Broadwell to Skylake, will be similar to the transition from Prescott to Conroe

[shady28]

Yeah, i'm not sure how Intel is going to make any real headway in phones. They will need to do better and likely cheaper than the likes of Samsung and Qualcomm. While they certainly have the resources and expertise to make something better, it's not likely to be cheaper.

That said, there's another market where they can do really well in, and that's tablets. With the iPad losing market share, and more fully functional tablets like the Surface Pro 3 and soon, Surface 3 becoming more popular, Intel's timing is pretty darn good in this regard. MS and Intel need to be joined at the hip. MS needs to polish their OS to give it even more mass appeal, and Intel in turn needs to deliver a CPU with excellent performance and power characteristics. Also, tablets like the Surface Pro are expensive enough to keep the Intel share holders happy. I can certainly see "WIntel" tablets being very successful in the not too distant future.

I like the Surface 3 as it has the full Windows 8.1 on it and finally has the RAM and performance to possibly replace a laptop. But tablets may be a losing game as that market is moving to large phones - an area where Wintel has virtually no penetration.

If tablets are where Intel thinks they're going, this is likely to be another mobile fail.

http://techcrunch.com/2015/02/02/tablets-decline-canalys/

"As phablets become more popular, consumers are waiting longer to upgrade their tablets or eschewing them altogether. As a result, worldwide tablet shipments plunged 12 percent year-over-year to 67 million units in Q4 2014, which research firm Canalys says marks its first ever decline after several quarters of slowing demand."

 

[2is]

I like the Surface 3 as it has the full Windows 8.1 on it and finally has the RAM and performance to possibly replace a laptop. But tablets may be a losing game as that market is moving to large phones - an area where Wintel has virtually no penetration.

If tablets are where Intel thinks they're going, this is likely to be another mobile fail.

http://techcrunch.com/2015/02/02/tablets-decline-canalys/

"As phablets become more popular, consumers are waiting longer to upgrade their tablets or eschewing them altogether. As a result, worldwide tablet shipments plunged 12 percent year-over-year to 67 million units in Q4 2014, which research firm Canalys says marks its first ever decline after several quarters of slowing demand."

I think this is directly related to the iPad's dominance and the fact that it's nothing more than a large iPhone, which is kind of the point I've been trying to make, so larger Phones means less need for an iPad. Surface Pro and Surface have very distinct advantages over a phablet as well as full blown laptops. Since I got my iPhone 6 Plus, I use my ipad a lot less, but wouldn't necessarily affect how much I'd use a Surface tablet that can be used as a full blown laptop or even desktop replacement if you're not gaming.

 

[jdubs03]

looks like skylake-u might be quite the chip, if this is true:

http://fudzilla.com/news/notebooks/37472-skylake-15w-mobile-skus-getting-iris-graphics

gen 9 + iris in 15w. this just makes the value proposition for something like a surface pro 3 -> 4 so much better. i'm not sure how many incremental consumers will be enticed by this, but it certainly is a boost.

maybe this will mean that core m can get some more eu's too. it would certainly help.

 

[Arachnotronic]

I tried the Surface 3 at Best Buy today and I must say that it is quite a neat machine; I think a fanless, thin Surface Pro with Skylake-Y would be pretty interesting.

 

[frozentundra123456]

looks like skylake-u might be quite the chip, if this is true:

http://fudzilla.com/news/notebooks/37472-skylake-15w-mobile-skus-getting-iris-graphics

gen 9 + iris in 15w. this just makes the value proposition for something like a surface pro 3 -> 4 so much better. i'm not sure how many incremental consumers will be enticed by this, but it certainly is a boost.

maybe this will mean that core m can get some more eu's too. it would certainly help.

I say again, where are the quad mobile processors? Is intel dropping them? Seems like they are abandoning the gaming laptop mobile market if they are.

Edit: and what is with putting iris graphics in a 15 watt mobile. It is not really going to be an adequate gaming processor anyway. I suppose it could be for high res displays, but 1080p seems fine for me in a laptop.

 

[Arachnotronic]

I say again, where are the quad mobile processors? Is intel dropping them? Seems like they are abandoning the gaming laptop mobile market if they are.

Edit: and what is with putting iris graphics in a 15 watt mobile. It is not really going to be an adequate gaming processor anyway. I suppose it could be for high res displays, but 1080p seems fine for me in a laptop.

Intel has said that Broadwell-H comes in mid-2015.

 

[2is]

I say again, where are the quad mobile processors? Is intel dropping them? Seems like they are abandoning the gaming laptop mobile market if they are.

Edit: and what is with putting iris graphics in a 15 watt mobile. It is not really going to be an adequate gaming processor anyway. I suppose it could be for high res displays, but 1080p seems fine for me in a laptop.

As you said, high end displays. They're looking past 1080p since a LOT of mobile products are pushing resolutions well above 1080 these days.

 

[jdubs03]

As you said, high end displays. They're looking past 1080p since a LOT of mobile products are pushing resolutions well above 1080 these days.

Yup, 4K is around the corner. but i think it is going to be 2-3 years before we see those resolutions becoming more mainstream. the pc industry as a whole certainly seems slow in regards to pushing screen res. 1080p will be here for awhile as a base res (we're still seeing 1366x768 too unfortunately), maybe 3200x1800 will be the transition resolution toward 4K.

 

[2is]

Yup, 4K is around the corner. but i think it is going to be 2-3 years before we see those resolutions becoming more mainstream. the pc industry as a whole certainly seems slow in regards to pushing screen res. 1080p will be here for awhile as a base res (we're still seeing 1366x768 too unfortunately), maybe 3200x1800 will be the transition resolution toward 4K.

That, and I also suspect Apple with their "Retina" macbooks are a big reason why Intel is pushing their high end IGP in a low power package. There are some PC ultrabooks pushing pretty decent resolutions too, so there's certainly good reason Intel is doing this, the least of which is desktop gaming.

 

[Hulk]

The Broadwell tick is kind of like the Westmere tick in that they are both die shrinks with the 1st round of chips (Arrandale and Clarkdale for Westmere) being dual core only. In fact Westmere never had 4 core parts, on the Gulftown hexes.

 

[frozentundra123456]

Guess i an going against the trend here, but i can see the place for 4k or 1440p in a big screen tv, or maybe even a 27 or 30 inch monitor, but it just doesnt make sense to me in a phone, tablet or ultrabook. Or even in a full size laptop. It just increases the power usage and hardware demands, when it seems 1080 is more than adequate.

 

[2is]

Well it doesn't really matter what we think (though I personally love high PPI displays) >1080p laptops are here and they're selling. They need a efficient yet powerful GPU and that's what Intel is delivering.

 

[witeken]

looks like skylake-u might be quite the chip, if this is true:

http://fudzilla.com/news/notebooks/37472-skylake-15w-mobile-skus-getting-iris-graphics

gen 9 + iris in 15w. this just makes the value proposition for something like a surface pro 3 -> 4 so much better. i'm not sure how many incremental consumers will be enticed by this, but it certainly is a boost.

maybe this will mean that core m can get some more eu's too. it would certainly help.

I'm not sure if that eDRAM is going to make much of a difference in the thermally constraint 15W.

 

[mikk]

l
maybe this will mean that core m can get some more eu's too. it would certainly help.

SKL-Y has 24 EUs just like BDW-Y. Intel says Skylake has faster graphics at lower power, this should help in particular for low TDP SKUs to maintain a higher and more constant GPU turbo.

I'm not sure if that eDRAM is going to make much of a difference in the thermally constraint 15W.

It makes a big difference for HSW, so it should help.

 

[NTMBK]

I'm not sure if that eDRAM is going to make much of a difference in the thermally constraint 15W.

If you get a cache hit in the eDRAM, you'll save the power consumption required of going off-package to the main memory.

 

[Nothingness]

If you get a cache hit in the eDRAM, you'll save the power consumption required of going off-package to the main memory.

Given that this hit will reduce latency, it also means clock gating due to the CPU waiting will be less effective, so mean power consumption might go up Of course energy will go down.

 

[Arachnotronic]

Given that this hit will reduce latency, it also means clock gating due to the CPU waiting will be less effective, so mean power consumption might go up Of course energy will go down.

The "HUGS" principle

 

[danjw]

If Intel is trying to confuse their competition, I expect they are doing very well at that. Unfortunately, they are also sending signals that are confusing to both consumers and stockholders. Which in the long run may well hurt them.

 

[SAAA]

A couple of Skylake scores from Geekbench again, clockspeeds are low but some multithread scores are insane. I leave the math to you, I'm pretty sure they have no turbo because the single scores are right for that frequency.

http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench3/2319945

http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench3/2321402

 

[coercitiv]

A couple of Skylake scores from Geekbench again, clockspeeds are low but some multithread scores are insane. I leave the math to you, I'm pretty sure they have no turbo because the single scores are right for that frequency.

http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench3/2319945

http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench3/2321402

Multithread scores are insane? The 2c/4T bench is 929/1819 @ 900Mhz while Haswell ULT does 1290/2422 @ 1.3Ghz.

Plus, take a look at isolated benchmark scores, results are all over the place.

 

[Nothingness]

A couple of Skylake scores from Geekbench again, clockspeeds are low but some multithread scores are insane.

I see nothing particular on the MT scores, scaling looks similar to 4770K for instance (see this for instance).

OTOH the lack of MT speedup on the RAM test for the Inventec score makes me wonder if the system used poor chips and/or a single DIMM.

 

[mikk]

http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench3/2344032
http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench3/2344229


Two more Sylake ES. I think this is Skylake-U.

 

[IntelUser2000]

I'm not sure if that eDRAM is going to make much of a difference in the thermally constraint 15W.

Don't confuse Iris with Iris Pro. The former is what's going into 15W Skylake. Iris Pro OTOH is for 28W devices.

I am not amazed at all. Look at it now.

15W GT2 HD 5500
15W GT3 HD 6000 - 10-20% over HD 5500
28W GT3 Iris 6100 - 20% over HD 6000

Considering that Iris parts are priced out of this world, its not impressive. Even if priced similar, its 30-40% better than base GT2, hardly an impressive number. The 28nm Maxwell parts will beat the crap out of it in perf/watt and Tegra X1 will threaten the low end SKL GPU.