Intel's Ivy Bridge Architecture Exposed
by Anand Lal Shimpi on September 17, 2011 2:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
- Intel
- Ivy Bridge
- IDF 2011
- Trade Shows
Final Words
Ivy Bridge will bring about higher clock speeds thanks to its 22nm process, however the gains will likely be minimal at best. Intel hasn't been too keen on pursuing clock speed for quite some time now. Clock for clock performance will go up by a small amount over Sandy Bridge (4 - 6%), combine that with slightly higher clock speeds and we may see CPU performance gains of around 10% at the same price point with Ivy Bridge. The bigger news will be around power consumption and graphics performance.
Ivy Bridge will be Intel's flagship 22nm CPU for some time. The chip was originally due out at the end of this year but was likely subject to delays due to issues with the fab process and the chip itself. The move to 22nm is significant leap. Not only are these new transistors aggressively small but the introduction of Intel's tri-gate technology is a major departure from previous designs. Should the fab engineers at Intel do their job well, Ivy Bridge could deliver much better power characteristics than Sandy Bridge. As we've already seen, introducing a 35W quad-core part could enable Apple (and other OEMs) to ship a quad-core IVB in a 13-inch system.
Ivy Bridge's GPU performance is particularly intriguing. With a 33% increase in execution hardware and a near doubling of performance per EU, it's clear that Intel is finally taking GPU performance seriously. If Intel can hit its clock and performance targets, Ivy Bridge could deliver GPU performance on-par with AMD's Llano. By the time Ivy Bridge arrives however, AMD will have already taken another step forward with Trinity. The question is who will address their performance issues quicker? Will AMD improve x86 performance faster than Intel can improve GPU performance? Does it even matter if both companies end up at the same point down the road? Short of 3D gaming workloads, I believe that x86 CPU performance is what sells CPUs today. Intel's embracing of OpenCL however and AMD's efforts in that space imply things are finally changing in that regard.
Sandy Bridge brought about a significant increase in CPU performance, but Ivy seems almost entirely dedicated to addressing Intel's aspirations in graphics. With two architectures in a row focused on improving GPU performance, I do wonder if we might see this trend continue with Haswell. Intel implied that upward scalability was a key goal of the Ivy Bridge GPU design, perhaps we will see that happen in 2013.
Ivy Bridge can do very well in notebooks. A more efficient chip built using lower power transistors should positively impact battery life and thermal output. Desktop users who already upgraded to Sandy Bridge may not feel the pressure to upgrade, but having better graphics shipping on all new systems can only be good for the industry.
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JonnyDough - Monday, September 19, 2011 - link
4-5 year old GPU? Heh, bud...most hardware takes years to develop. And the HD3000 series may be a bit dated but it makes even the XBox 360 look weak in comparison. Hardly dismal.moozoo - Saturday, September 17, 2011 - link
Does its GPU support double precision under OpenCL? i.e. cl_khr_fp64Does Trinity?
Ryan Smith - Saturday, September 17, 2011 - link
We don't have solid details on either one, but don't count on it. The reasons we don't see full FP64 support on non-halo GPUs are still in play for CPUs.Galcobar - Saturday, September 17, 2011 - link
Perhaps I'm missing something in the acronyms, but the table and text seems to disagree on the availability of SSD caching.The text states "All of the 7-series consumer chipsets will support Intel's Rapid Storage Technology (RST, aka SSD caching)."
The table, however, puts No under the Z75 column for Intel SRT (SSD caching).
As I understand things, you need RST (software) to support SRT (bound to the motherboard), but without SRT you don't get SSD caching.
Anand Lal Shimpi - Saturday, September 17, 2011 - link
Fixed :) SRT is only on the Z77/H77, not the Z75.Take care,
Anand
mlkmade - Saturday, September 17, 2011 - link
I know its really early to be talking about this cause ivy won't be out for awhile..but what about what amounts to be "ivyb-e" ? I'm sure details are very scarce...but will it follow the desktop path (both s1155) and be socket compatible? in this case s2011? if ivyb-e is socket compatible with sb-e...that'd be great..but by then all the chipset problems would be fleshed out huh..buy a new mono anywayAnand Lal Shimpi - Saturday, September 17, 2011 - link
I would hope so, but as of now there is no IVB-E on the roadmaps so anything I'd say here would be uninformed and speculative at this point :-/Take care,
Anand
ltcommanderdata - Saturday, September 17, 2011 - link
Does Ivy Bridge finally allow the IGP and QuickSync engine to be available even with a discrete GPU plugged in for both mobile and desktop without resorting to specific chipsets (ie. limited to the high-end chipset) or third-party software (relying on motherboard makers and OEMs to deal with Lucid)? WIth the IGP being OpenCL and DirectCompute capable, even if you have the latest Quad SLI/Crossfire setup it would be useful to have the IGP help out in GPGPU tasks.And it's interesting that with AMD introducing a beefier form of SMT with two full integer cores, Intel decided not to similarly increase hardware resource duplication to expand Hyperthreading. Instead Intel is focusing on improving single threaded performance by making sure a single thread can use all the resources if Hyperthreading is not needed. Seeing most software isn't making use of 8 simultaneous threads, focusing on making 4 threads (1 per core) work as fast as possible does make sense.
Meegulthwarp - Saturday, September 17, 2011 - link
"As we've already seen, introducing a 35W quad-core part could enable Apple to ship a quad-core IVB in a 13-inch MacBook Pro." Here is to hoping that someone other than apple will also ship a decent 13-inch with a quad.Other than that great insight, I really hope the GPU on IVB will be half way useable. I think we've hit a point where CPU performance is more than adequate for 95% of consumers. Now just need to up the GPU performance and get power down so we can use our laptops on battery all day. I'm more than happy with my 2 year old C2D CPU performance but want battery life, hugely tempted with AMD's A6-3400M. But with Bulldozer looming I think I may hold back for 6 months.
Anand Lal Shimpi - Saturday, September 17, 2011 - link
I hope so too, I simply used Apple as an example because it has migrated to quad-core in every member of its MBP family with the exception of the 13-inch. I've updated the statement to be a bit more broad :)Take care,
Anand