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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.

14 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 iggymanz · · Score: 5, Interesting

      well IBM power8 has 5GHz chip, what's Intel's problem

    3. 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.

    4. 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."
    5. Re: Really? by dgatwood · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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.

      Not at all true. RISC didn't lose. PowerPC lost because Apple didn't have the marketshare to be worth IBM's time. IBM wanted to focus on building hardware for gaming consoles where they thought they could get better volume, and didn't want to spend the R&D effort to build a version of the G5 that could thermally survive in a laptop. The gaming console designs mostly paired lots of DSP hardware with a really minimal (603e-quality) main core, so those designs were unsuitable for Apple's needs.

      But RISC itself has basically won at this point. The most popular CPU architecture on the planet, by a large margin, is ARM, which is RISC. There are on the order of 250 times as many ARM chips built every year as x86/x86-64 chips from AMD and Intel combined. Pretty much every cell phone out there uses the ARM ISA, and more and more tablets are switching to ARM every year. Why? Because CISC doesn't scale nearly as well as RISC in terms of CPU horsepower per unit heat/power, which is the most critical thing for mobile devices, laptops, etc.

      I expect CISC to be basically dead in twenty years, and possibly sooner.

      --

      Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.

  2. And it was a 32 core machine ... by perpenso · · Score: 4, Funny

    We 'Forgot' To Mention 28-Core, 5GHz CPU Demo Was Overclocked

    They probably also forgot to mention that it was a 32-core device with 4 faulty cores. ;-)

    1. Re:And it was a 32 core machine ... by alvinrod · · Score: 4, Informative

      I would have assumed this was the case as well, but this is almost certainly one of their Skylake XCC (Extreme Core Count) chips that are used for the high-end Xeon processors that retail for around $10,000 depending on clock speeds. The cores are laid out on a 5 x 6 grid, but two of the spots are used for the memory controller. Here's a site with a good shot of the die and a diagram of the parts of the chip.

      I don't know what they intend to charge for this thing, but it's a full chip and utterly massive at almost 700 mm^2. I don't expect it to normally run anywhere close to 5 GHz as one of the tech sites pointed out that Intel was using a stand alone water cooler rated for about ~1700W and that the power supply for their demo was a 1600W job, but even having 28 cores at 3.5 GHz is an insane amount of computational power. I expect it to be priced similarly.

    2. 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.

  3. Because Chipzilla would never .... by UnknownSoldier · · Score: 5, Informative

    /sarcasm Chipzilla would never resort to benchmarking shenanigans ... Oh wait.

  4. Re:And cooled to -10C by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    No need to cite anything - one of Intel's engineers involved with the demo admitted as much already.

  5. Updated: Intel's YEARS of insufficient management by Futurepower(R) · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I've updated this from a comment I made before. To me, it seems like a more in-depth understanding of Intel's management in the past 15 years.

    Intel's insufficient management: Intel has had many years of insufficient management, in my opinion. (Jan. 22, 2018)

    Here is a comment of mine posted exactly 12 years ago: Lower prices are not the answer. Proposal. (June 9, 2006)

    Intel's poor marketing: It is not difficult to find other evidence of insufficient management at Intel. Since the beginning of this year I've gotten 40 poorly considered, poorly written marketing emails from Intel. Whoever writes those ads seems to have almost no technical knowledge and no ability with sophisticated communication. This is an amazingly foolish sentence from emails I got from Intel on March 6 and March 8, 2018: "Up your marketing game with segment-focused campaigns..."

    Recent background: Meltdown and Spectre: 'worst ever' CPU bugs affect virtually all computers (Jan 4, 2018) "Meltdown is currently thought to primarily affect Intel processors manufactured since 1995, excluding the company's Itanium server chips and Atom processors before 2013."

    Linus Torvalds Calls Intel Patches 'Complete and Utter Garbage'. (Jan. 22, 2018)

    Two previous errors in design of Intel processors: Pentium FDIV bug (1994) and the Pentium F00F bug (1997)

    More EXTREME evidence of insufficient management at Intel: Intel was aware of the chip vulnerability when its CEO sold off $24 million in company stock. (Jan. 3, 2018)

    Will Intel be allowed to PROFIT from many years of producing processors with vulnerabilities? Will Intel be treated like U.S. banks in 2008, when many banks profited and many finance system managers got bonuses after the financial crash?

    If vulnerabilities are profitable, would Intel deliberately allow vulnerabilities in its products? Were the previous vulnerabilities deliberate? Did the CEO know about the vulnerabilities previously? Do others at Intel profit from the vulnerabilities?

  6. 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.

  7. Re:I love an underdog... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    What a fun and relevant anecdote!