above normal cooling.

      Intel used this misleading presentation in hopes it will "stuck" in the brains of the decision makers, even after they admit they represented a false image of performance. In my opinion Intel is scared that the AMD upcoming processors take a bite out of their market, and goes for this kind of misleading stuff to keep their hold.

    3. Re: Really? by Rockoon · · Score: 3, Insightful

      RISC is a solution looking for a problem at this point. While you dont need a complicated decoder on RISC, If you want to perform as well as x86 while being RISCy then you need more instruction fetch bandwidth going into the decoder than x86 needs. Its a tradeoff that does not favor RISC, which is why it lost. RISC was winning up until the moment that CPU's went super-scaler, at which point the instruction fetch shortcoming becomes a losing burden.

      --
      "His name was James Damore."
  2. Halfassed SPARC by nbvb · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So, Intel demos a halfassed SPARC chip.

    Even freakinâ(TM) Oracle can ship a 32-core, 5GHz monster of a chip ...

    Intel needs a gigantic cooler for a one-shot demo of a chip with less cores and no DAX accelerators.

    My how the mighty have fallen.

  3. Re:And it was a 32 core machine ... by Ramze · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This wasn't a new chip -- it was a rebranded server chip overclocked to 5 Ghz using external -10 C (14 F) temp cooling system and a modified motherboard that could use non-ECC memory.

    No one would seriously purchase that abomination. It was meant as a distraction and a bit of marketing to compete with AMD's upcoming 32 core Threadripper 2 that was announced shortly after. It was literally a "hey, we got something that can compete with that!" pony show where no one talked about the cooling system needed to overclock it that high -- or even that it was overclocked. Inexperienced reporters ran with a headline that this was a new desktop CPU we might be seeing in the near future. Nope.

    They are already now fessing up that if this thing sees daylight, it won't be stock clocked to 5 Ghz -- you'd be lucky to see it at 3.7 Ghz with boost to 4.2 Ghz on some cores. It's literally nothing new and worse than AMD's threadripper model with more cores and made with a better manufacturing process.

    It's beyond BS when you take a chip already in use in servers, cherry pick one that has the best (almost miracle perfect) overclock capability and use what was basically a refrigerator to cool the water cooling system and hype it as a DEMO for some upcoming product. Tis vaporware to compete on paper with a soon-to-be shipping AMD product.