Intel's Architecture Day 2018: The Future of Core, Intel GPUs, 10nm, and Hybrid x86
by Dr. Ian Cutress on December 12, 2018 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
- Memory
- Intel
- GPUs
- DRAM
- Architecture
- Microarchitecture
- Xe
Going Beyond Gen11: Announcing the XE Discrete Graphics Brand
Not content with merely talking about what 2019 will bring, we were given a glimpse into how Intel is going to approach its graphics business in 2020 as well. It was at this point that Raja announced the new product branding for Intel’s discrete graphics business:
Intel will use the Xe branding for its range of graphics that were unofficially called ‘Gen12’ in previous discussions. Xe will start from 2020 onwards, and cover the range from client graphics all the way to datacenter graphics solutions.
Intel actually divides this market up, showing that Xe also covers the future integrated graphics solutions as well. If this slide is anything to go by, it would appear that Intel wants Xe to go from entry to mid-range to enthusiast and up to AI, competing with the best the competition has to offer.
Intel stated that Xe will start on Intel’s 10nm technology and that it will fall under Intel’s single stack software philosophy, such that Intel wants software developers to be able to take advantage of CPU, GPU, FPGA, and AI, all with one set of APIs. This Xe design will feed the foundation of several generations of graphics, and shows that Intel is now ready to rally around a brand name moving forward.
There was some confusion with one of the slides, as it would appear that Intel might be using the new brand name to also refer to some of it's FPGA and AI solutions. We're going to see if we can get an answer on that in due course.
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peevee - Tuesday, December 18, 2018 - link
"Normally cache misses decrease by a factor of a square root of the proportional size when the cache is increased"This is neither true in most performance-critical real cases nor can provide any estimate of actual performance increase.
mikato - Friday, December 21, 2018 - link
I'm here for the "raja inside" comments. Disappointed.peevee - Sunday, December 23, 2018 - link
"although it was pointed out that these improvements won’t help everyone, and might require new algorithms in order to use specific parts of the core."Which means it will help almost no one, as very few will optimize specifically for that core.
"We’re waiting to see what changes Intel has made on the front-end, which is where a lot of low-hanging fruit often lies for performance."
Low-hanging fruit in x86 was picked up in Pentium. Since then it is just more and more kludges which cost more energy than improve performance (normalizing for node).
peevee - Sunday, December 23, 2018 - link
"64 EUs... Each EU will support seven threads as before, which means that the entire GT2 design will essentially have 512 concurrent pipelines."Math?
And are these threads? Or ALUs?
peevee - Sunday, December 23, 2018 - link
"The 7-Zip demo was relatively straight forward, showing how the new instructions such as Vector-AES and SHA-NI in Sunny Cove can give the processor a 75% boost in performance over an equivalent Skylake based platform at iso-frequency."Huh? Have they recompiled (what compiler supports the new instructions then), or manually wrote a codepath in asm? And enabled encryption so to get any increase, so the increase is not actually for compression? Have they disabled compression too? ;)
dampf - Wednesday, January 2, 2019 - link
Really Intel? Adding AI improvements to Core architecture in 2021? Smartphone vendors were doing it last year... way too late. And 5G will take off in the end of 2019.TheJian - Wednesday, January 2, 2019 - link
I guess I'm not getting why I should be impressed by this.https://www.electronicsweekly.com/news/design/comm...
Leti already did it? They say it's IP can be used by others, so is this Intel's solution (what they're using I mean)?
AMD already does chiplets, everyone does socs (Intel failed them)...etc. 144mm^2 not that small (about an large apple soc size). Current 7nm A12 is 83mm^2 with 6.9B transistors and two big cores, 4 small. AMD already did interposer/chiplets. Memory has been stacking for a while now. Not sure what is supposed to impress me here.
"Very much like a mobile chip" ...Pretty much...Again, why so impressed?
And as OP noted, you have no idea how big the market is, nor how much they can make on them. I think they have to try to sell some before we can say that (many Intel things killed over the years), as their last mobile strategy cost them 16B+ in giveaways, and lost the fab race for a while (maybe forever, because that 16B lost should have went DIRECTLY into fabs and 10nm wouldn't be crap now), as once 7nm Intel hits, it looks like TSMC beats them anyway with 5nm (ok, tie? whatever). My point here is Intel's 7nm won't be much ahead of tsmc 5nm if at all as that is what it will compete with since tapeouts happen q2 2019 and chips 12-15 months later.
https://www.extremetech.com/computing/278742-tsmc-...
Many other articles out there like this, but has a good chart of when and how much wafers etc. But if risk production is really as they say, 5nm chips by xmas 2020. That puts Intel where with this @7nm? Unless that answer is XMAS 2020, I'm thinking behind tsmc. It looks like TSMC is aiming before xmas and they've been moving at a good clip without many glitches recently, so Intel better get busy IMHO. TSMC is 2q 2019 risk, or 2H 2019 depending on who you believe I guess. But still, Intel 7nm better hit by xmas 2020 then right?
Comments on last page: Uh, should have bought NV under $10 but couldn't take the best from gpu side because nobody could handle Jen as president :) WOW, look at that value you passed up Intel, oh, and you'd RULE mobile by now with all those tegras being on Intel's process 5+yrs ago (never mind what gpus would have done on Intel during this time) and you already had the modem solution too (NV bought one, and had to kill it, intel would have taken over everything cpu/gpu/modem/mobile).
With chromebooks, 2b mobile units not using NV gpu's etc, nobody would have stopped them at FTC since more gpus, and arguably more computing devices ship without WINTEL, Intel's gpus (even with NV in there) etc. Intel gpus wouldn't have been needed, mobile wouldn't have been lost (14nm Intel NV socs would have competed well against 20nm everyone else, same story before 14/20, Intel 22nm NV socs vs. 28nm everyone else)., fab money wouldn't have been blown on mobile etc etc. All the problem Intel has now are because they blew 16B on failing instead of BUYING NV for that or a bit more. They had a value back then ~6B or less 659mil shares at $10, I bought at 12...ROFL. They should have owned NV anywhere in there and all this crap wouldn't have happened...LOL. We'll see how this "ideas from outside" crap works out now. To be fair AMD had the same problems to some extent, firing Dirk for not liking mobile/tablet/apu, and wanting a KING first then that cheap crap later. Now they chase king cpu (not gpu yet so far) again...LOL. Yeah, I own AMD stock but still think management is dumb. Can't price anything right, always trying to be a friend or get share which means NOTHING if it doesn't come with MARGIN as a poor man. Sure the rich guy can flood a market, kill enemy sales, but only because he has wads of cash and can wait until he breaks you. Poor company needs NET INCOME for the next gen R&D and to retain people like KELLER etc.
I'm only in AMD stock for the 7nm server stuff, then out likely. Rumor/hype work well in advance of real product at amd (talking stock price here), so you don't likely have to wait for anything other then "shipping soon" or some leaked benchmarks etc. and the price will head to 40+ probably. Just run before that reality hits or brave the waves...LOL. I think AMD will make money, certainly has the server chips to do it, but management just seems to fail at pricing anything to take advantage while they can. Too worried about market, instead of MARGIN for R&D. I'd rather own the 10% that makes most of the money than the 80% that makes crap+a little midrange crap. Apple thinks the same, see their Q reports for ages etc. Own the rich so you can afford to supply the poor. It doesn't work the other way around generally speaking, especially as the little guy. You can't bleed as the poor little guy ;)
TheJian - Wednesday, January 2, 2019 - link
One more point, in case anyone brings it up, A12x 122mm^2 10B transistors. just adds two more big cores IIRC (maybe a few other small changes). Same point though.