Intel's Latest 8th-Gen Core Processors Focus on Improving Wi-Fi Speeds (theverge.com)

IFA 2018 is here, and to go along with the wealth of new laptops that will presumably be announced over the next few days, Intel is taking the wraps off its latest 8th-Gen processors. There are three new Whiskey Lake U-series chips (Intel's midrange line for laptops), and, for the first time, there are three 8th-Gen Amber Lake Y-series processors. From a report: While Intel is still using the same underlying architecture as its previous processors -- making these new chips ostensibly an "8.5-Gen" lineup, at least where the U-series models are concerned -- the big change that the company is highlighting is integrated gigabit Wi-Fi support. Intel promises that this should result in dramatically faster internet speeds, especially apparent on the cheaper, midrange laptops that may not have been able to offer those kinds of speeds before. Also being added to the new Y-series and U-series chips is built-in support for virtual assistants like Cortana and Alexa. So you should expect to see the digital assistants cropping up on more laptops in the near future. Further reading: Intel Launches Whiskey Lake-U and Amber Lake-Y: New MacBook CPUs?

Comments

Vulnerabilities.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what I think of when I think Intel.

Mmmmmm whiskey

[renegadesx]

I really dont trust Intel to build secure chips anymore, but god damn the name "whiskey lake" is incredibly intoxicating.

Re:Mmmmmm whiskey

[Anonymous Coward]

There are a couple of dozen chip foundries in the U.S. at least. Intel has several in Oregon and Arizona as far as I know.

In other words, some people would rather buy a product that's known to be insecure, because some asshats have convinced them that other nations are the enemy and are out to get them. Meanwhile, legitimate bad actors will pwn your machine because you've got a bad CPU in it with some known, and potentially more unknown security issues. Remember, not too long ago, the Foreshadow issue was unknown too. Imagine what surprises Intel will have for us the years ahead.

You Thought Intel’s ME Was Bad?

[mschwanke97402]

So now Intel processors can be back doored directly from the nearest WiFi hot-spot. What could go wrong with that?

Because the one thing I look for in a CPU

[rsilvergun]

is improved WiFi? Seriously, I know we're at the end of Moore's law and all but come on. My work laptop is dog slow with a clean load of Windows. Maybe do something about that first please?

Re: Because the one thing I look for in a CPU

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny you should say that. Thanks to all the mitigations, both this years and last years CPU is slower than last years CPU!

Re:Because the one thing I look for in a CPU

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

On his work laptop.

If he's working in a Windows shop, that's not going to work the way you think it is.

Nah.

[PopeRatzo]

Also being added to the new Y-series and U-series chips is built-in support for virtual assistants like Cortana and Alexa.

Oh, hell no.

Is this some last minute hand-wavy redirection?

[mnemotronic]

I would have liked to have been in the meeting where the on-chip radio product manager was told his feature had to be pushed onto center stage to redirect attention away from the whole speculative execution / prefetch arena. What minor wifi improvement could be spun as the greatest thing since politician retirement announcements?

Network Card

[dohzer]

Shouldn't the network card of my PC be handling that?
If I ever chose to put WiFi in my desktop, that is.
Not sure why I'd ever want slower internet, but sure, WiFi is an option.

Re:Network Card

[darkain]

Multiple things are merged into a single chip now. Have you questioned why the memory controller is on the CPU instead of the north bridge nowadays? What about integrated GPU? Or PCIe? Or SATA? Or Ethernet? Or USB? Why is WiFi so perplexing with everything else is already integrated into a single die? (as a note, this is what several other Intel Atom chips do, I have a T5700 with integrated WiFi)

Re:Network Card

[Anonymous Coward]

Shouldn't the network card of my PC be handling that?

Not if Intel wants to update your CPU microcode whenever you venture into a WiFi network under their control. This allows ad-hoc networking of Intel CPUs completely invisible to users, debuggers, and even hardware. You could infiltrate a complete corporate's hardware base by coming into WiFi range without needing to go through their rooters, firewalls, or cables. Including computers purposely quarantained from the network.

Re:Network Card

[jittles]

Shouldn't the network card of my PC be handling that? If I ever chose to put WiFi in my desktop, that is. Not sure why I'd ever want slower internet, but sure, WiFi is an option.

You do realize that the chips announced yesterday were all Y and U models, right? They *could* go into a desktop but they are generally used for (U)ltra low power devices. That's what the U stands for. The U SKUs usually end up in laptops and the Y SKUs would be used in things like tablets. So there are some serious power savings with this particular change. I do not believe they plan on integrating the WiFi on other SKUs, though I could be wrong. I do not believe these chips have been modified for side-channel attacks, but I can't be certain of that at all at this point.

Re:"Virtual Assistant" hypetrain? What?

[Waffle Iron]

so I expect (and hope) it's just the non-technical Verge misunderstanding some piece of meaningless PR-speak.

No, Intel is adding new opcodes to support virtual assistants. This will make them much more efficient, since there will be no high-level language overhead involved in processing user requests.

One of the most significant new opcodes is the SCIFALXWV src instruction, or "Set Carry if 'Alexa' detected in WAV data". This scans the memory buffer pointed to by the source operand, and of length specified by RCX, using a language code specified in RDX, and then uses advanced pattern matching logic to determine whether or not it contains a recording of a human voice speaking the word "Alexa". If it does, it sets the carry flag, otherwise it resets the flag.

wifi and assistants?

[Karmashock]

This has nothing to do with CPUs.

First, the wifi is generally provided by the motherboard or an addon comm board... not the processor... and I don't want the processor to have that feature even if it could.

Second, who the flying fuck cares about these assistants especially when you have a keyboard etc?

The assistants are superfluous bullshit. I can appreciate them in the car when interacting with your phone. There is some sense to a voice interface in that singular context. But outside of that? Complete garbage. And to suggest you're building in any way the CPU around these shit applications?

We really need solid alternatives to Intel. The desktop CPU market has been an Intel monopoly for too long.

9th gen with integrated facebook

[Anonymous Coward]

..is going to blow peoples minds. Amazingly faster, you've never seen Facebook run this fast.

Weird priorities

[DrYak]

AMD: we will try to make upcoming Zen 2 architecture more spectre-proof (not that there that many of the various spectre vulnerabilities that affect us, but still)

Intel: with 8th Gen Core architecture, we will make your Wifi a tiny bit faster, and make the various "voice assistant" devices even more efficient at spying on you.
(Forget about the ~20 and still growing list of spectre vulnerabilities affecting our chips, look at the shiny trendy instead !)

huh... what ?

The usual first question for any "new features"

[Opportunist]

It's sad, but this is actually the first question that comes to mind whenever any hard- or software announces new features:

"Can we turn it off?"

Re:The usual first question for any "new features"

[Opportunist]

I blame it on the fucking tick-box-counting idiots. The kind of customer that has no idea what he wants or needs but looks at the cute little "informative" cards next to a product where you can see a bunch of tick boxes with some label, a label the idea of which they also don't grasp. But the tick box is ticked, so the product is "better" than the other product next to it where that tick box isn't ticked. What tick box? No idea. Do they need that feature? Need? They don't even know what the feature does! But it has the feature, so it's better.

When Homer said "you should have taken an existing product and add a clock to it", he was pretty much predicting what we're heading for. Appliances that get more and more useless gimmicks nobody wants, needs or even knows what it's good for.

Re:"Virtual Assistant" hypetrain? What?

[willy_me]

It is probably the addition of a very low power module to support real-time analysis of audio. Lattice Semiconductor sells such a module based on their iCE40 FPGA which claims to only require 5 mW - Link. This allows you to respond to voice commands without having the CPU fully powered. Apple has developed their own hardware to do something similar in their computers and iPhones.

The real question is, what else can this Intel module be programmed to do.