The Intel Lakefield Deep Dive: Everything To Know About the First x86 Hybrid CPU
by Dr. Ian Cutress on July 2, 2020 9:00 AM ESTLakefield in Terms of Laptop Size
In a traditional AMD or Intel processor designed for laptops, we experience two to eight processing cores, along with some graphics performance, and it is up to the company to build the chip with the aim of hitting the right efficiency point (15 W, or 35/45 W) to enable the best performance for a given power window. These processors also contain a lot of extra connectivity and functionality, such as a dual channel memory controller, extra PCIe lanes to support external graphics, support for USB port connectivity or an external connectivity hub, or in the case of Intel’s latest designs, support for Thunderbolt built right into the silicon without the need for an external controller. These processors typically have physical dimensions of 150 square millimeters or more, and in a notebook, when paired with the additional power delivery and controllers needed such as Wi-Fi and modems, can tend towards the board inside the system (the motherboard) totaling 15 square inches total.
One of Qualcomm’s examples from 2018
For a Qualcomm processor designed for laptops, the silicon is a paired down to the essentials commonly associated with a smartphone. This means that modem connectivity is built into the processor, and the hardware associated with power delivery and USB are all on the scale of a smartphone. This means a motherboard designed around a Qualcomm processor will be around half the size, enabling different form factors, or more battery capacity in the same size laptop chassis.
With Intel’s new Lakefield processor design, the chip is a lot smaller than previous Intel implementations. The company designed the processor from the ground up, with as much included on the CPU as to not need additional chips on the motherboard, and to fit the dimensions similar to one of Qualcomm’s processors. Above is a slide showing how Intel believes that with an LTE modem included, a Lakefield motherboard can move down to 7.7 square inches, similar to a Qualcomm design. This leaves more room for battery inside a device.
When Intel compares it against its own previous low power CPU implementations, the company quotes a 60% decrease in overall board area compared to its first generation 4.5 W processors.
It is worth noting that for power delivery, Intel placed MIMCAPs inside the Lakefield silicon, much like a smartphone processor, and as a result it can get by on the power delivery implementation with a pair of PMICs (power management ICs). The reason why there is two is because of the two silicon dies inside – they are controlled differently for power for a number of technical reasons. If each layer within an active stacked implementation requires its own PMIC, that would presumably put an upper limit on future stacked designs – I fully expect Intel to be working on some sort of solution for this for it not to be an issue, however that wasn’t implemented in time for Lakefield.
For those that are interested, Lakefield’s PMICs are under the codenames Warren Cove and Castro Cover, and were developed in 2017-2018.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
221 Comments
View All Comments
Quantumz0d - Sunday, July 5, 2020 - link
PC gaming marketcap is supposed to be at $40Bn by 2022, total gaming market is $120Bn including everything, and Consoles are built on AMD x86 technology and now DX12U and you think that is a niche ?ARM is not going to do anything just because Apple did, there are so many trials by so many companies and the best company which is known for it's ROI with R&D, Qualcomm abandoned all of it's Server ARM marketshare dreams with the death of their full custom Centriq. x86 runs blazingly fast and optimized with Linux which is what the world is powered just because ARM is good in thin and light garbage doesn't make it a superstar.
ARM is not going to get into Desktop at all, no one is going to write their programs again to suppor that HW, and no company is going to invest in DIY market before Server/DC market. Supercomputer market is not the DIY or Enterprise, look at the Top Supercomputers, Chinese Tianhe and 2 positions are with Chinese only, AMD CRAY Zen based IF supercomputer is about to come as well.
Wilco1 - Sunday, July 5, 2020 - link
The #1 supercomputer is Arm, and Arm servers beat x86 servers on performance, cost and power, so not a single "fact" in your post is correct.lmcd - Sunday, July 5, 2020 - link
That first statement is hilariously disconnected from the second. Fugaku at 3x the cost per flop of its next competitor hardly backs up your assertion.ARM servers might beat x86 servers on performance, cost, and power but it's not looking that good vs x86_64. The latter arch is commodity hardware, software, and talent hiring.
Wilco1 - Monday, July 6, 2020 - link
Just looking at the peak FLOPS in comparisons is deceiving. Fugaku is a very different design as it does not use GPU accelerators like most supercomputers. That means it is far better than the rest in terms of ease of programming and efficiency. So even if the upfront cost is higher, they expect to get far more out of it than other super computers.I'd say Arm servers are doing really well in 2020, clearly companies want a change from the x86 duopoly. Much of the talent is at companies that do Arm designs. How else do you think Arm CPUs are getting 20-30% faster per year, and mobile phones already outperform the fastest x86 desktops?
Quantumz0d - Tuesday, July 7, 2020 - link
No company wants to develop an in house IP, that R&D and ROI is not easy, Amazon did it because to chop off some costs and set up a plan for the low end AWS instances with Graviton 2, Altera is still yet to show, Centriq abandoned by Qcomm with so much of marketing done around Cloudflare and top class engineering work, the team which made 820's full custom core.AND What the fuck you are babbling on fastest x86 desktops (Like Threadripper 3990X, or 3950X, 10900K) outperformed by mobile phones ? Ooof, you are gulping down the AT's SPEC scores aren't you ?
ARM servers LMAO, like how AMD upped their DC marketshare with EPYC7742, dude stop posting absolute rubbish. ARM marketshare in data centers is in 0.5% area where IBM also resides.
Quantumz0d - Monday, July 6, 2020 - link
Tiahu is fucking Chinese Sunway Processor based Supercomputer and it's top #3 so what did they do ? jack off to Zen with Hygon or did they make all Chinese use Chinese made processors ? Stop that bullshit of Supercomputer nonsense, IBM has been there since ages and they had SMT8 with Power9 uarch which came in 2017 (Summit which is #2, it was first since 2018) what did they do ? x86 is consumer based and DC market is relying only on that. ARM DC market-share is less than fucking 2%, AMD is at 4.5%, Intel is at 95% that is 2019 Q4.I don't know why people hate x86 as if it's like their life is being threatened by them, the fact that x86 machines are able to run vast diverse rich software selection and more freedom based computing, people want ARM based proprietary dogshit more, Apple series trash wich their APIs or the Bootloader locked (much worse like chastity) or Unlocked Android phones, even with GNU GPL v2 and Qcomm's top OSS CAF the godddamned phones do not get latest updates or anything but a Core2Quad from decade ago can run a fucking Linux or Win7 / Win10 without any bullshit issue.
Wait for the SPEC A series iPhone 12 benchmarks and then you be more proud of that garbage device which cannot compute anything outside what Apple deems it.
Wilco1 - Friday, July 3, 2020 - link
It would be good to run benchmarks on the 2 variants of Galaxy Book S. One comparison I found:https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/compare/25848...
So Lakefield wins by only 21% on single-threaded (that's a bad result given it is Cortex-A76 vs IceLake at similar clocks), and is totally outclassed on multithreaded...
lmcd - Sunday, July 5, 2020 - link
Current scheduler doesn't even guarantee that's the Sunny Cove core.Wilco1 - Monday, July 6, 2020 - link
Given Tremont can't get anywhere near Cortex-A76 performance, we can be sure single-threaded result is the Sunny Cove core.PaulHoule - Friday, July 3, 2020 - link
This is an example of the "Innovator's Dilemma" scenario where it is harder to move upmarket (in terms of performance) than downmarket.Put a phone processor into a box with a fan and people will be blown away by how fast it is -- they've never seen an ARM processor cooled by a fan before.
Put a desktop processor into a thin tablet with little thermal headroom and people will be blown away by how slow it is.
So first it is a situation that Intel can't win, but second it is a disaster that this low performance (downmarket) chip is expensive to produce and has to be sold upmarket. Sure you can stick any number of dies together and "scale up" a package in a way that looks as if you scaled up the chip by reducing the feature size, but when you reduce the feature size the cost per feature goes down in the long term -- when you stick a bunch of cheap chips together you get an expensive chip.