Examining Intel's Ice Lake Processors: Taking a Bite of the Sunny Cove Microarchitecture
by Dr. Ian Cutress on July 30, 2019 9:30 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
- Intel
- 10nm
- Microarchitecture
- Ice Lake
- Project Athena
- Sunny Cove
- Gen11
Using Power More Efficiently: Dynamic Tuning 2.0
A common thread in modern microprocessor design is being able to use the power budget available. There have been many articles devoted to how to define power budgets, thermal budgets, and what the mysterious ‘TDP’ (thermal design power) actually means in relation to power consumption. Intel broadly uses TDP and power consumption simultaneously, along with a few other values, such as power limits 1 and 2 (PL1 and PL2), which apply to sustained power draw and peak power draw respectively. Most Intel processors up until this point will allow a processor to turbo, up to a peak power draw of PL2 for a fixed time, before enforcing a PL1 sustained power draw. This is all very OEM dependent as well. However, for Ice Lake, this changes a bit.
For Ice Lake, Intel has a new feature called Dynamic Tuning 2.0, which implements a layer of machine learning on top of the standard turbo mode. The idea behind DT2.0 is that the processor can predict the type of workload that is incoming, say transcode, and adjust the power budget intelligently to give a longer turbo experience.
Technically the concepts of PL1 and PL2 don’t magically disappear under this new regime – the processor ends up going below max turbo because the algorithm predicts that the user won’t need it, and this saves up ‘power budget’ in order to enable the turbo to work for longer.
This is a topic that Intel will hopefully go into more detail. We do know that it requires collaboration at the OS level, but how these algorithms are trained would be a useful trove of information. It is unclear whether Intel will allow this feature to be enabled/disabled at the user level, for testing purposes, but it should be noted that unless it is by default ‘on’ for OEM systems, we might end up with some systems enabling it while others do not.
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PeachNCream - Tuesday, July 30, 2019 - link
Are there really that many eGPUs out there though?HStewart - Tuesday, July 30, 2019 - link
Just do a search on amazon for eGPU and you find 3 pages full of then. ASUS, Gigibyte, and Dell are examples plus many 3rd party.PeachNCream - Tuesday, July 30, 2019 - link
Not for sale. Actually in use by people.The_Assimilator - Wednesday, July 31, 2019 - link
2.Retycint - Wednesday, July 31, 2019 - link
One of the reasons that eGPU adoption rates are low is precisely because of the limitation mentioned above - huge performance drop (anywhere from 30-50% I think) compared to PCI-E connection, due to bandwidth limitations.DanNeely - Wednesday, July 31, 2019 - link
The performance issue is TB3 overhead. Running a GPU on an internal PCIe3 x4 link will come within a few percent of an x16.repoman27 - Tuesday, July 30, 2019 - link
"There is still some communication back and forth with the chipset (PCH), as the Type-C ports need to have USB modes implemented."Just to add to that, all of the high-speed signaling (Thunderbolt, DisplayPort, SuperSpeed USB) is handled by the CPU die, and the PCH only transacts in USB 2.0 and the low-speed, out-of-band management channel for Thunderbolt (LSx).
I fully understand why you (Ian) included the asterisk, because many OEMs won't bother implementing Thunderbolt 3 due to the additional expense / complexity, but to be fair to Intel, they integrated Thunderbolt as much as they possibly could. It's really not feasible to include all of the power and analog signal conditioning necessary for Thunderbolt 3 on the CPU package.
Galatian - Tuesday, July 30, 2019 - link
The numbers of the iGPU don’t really add up. They are comparing their best new GPU to last Gens UHD 420. I don't see the performance gain.at8750 - Tuesday, July 30, 2019 - link
Probably,CML-U
i7-10510U 4C 1.8GHz TB:4.9/4.8/4.3GHz
i5-10210U 4C 1.6GHz TB:4.2/4.1/3.9GHz
ICL-U
i7-1065G7 4C 1.3GHz TB:3.9/3.8/3.5GHz
i5-1034G1 4C 0.8GHz TB:3.6/3.6/3.3GHz
digitalgriffin - Tuesday, July 30, 2019 - link
Ian,You do know pure Silicon is highly toxic? I wouldn't even hang it in your house unless it was plated in a clear lacquer. It degrades when exposed to open air. And it's been shown to cause cancer. I know you wouldn't actually bite it. But be sure to wash your hands.