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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Raqia - Thursday, December 13, 2018 - link
Your point is taken and Keller did say it was in its infancy, but I am interested in whether what we're seeing here will be a competitive product or will remain an interesting science experiment. There are theoretical benefits of stacking high performance dies on low leakage ones like this but also substantial challenges and deficiencies which the current iteration doesn't show that it has overcome. What we might see in benefit in terms of better overall area, lower package level fab rejection rates, and better net power characteristic could be offset by a worse concentration of heat and hence more throttling when both elements are running or more expensive packaging. Perhaps in the end, a monolithic die is a better compromise despite losing out on some metrics for mobile.nico_mach - Wednesday, December 12, 2018 - link
So the GPU is going to be called ... Ten to the Eeth power? Is that right?I reject all these Xes used in unpredictable ways. The iPhones are pronounced exar and excess. This is ecksee, and I still use oh ess ecks on my emm bee eh at home.
Jon Tseng - Wednesday, December 12, 2018 - link
>Intel actually says that the reason why this product came about is because a customer>asked for a product of about this performance but with a 2 mW standby power state.
Huh wonder who the customer for that Core/Atom hybrid is. Seems a bit overpowered for a tablet. A bit underpowered for a MacBook (or for a car). Chromebooks maybe but most are too low volume to demand a custom part (maybe the education market is taking off?). PC OEMs don't normally take such custom parts for their laptops. But the graphics loadout implies some kind of PC-type application?
Any ideas??
HStewart - Wednesday, December 12, 2018 - link
From the diagram, it appears that hybrid cpu - has single Core CPU with 4 small (Atom) CPU's - such technology is done with Samsung Processors - this would mean it still lower power - but still have primary single thread core speed.Most interesting would be how the smaller core are used in scheduling system. Most like means and enhancement in OS for proper usage.
A5 - Wednesday, December 12, 2018 - link
There aren't a ton of companies big enough to make Intel create a new product line just for them.The whole list is probably Apple/HP/Dell. Maybe Microsoft.
The_Assimilator - Wednesday, December 12, 2018 - link
Microsoft Surface, obviously. It's become a very profitable line for MS but the current models are either too battery-hungry (Core CPUs) or too slow (Atom CPUs). Fovoros will give the best of both these worlds while also being x86... priced right, a Fovoros-based Surface will essentially end any argument for iPads in a business environment, especially considering most software remains firmly single-threaded. But it remains to be seen whether (a) Intel can get the power down even further (7W is still double most smartphones) and (b) whether their big.LITTLE implementation is good enough.Raqia - Wednesday, December 12, 2018 - link
Windows on ARM will do just fine now that Visual Studio emits ARM native code. Once Chrome gets ported (and that will be soon https://www.neowin.net/news/both-chromium-and-fire... the platform should address 95% of typical daily use cases and provide substantial compatibility with legacy software / file formats. This is better value than iPads and upcoming dedicated SoCs like the 8cx should offer better performance and battery / heat characteristics than what Intel has planned for next year in the same power envelope.The_Assimilator - Thursday, December 13, 2018 - link
I think you missed the part where Windows on ARM is horribly slow and therefore shitty. As a result, Microsoft has no plans to port anything useful (e.g. Office) to ARM, which means Windows on ARM is stuck being the lowest of the low-end. And that's not a space that Surface is intended to play in; Surface is an iPad competitor, and an iPad competitor can't be slow and shitty. Business devices can't be slow and shitty, and they absolutely need to be able to run Office.I expect that either Windows on ARM will be allowed to wither and die once Fovoros ships, or it will languish in a dead zone whereby only the cheapest of the cheap devices by no-name-brand OEMs (think $100 Lenovo tablets) use ARM chips and hence need it.
So unless Qualcomm's 8cx is a game-changer in terms of performance, Fovoros should be the end of ARM on desktop, and thank fucking God for that.
Spunjji - Thursday, December 13, 2018 - link
Microsoft already have an Office code base on ARM, so I'm not sure what you're talking about there.What would worry me about an Intel BIG.little style design is that if Windows doesn't assign your performance-critical application to the correct (big) core, performance will mostly suck just as hard as if all your cores were Atom.
As such, I'd be cautious on calling a winner just yet.
gamerk2 - Thursday, December 13, 2018 - link
Agreed with this; Microsoft has been let down by Intel not having a good mobile platform. If it were up to them, they wouldn't bother with ARM, but they have to due to battery/power/heat requirements.