Intel's Haswell Architecture Analyzed: Building a New PC and a New Intel
by Anand Lal Shimpi on October 5, 2012 2:45 AM ESTPlatform Retargeting
Since the introduction of Conroe/Merom back in 2006 Intel has been prioritizing notebooks for the majority of its processor designs. The TDP target for these architectures was set around 35 - 45W. Higher and lower TDPs were hit by binning and scaling voltage. The rule of thumb is a single architecture can efficiently cover an order of magnitude of TDPs. In the case of these architectures we saw them scale all the way up to 130W and all the way down to 17W.
In the middle of 2011 Intel announced its Ultrabook initiative, and at the same time mentioned that Haswell would shift Intel's notebook design target from 35 - 45W down to 10 - 20W.
At the time I didn't think too much about the new design target, but everything makes a lot more sense now. This isn't a "simple" architectural shift, it's a complete rethinking of how Intel approaches platform design. More importantly than Haswell's 10 - 20W design point, is the new expanded SoC design target. I'll get to the second part shortly.
Platform Power
There will be four client focused categories of Haswell, and I can only talk about three of them now. There are the standard voltage desktop parts, the mobile parts and the ultra-mobile parts: Haswell, Haswell M and Haswell U. There's a fourth category of Haswell that may happen but a lot is still up in the air on that line.
Of the three that Intel is talking about now, the first two (Haswell/Haswell M) don't do anything revolutionary on the platform power side. Intel is promising around a 20% reduction in platform power compared to Sandy Bridge, but not the order of magnitude improvement it promised at IDF. These platforms are still two-chip solutions with the SoC and a secondary IO chip similar to what we have today with Ivy Bridge + PCH.
It's the Haswell U/ULT parts that brings about the dramatic change. These will be a single chip solution, with part of the voltage regulation typically found on motherboards moved onto the chip's package instead. There will still be some VR components on the motherboard as far as I can tell, it's the specifics that are lacking at this point (which seems to be much of the theme of this year's IDF).
Seven years ago Intel first demonstrated working silicon with an on-chip North Bridge (now commonplace) and on-package CMOS voltage regulation:
The benefits were two-fold: 1) Intel could manage fine grained voltage regulation with very fast transition times and 2) a tangible reduction in board component count.
2005 - A prototype motherboard using the technology. Note the lack of voltage regulators on the motherboard and the missing GMCH (North Bridge) chip.
The second benefit is very easy to understand from a mobile perspective. Fewer components on a motherboard means smaller form factors and/or more room for other things (e.g. larger battery volume via a reduction in PCB size).
The first benefit made a lot of sense at the time when Intel introduced it, but it makes even more sense when you consider the most dramatic change to Haswell: support for S0ix active idle.
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rundll - Friday, October 5, 2012 - link
Four cores and 95 W tdp.What is this?
meloz - Friday, October 5, 2012 - link
Yes this caught my eye and I would like an answer, too.Maybe it is one SKU with GT3 for desktop? Or maybe it is a 6 core part?
Or maybe.....it is the mother of all overclocking processors. Muhahahahah!
Kevin G - Friday, October 5, 2012 - link
I suspect that 95W is the rated socket limit. This is similar to how Intel advertises Ivy Bridge at 77 W on the desktop but tells motherboard manufacturers to build around the higher 95 W figure.What is odd is that Haswell will move some of the VRM circuitry on the package which should restrict just how far off that 95W figure motherboards can deviate.
meloz - Friday, October 5, 2012 - link
What a great article, Anand!Felt so good to read a 'proper' Anandtech article after so long, instead of the usual Apple worship and cheap fillers.
Haswell is looking very good. Would make an ideal upgrade for Sandy Bridge users. AMD is done, but thankfully Intel sees some threat from ARM so that will keep them innovating.
I hope Intel make a sensible choice with Haswell SKUs and get away from their artifical crippling and segmentation tendencies. That's about the only thing that can ruin Haswell.
Wolfpup - Friday, October 5, 2012 - link
Once again they bump up the number of transistors being used on their worthless video-and this time they even lower CPU performance (L3 cache) to appease their worthless video.Interesting article, but I guess I misunderstood previous articles...I thought Conroe through Ivy Bridge had 4 integer execution units per core? (As does Piledriver?)
haukionkannel - Friday, October 5, 2012 - link
Good article and information that you need win 8 to fully utilize Haswell was new information to me. It will be interesting to see how much better Haswell will be with win 8 compared to win 7. Seems to be same kind of dilemma as with AMD Bulldoser/piledriver where there seems to be some kind of better performance with new OS, but how much will reamain to be seen.Belard - Friday, October 5, 2012 - link
Apple owns various CPU tech and design companies such as P.A. Semi. They can build their own CPUs (not x86 of course)...Apple will do what they can to take out the middleman.
jwcalla - Friday, October 5, 2012 - link
Apple doesn't have any fabs though and if Samsung isn't willing to re-sign another contract, they're going to be in a bit of a bind. In other words, it won't be cheap. And even if Samsung does re-up, you can be sure that it'll come with an additional $1.05b price tag to offset any "losses" in their mobile division.I felt the first page overestimated Apple's influence quite a bit. They have ~5% desktop marketshare and 0% in the server space. Not to trivialize any loss in CPU sales, but Intel's primary headwinds don't involve a possible Apple switch to ARM.
Kevin G - Friday, October 5, 2012 - link
Apple's influence comes from the mobile market which is beginning to dwarf the PC market (and is larger than the server market in terms of volume). Apple is the largest tablet maker and a major smart phone manufacturer. There hardware is backed by one of the largest digital media markets. To do this Apple is the worlds largest consumer of flash memory whom orders are large enough to directly affect NAND pricing.With the rest of the industry going ultra mobile, they'll have to compete with Apple who is already entrenched. Sure the PC will survive but mainly for legacy work and applications. Their isn't enough of a PC market in the future to be viable long term with so many players.
jwcalla - Friday, October 5, 2012 - link
While all this is true, the first page seems to indicate that Intel is really pushing the low power envelop partly because of rumors that Apple will move away from Intel chips in their laptop / ultrabook products.While I'm sure Intel is happy to be in MBAs, etc., losing that business isn't going to be as big a deal as the other pressures facing the PC market (as you mention).
Now if WinRT on ultrabooks / laptops began to take off... that would be a huge problem for Intel.