Intel Announces Skylake-X: Bringing 18-Core HCC Silicon to Consumers for $1999
by Ian Cutress on May 30, 2017 3:03 AM ESTAnnouncement Four: AVX-512 & Favored Core
To complete the set, there are a couple of other points worth discussing. First up is that AVX-512 support coming to Skylake-X. Intel has implemented AVX-512 (or at least a variant of it) in the last generation of Xeon Phi processors, Knights Landing, but this will be the first implementation in a consumer/enterprise core.
Intel hasn’t given many details on AVX-512 yet, regarding whether there is one or two units per CPU, or if it is more granular and is per core. We expect it to be enabled on day one, although I have a suspicion there may be a BIOS flag that needs enabling in order to use it.
As with AVX and AVX2, the goal here is so provide a powerful set of hardware to solve vector calculations. The silicon that does this is dense, so sustained calculations run hot: we’ve seen processors that support AVX and AVX2 offer decreased operating frequencies when these instructions come along, and AVX-512 will be no different. Intel has not clarified at what frequency the AVX-512 instructions will run at, although if each core can support AVX-512 we suspect that the reduced frequency will only effect that core.
With the support of AVX-512, Intel is calling the Core i9-7980X ‘the first TeraFLOP CPU’. I’ve asked details as to how this figure is calculated (software, or theoretical), but it does make a milestone in processor design. We are muddying the waters a bit here though: an AVX unit does vector calculations, as does a GPU. We’re talking about parallel compute processes completed by dedicated hardware – the line between general purpose CPU and anything else is getting blurred.
Favored Core
For Broadwell-E, the last generation of Intel’s HEDT platform, we were introduced to the term ‘Favored Core’, which was given the title of Turbo Boost Max 3.0. The idea here is that each piece of silicon that comes off of the production line is different (which is then binned to match to a SKU), but within a piece of silicon the cores themselves will have different frequency and voltage characteristics. The one core that is determined to be the best is called the ‘Favored Core’, and when Intel’s Windows 10 driver and software were in place, single threaded workloads were moved to this favored core to run faster.
In theory, it was good – a step above the generic Turbo Boost 2.0 and offered an extra 100-200 MHz for single threaded applications. In practice, it was flawed: motherboard manufacturers didn’t support it, or they had it disabled in the BIOS by default. Users had to install the drivers and software as well – without the combination of all of these at work, the favored core feature didn’t work at all.
Intel is changing the feature for Skylake-X, with an upgrade and for ease-of-use. The driver and software are now part of Windows updates, so users will get them automatically (if you don’t want it, you have to disable it manually). With Skylake-X, instead of one core being the favored core, there are two cores in this family. As a result, two apps can be run at the higher frequency, or one app that needs two cores can participate.
Availability
Last but not least, let's talk about availability. Intel will likely announce availability during the keynote at Computex, which is going on at the same time as this news post goes live. The launch date should be sooner rather than later for the LCC parts, although the HCC parts are unknown. But no matter what, I think it's safe to say that by the end of this summer, we should expect a showdown over the best HEDT processor around.
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Strunf - Tuesday, May 30, 2017 - link
"even if manages to take tangible lead against a 16 core threadripper, it will not be worth the money." on this market niche money means nothing... AMD needs to have a 10%+ performance advantage to be considered cause Intel has a much better brand value, if anything the 16 core Threadripper is a desperate attempt by AMD to actually gain some traction on the HEDT.About the thermal limit, yes there's a wall but with the new Turbo the two best cores of a CPU can be clocked higher than the rest and hence give you better single thread performance when need, this is the future no doubt about it.
You guys need to realize it's not cause AMD releases a product that is better on all metrics that everyone will shift to AMD, brand value counts and in the case of CPU the motherboard matters too, sure AMD has some nice motherboards but overall the Intel motherboards seem to be better furnished albeit at a higher cost.
ddriver - Tuesday, May 30, 2017 - link
Sure, intel's high prices are justified by several things:corporate brand loyalty
amd's limited production capacity
fanboyism
But all in all, money is EVERYTHING, the whole industry cares primarily about one thing, and that's profit. There is absolutely no good reason to pay 100% more for 10% more. I mean not unless someone else does the actual paying.
Only an idiot would care about "brand value". Computers are supposed to do work, not make up for your poor self-esteem. Any intelligent person who needs performance would put his money where he'd get the most bang for the buck. Workstation grade workloads render particularly well to multithreading but also to clustering. So if you want more performance, the smart solution is to aim for the best price/performance product, and get a lot of it, rather than getting the single most expensive product.
AMD is not desperately trying anything. It's desktop line pretty much annihilated intel's existing HEDT offerings at significantly lower price points. It is intel desperately trying to not lose the HEDT market to AMD's mainstream offerings. They'd rather throw in a couple of extra cores even if it makes zero sense, just to not disillusion their fanboys.
I am not speaking of any brand loyalty point, I have like 70 active systems and they all run intel CPUs. I am however very happy and eager to diversify and replace most of those, which are aging 3770k chips with something that offers higher performance and better power/performance ratio.
Hxx - Tuesday, May 30, 2017 - link
well, first off general comments have no place in the tech industry due to the variety of use cases and products. Folks care about brand value on certain items , say motherboard brands but not so much maybe on CPUs.Second, AMD did not annihilate Intel by any stretch of the imagination. where do u guys get this info? Probably from wccftech.com . Anyway their ryzen release is solid but they need cpus with higher IPCs or higher than Intel which they currently don't have.
Third, I'm not sure what you mean by intel and desperately but there is nothing desperate about this current announcement. CPUs don't take 2 months to develop. Its not like Intel said in response to Ryzen "oh yeah? lets build a better cpu". these cpus have been fully developed and waiting retail release, maybe Ryzen pushed them to prioritize this release but these were not build as a "response to Ryzen" by any means.
ddriver - Tuesday, May 30, 2017 - link
Ryzen offered intel's E series of performance at half the cost. That's twice the value. You don't need imagination, much less to stretch it, to realize that 100% better value is tad amount to annihilation. This is over-exponated by the fact it was mainstream CPUs against premium HEDT.And YES, it is desperation, because this product was never intended for HEDT, this is not a case of intel holding a trump card just in case amd finally decides to stop sitting on its hands. The 18 core chip was intended for server parts, and its arrival is exactly on time to be directly caused by the Ryzen launch. Intel simply too a server part with some deffective or disabled cores, in order to gain TDP headroom to boos the clocks of the remaining cores higher. It is not like intel sat down and "let's design a whole new chip in response to ryzen" - that would take significantly more time, they simply took a server part, crippled it a bit, overclocked it a bit, just so they can have a HEDT product with 2 more cores, and in doing so, sacrificing the amount of money they will make on that chip just to save face, as it would have been significantly more expensive as a xeon branded product.
Had amd not launched ryzen, intel's current gen HEDT would have capped out at 12 cores. The 18 core solution is a last resort, last moment solution, and not too economically viable either. So yeah, it is desperation.
But then again, expecting someone who cannot property format a paragraph to get common sense might be pushing it...
ddriver - Tuesday, May 30, 2017 - link
Keep in mind had not intel sacrificed xeons to make that 18 core chip, its HEDT line would have been stuck at 12 cores, meaning that threadripper would have made intel look like a second-class CPU maker in that segment.So yes, it is quite literally burning money to save face for intel.
Kjella - Tuesday, May 30, 2017 - link
Burning money? Ever since Bulldozer started lagging behind Intel has been printing money like crazy, this is just a return to normal profit margins because AMD is back on the field. Intel made $10 billion profit last year, I'm sure they'll survive this horrible "loss".ddriver - Wednesday, May 31, 2017 - link
The "desperation" is not for their survival, they survived the netburst fiasco when their product was marginally inferior.The desperation is to not look like a second grade choice in the HEDT market, thus sacrificing a much more profitable die to save face.
rocky12345 - Thursday, June 1, 2017 - link
"The "desperation" is not for their survival, they survived the netburst fiasco when their product was marginally inferior."Back in Netburst days AMD was a lot better with what they had to offer. Heck AMD CPU running at 2000Mhz was able to keep up to or surpass a Pentium 4 @3.2Ghz. It only got worse when dual core Ahtlon's came about and Intel had to make the Pentium 4 D's but still running much much faster clock rate just to stay in the game. Very few people seem to remember Intel had a lot of bad years as well. Pentium 4 series all sucked Donkey Nutz nuf said.
As others have said if AMD did not release Ryzen that competes nicely with Intel's HEDT platform at half the price then AMD say's oh we have a 16/32 Threadripper as well Intel would not be releasing the 18/36 CPU right now they would have kept that CPU in the Zeon line where they make the big bucks hell that 18 core is probably a cut down 20/40 Zeon retro fitted to be a X series chip. Anyways all this means it is good for us the consumers we get more choice and hopefully at a better price also.
ddriver - Friday, June 2, 2017 - link
Don't forget that with AMD you get marginally better value. So even if the 18 core intel HEDT chip is tangibly faster than the top tier threadripper, for 2000$ AMD could get you a 32 core Epyc that will beat the 18 core in performance, and pretty much every other chip intel have at any price point.The 18 core number is also interesting as AMD's design is practically incapable of efficiently producing such a SKU, so even if intel don't get the fastest single chip, they will still be technically getting the performance crown in HEDT, albeit with a server chip they shoehorned there, and with a unique core count that AMD cannot exactly match, even if they can significantly outmatch.
Azethoth - Tuesday, May 30, 2017 - link
Dude, you are missing an opportunity to really diss Intel here. Why just compare AMD to the last gen Intel chips from many years ago when you can go back decades!Compare to the pentium. Then you can claim that AMD annihilated Intel, scraped up the ashes then decimated those, then threw them in the microwave and nuked them before getting hookers to pee on the dust and leaving it out to blow around in the sun and wind!
As it is your post is too weak to take seriously.