Those 8 thread CPU's sell well on the basis of the performance of the 4 cores in those CPU's.
Those 8 thread CPU's sell well on the basis of the performance of the 4 cores in those CPU's.Yes, Intel 8 thread mainstream CPUs sell pretty well.
Simply put its not a matter of the market needing or demanding it, its a matter of competition. Nobody 'needed' a quad when the first quads were launched either but they were launched because of competition.
How are those 8 core AMD CPUs selling? Where's all the demand for those?
Those 8 thread CPU's sell well on the basis of the performance of the 4 cores in those CPU's.
Then why do people buy Intel 4C/8T CPUs and not just 4C/4T CPUs? The former is about $100 more expensive, so that is just wasted money according to you.
Those who do buy the 4C8T models, almost certainly do so for at least 1 of the below reasons.
1. They like the notion of having the best offering within a certain class
2. Have a variety of workloads that includes highly threaded work, but don't want to sacrifice performance on lowly threaded work.
3. Not everyone is price conscious, so provided the extra cost isn't totally out of whack, they will go for the higher end product.
Since Intel sells the 4x Core + GT3e Broadwell at $250 and get a profit, then they could sell a 6x or 8x core Broadwell (no iGPU, same die size) at the same price.
Ohh, it would even be cheaper to design as well, no R&D for the iGPU, plain copy-paste 8 CPU cores in to a single die.
But Intel would need to produce a whole new set of masks, which is a very expensive process.
They are not selling because they have worse ST performance than Intel 4 core CPUs, and you know that.
When we get 8 core Zen things will be different, assuming it delivers as promised so we get decent ST performance too from AMD.
Besides, interesting that you consider the AMD FX CPUs to be true 8 cores now. I guess you change standpoint on that depending on what suits your argument at the moment.
But Intel would need to produce a whole new set of masks, which is a very expensive process.
Do you have any proof the 8 core FX chips sell better with better ST performance?
It's impossible to provide proof of that, since there is no such CPU on the market, or any comparable either.
But are you really saying that the relatively poor ST performance of AMD's FX CPUs is not the reason they aren't selling? If so, what do you suggest the reason is that they are not selling as well?
I doubt intel would be affected by the cost of a few <dozen> masks
No, I never said that poor ST performance is the reason FX CPUs aren't selling.
I'm not going to comment any further about FX sales as this is a Broadwell thread. Feel free to start a thread about FX sales and I'll post there.
Intel's 8 core offering is clocked at 3Ghz vs the 4Ghz of the i7-4790K, despite the 8 core having 59% more TDP to play with.All those reasons can be applied to 8C CPUs too. So they'd probably also sell well if provided in the mainstream desktop lineup.
FTFY. Now try out your Google-Fu and see how much a 14nm mask set costs.
Intel's 8 core offering is clocked at 3Ghz vs the 4Ghz of the i7-4790K, despite the 8 core having 59% more TDP to play with.
Why would such a compromised desktop product sell well?
Having said this I do agree that the HEDT CPUs have higher TDP than expected. 130 W TDP for 6 cores and no iGPU is quite high, when the corresponding 4 core + iGPU CPU is at 84 W TDP. I'm not sure why the Intel HEDT TDP is so high though. I have a hard time seeing how the increased core count alone should explain it.
Ohh, it would even be cheaper to design as well, no R&D for the iGPU, plain copy-paste 8 CPU cores in to a single die.
Its one mask. And it has the potential to sell a lot as well on the high end market as providing a very good step up incentive (ie people will be more likely to spring for a more expensive chip).
How much do you think 14nm intel masks are going to cost? (I want your number).
http://www.zdnet.com/article/chipmakers-face-big-challenges-at-10nm-and-beyond/n a separate talk, Sehat Sutardja, the CEO of Marvell, said that because of the escalating costs of R&D and lithography (mask sets), beyond 28nm a chip design would need to reach very high volume (25 million units or more) just to keep costs flat.
http://semiengineering.com/finfet-rollout-slower-than-expected/the IC design cost for a mid-range 14nm SoC is about $80 million. Add an extra 60% (to that cost) if embedded software development and mask costs are included, Gartners Wang said. A high-end SoC can be double this amount, and a low-end SoC with re-used IP can be half of the amount.
FDSOI FinFET on bulk FinFET on SOI
Mask layers 44 46 43
Multi patterning masks 8 13 11
Total masks 52 59 54
Substrate cost High Low Highhttp://chipdesignmag.com/sld/blog/tag/28nm/The huge investment needed to be leading edge (an estimated at $110 million to $140 million to set up a 28nm photomask shop, or $350 million to $400 million for a new 10nm mask production site) means that many fall by the wayside. LaPedus reports that there are less than a dozen leading-edge mask shops today.
Do you see Broadwell C selling in massive quantities?
The 6 core Haswell-E is 3.5 GHz though, the same frequency as the initial 4 core variants were (e.g. 4770K). The 4790K at 4 GHz is from a later generation (Haswell Refresh), with specially binned units.
Intel could probably make similar binned higher clock variants of Haswell-E too if they wanted. They could likely also release higher clocked binned 8 core variant if they wanted to. Also, all this is on 22 nm and we're on 14 nm now, where higher density should allow for higher core count too.
Having said this I do agree that the HEDT CPUs have higher TDP than expected. 130 W TDP for 6 cores and no iGPU is quite high, when the corresponding 4 core + iGPU CPU is at 84 W TDP. I'm not sure why the Intel HEDT TDP is so high though. I have a hard time seeing how the increased core count alone should explain it.
No, because it hasn't hit the market yet and is only available in the following prebuilt desktops
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883227616
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883227618