Intel's Haswell Architecture Analyzed: Building a New PC and a New Intel
by Anand Lal Shimpi on October 5, 2012 2:45 AM ESTPrioritizing ILP
Intel has held the single threaded performance crown for years now, but the why is really quite easy to understand: it has prioritized extracting instruction level parallelism with every generation. Couple that with the fact that every two years we see a "new" microprocessor architecture from Intel and there's a recipe for some good old evolutionary gains. The table below shows the increase in size of some major data structures inside Intel's architectures for every tock since Conroe:
| Intel Core Architecture Buffer Sizes | ||||||
| Conroe | Nehalem | Sandy Bridge | Haswell | |||
| Out-of-order Window | 96 | 128 | 168 | 192 | ||
| In-flight Loads | 32 | 48 | 64 | 72 | ||
| In-flight Stores | 20 | 32 | 36 | 42 | ||
| Scheduler Entries | 32 | 36 | 54 | 60 | ||
| Integer Register File | N/A | N/A | 160 | 168 | ||
| FP Register File | N/A | N/A | 144 | 168 | ||
| Allocation Queue | ? | 28/thread | 28/thread | 56 | ||
Increasing the OoO window allows the execution units to extract more parallelism and thus improve single threaded performance. Each generation Intel is simply dedicating additional transistors to increasing these structures and thus better feeding the beast.
This isn't rocket science, but it is enabled by Intel's clockwork fab execution. Designers can count on another 30% die area to work with every 2 years, so every 2 years they increase the size of these structures without worrying about ballooning the die. The beauty of evolutionary improvements like this is that when viewed over the long term they look downright revolutionary. Comparing Haswell to Conroe, the OoO scheduling window has grown by a factor of 2x, despite generation to generation gains of only 14 - 33%.
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Peanutsrevenge - Friday, October 5, 2012 - link
What the hell are you guys bitching about?Of course the iPhone articles are going to be longer and more numerous than GS3 articles.
iPhone releases come with new iOS releases and have their own eco-system.
Android phone releases use a common OS across them and therefore much of what's in one article doesn't need repeating in another.
Anand liking Apple is not our problem, I can see why people like them (not so much Anand) and that's fine, personally I dislike them (hate was originally typed, but was edited due to being incorrect), but still respect them and respect people who purchase their products (and pay for their litigation).
An entire page of comments talking about how Anand isn't allowed to like or talk about Apple products because you guys don't like is ridiculous, they're a PC company and should exist on a PC website.
Grow up.
Kepe - Friday, October 5, 2012 - link
Sure, but I'm talking about dedicating entire, long articles to such things as the iPhone display or why it doesn't have a certain feature and so on. The SGS III has a very interesting display, too. Still it didn't get nearly as much attention. Of course Anand is allowed to talk about Apple products. What I want, though, is Anand(tech) to be as thorough in reviewing other products, too, or then stop making those huge articles only about Apple products. Because that is biased.In the Macbook Pro Retina article Anand talked about the cooling system and the fan blades for one page. When I read any other laptop review on Anandtech, cooling is briefly described in a sentence or two.
Dedicating so much attention to just one company's products makes it look like Anandtech is biased. And that is not good.
Magik_Breezy - Sunday, October 14, 2012 - link
Hopefully because of these comments they'll finally see what we want, not some Apple crap. Good engineering stupid managementSpunjji - Thursday, October 18, 2012 - link
Nailed it.vFunct - Saturday, October 6, 2012 - link
Android products would get more coverage if they bothered to do any engineering on them. Since they don't push the technology the way Apple does, they don't need a more in-depth review.StevoLincolnite - Saturday, October 6, 2012 - link
You're kidding right? Hardware wise Apple has always been behind the curve compared to the competition in every facet of it's product line-ups or very quickly beaten.lmcd - Saturday, October 6, 2012 - link
Umm, I would disagree there. Apple has always been ahead of the curve in GPUs and this is the FIRST TIME SINCE BEFORE THE A-SERIES that Apple has had a GPU without an overwhelming lead on the competition for more than half a year.*While GPU selection isn't always huge, it's one of the biggest points of differentiation in mobile chips, along with power use.
*excluding the A4 if you count from when it was first in a phone as opposed to in a tablet.
Magik_Breezy - Sunday, October 14, 2012 - link
The last time I played a game on my phone was about 8 months ago and I'm 15! To say that Apple pushes their hardware is naive as it gets.The Galaxy S III was the best purchase Ive made, even my mum doesn't like my iPhone 4.
vFunct - Sunday, October 7, 2012 - link
Yes, Apple products are always ahead of compromised Android products.Android devices are badly engineered, like incorporating LTE when the battery can't handle it, for example. Apple doesn't compromise on their design.
Kepe - Monday, October 8, 2012 - link
How much does Apple pay you for a comment praising them?