The Intel Atom Thread

[krumme]

I have a atom bt 4 c 2 in one 10" with ssd used as spotify server.
I mean as productivity device the days for such performance is over. When bobcat e350 arived 6 years ago it was kind of acceptable. At that time phones was like single core arm a8. Vs how fast a mobile phone is today its just to darn slow for serious work.

I have a bt nas server and like the spotify server its fine for that kind of niche purposes.

If a zen core is 6mm2 incl l2 on 14nm as Dresdenboy estimates and as amd for good reason then is leaving small core the days for Atom is comming to an end. At 7nm an zen+ will the be perhaps like 4mm2 and then derivatives be it in consoles whatever will take the place of atom.

Right now arm a73 will be flooding the market and with its 2 wide slim and extremely small core be very attractive eg for the nas market. A quad a73 is simply a fast processor here. In 3 years its a 8c variant.

Atom is simply stuck in a very very bad place. Worse than when it was to the tune of 4b loss a year. Can it be anymore difficult?
4 years and its 100% game over. One can understand Intels decisions.

 

[wzumada]

Where can you buy an Apollo Lake board in the US? I see an Asrock J4205 on sale at Amazon and Newegg for ~$120... but it has a realtek nic!

Anyone spotted J4205 elsewhere?

 

[dark zero]

Didn't Intel quit the tablet market? Wasn't Apollo Lake meant for low-end laptops? Interesting, but prolly low volume, it isn't like W10 has huge tablet share.

And they screwed up the low Core tier with that... and considering that ARM A73 is about to come, has Windows emulation with similar performance, Intel is literally doing a harakiri on that segment.

 

[ninaholic37]

Where can you buy an Apollo Lake board in the US? I see an Asrock J4205 on sale at Amazon and Newegg for ~$120... but it has a realtek nic!

Anyone spotted J4205 elsewhere?

It will be nice when Apollo Lake laptops come to North America. I read that some were ETA December 2016 but haven't see any here yet.

edit: Found two of them now on Best Buy
Lenovo Flex 4 - 11.6" - Celeron N3350
Acer Aspire ES - 17.3" - Pentium N4200

 

[Sweepr]

NotebookCheck reviewed one of the entry level notebooks with Pentium N4200:

http://www.notebookcheck.com/Test-Acer-Aspire-ES1-533-P7WA-Laptop.188005.0.html

Far from the best implementation of this chip, but still pretty nice CPU ST and iGPU performance boost from Braswell here.

 

[Sweepr]

Welcome Denverton (Avoton's successor)! Well, sort of. At least one model is out.

https://www.servethehome.com/intel-denverton-socs-somewhat
https://ark.intel.com/products/codename/63508/Denverton#@Server

 

[nvgpu]

Waiting for the 8 cores & possibly 16 cores Denverton SKUs, should be a decent improvement over Avoton.
CPU core is Goldmont, significant improvement over Silvermont in Avoton.

 

[nvgpu]

http://nucblog.net/2017/01/apollo-lake-nuc-nuc6cayh-review/

Apollo Lake NUC review.

 

[Sweepr]

Nice improvement from Braswell to Apollo Lake:

Ps: You'll definitely want dual modules with this NUC:

 

[Sweepr]

Apollo Lake slowly replacing Braswell inside Cloudbooks & Chromebooks

Acer Chromebook Spin 11 with a convertible tablet design and an Asus Chromebook C213 convertible will both be available in late spring, and both will support stylus input.

...Acer will offer models with Intel Celeron N3350 dual-core or Celeron N3450 quad-core processors and between 4GB and 8GB of RAM and 32GB to 64GB of eMMC flash storage. There are two USB 3.1 Type-C ports, 802.11ac WiFi, Bluetooth 4.2, and two USB Type-A 3.0 ports along with a microSD card slot.

https://liliputing.com/2017/01/goog...s-toting-chromebooks-education-acer-asus.html

The new HP ProBook x360 11 G1 Education Edition is a convertible notebook with a 360 degree hinge, a touchscreen display, and a starting price of $289.

It has an 11.6 inch, 1366 x 768 pixel display, pen support, Celeron N3350 and Pentium N4200 processor options, support for up to 8GB of RAM, up to 64GB of eMMC or up to 256GB of M.2 SSD storage, a microSD card slot, two USB 3.1 ports, a USB Type-C port, HDMI 14b, and a 41 Wh battery.

https://liliputing.com/2017/01/acer-hp-lenovo-unveil-low-cost-windows-laptops-education-189.html

 

[Sweepr]

Intel® Atom™ C3000 (Denverton) 2-16 cores, 8.5W - 31W
source: https://www.supermicro.com/manuals/brochure/brochure_Embedded.pdf

Interesting. Considering Avoton was/is up to 8C/8T Silvermont cores @ 20W, Denverton delivers twice the number of cores and improved IPC at up to 31W.

 

[nvgpu]

https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/intel-gfx/2017-February/118609.html

Geminilake has a native HDMI 2.0 controller, which is capable of
driving clocks upto 594Mhz. This patch updates the max tmds clock
limit for the same.

Gemini Lake finally has native HDMI 2.0 support, which should have been in Apollo Lake in the first place.

 

[Sweepr]

INTEL ATOM C3000 DENVERTON – FIRST BENCHMARKS AND WHAT WE CAN EXPECT WHEN IT IS FINALLY “LAUNCHED”

• Cores counts will scale from 2 cores to 16 cores
• No Hyper-Threading
• 14nm (confirmed via ARK)
• Intel TXT, improved AES-NI, QuickAssist Technology option on some SKUs
• Intel VT-x and VT-d for virtualization
• DDR4 and DDR3L support (expect most systems to be DDR4) – expect ~50% more RAM bandwidth
• Registered DDR4 DIMM support – 16GB modules will be readily available
• Dual channel RAM configuration with up to 2 DIMMs per channel for >2 core parts
• Maximum RAM of 64GB for dual core parts and 128GB for >2 core parts (confirmed for C3338 via ARK)
• Significantly improved IPC compared to the Avonton/ Rangeley cores. We expect a 70% or so raw performance improvement per core
• Lower IPC than Broadwell-DE and no L3 cache
• We expect to see 2MB L2 cache per core

www.servethehome.com/intel-atom-c3000-denverton-first-benchmarks-can-expect-finally-launched/

 

[Sweepr]

Denverton @ SiSoftware!

Atom(TM) CPU C3955 @ 2.10GHz (16C 2.1GHz, 8x 2MB L2): 229.47Mpix/s

http://ranker.sisoftware.net/show_r...d5e3d4e5d1e9dafc8eb383a5c0a598a88efdc0f8&l=en

 

[Arachnotronic]

Thanks for the news!

SiSoftware Sandra 22.20 - Processor Multi-Media - Windows x64 10.0.6

• Intel Atom(TM) CPU C3955 @ 2.10GHz (16C 2.1GHz, 8x 2MB L2 cache, Goldmont - Denverton 31W TDP): 229.47Mpix/s
source: ranker.sisoftware.net

for comparation:

• AMD FX(tm)-8350 Eight-Core Processor (4M 8T 4.84GHz, 2.63GHz IMC, 4x 2MB L2 cache, 8MB L3 cache, Steamroller 125W TDP): 223.16Mpix/s
source: ranker.sisoftware.net

That's amazing performance/watt from little Denverton.

 

[nvgpu]

https://www.servethehome.com/new-official-intel-atom-c3000-denverton-details/

Intel Atom C3000 Key Features

Thermal design points down to 8.5 watts to enable maximum energy efficiency.
Enhanced performance from 2 to 16 cores and frequencies from 1.5 Ghz to 2.2 Ghz.
Built-in hardware virtualization to enable dynamic provisioning of services as communication service providers extend network functions virtualization to the network edge. Now including Intel VT-d.
Intel x86 64-bit software support for scalable performance and broad application compatibility.
Integrated Intel QuickAssist technology with up to 20 Gbps of compression/encryption throughput.
4 x 10 GbE integrated Intel Ethernet to enable high-speed connectivity to the network.
Error-correcting code (ECC) memory for data integrity and system reliability through automatic data correction.
Flexible I/O lanes providing up to 16 SATA 3.0, 16 PCIE3, and 4 USB 3.0.
Extended temperature range and long-life support for dense network, storage, industrial IoT and autonomous driving environments.
DPDK (Data Plane Development Kit) helps to develop efficient applications for networking workloads.
SPDK (Storage Performance Development Kit) helps to develop efficient applications for storage workloads.

 

[Nothingness]

Intel Atom C3338 Benchmarks – Why Denverton is so Sweet
source: https://www.servethehome.com/intel-atom-c3338-benchmarks-why-denverton-is-so-sweet/

Still running multithreaded Dhrystone I see. Funny... Well no in fact that's not funny at all coming from a site that does home serving benchmarks.

That being said, Denverton looks good but we've known that for months. What is nice to see is that how much this proves previous Atom generations were just crap.

 

[raghu78]

The problem for Denverton is its too little too late against the ARM competition. Intel has basically lost the mobile war to ARM. For the PC desktop, notebook and server market AMD is back with a vengeance. AMD has a single core which will run all of AMD's products going forward from ultra low power notebooks to high end desktops and servers. The kind of disruptive pricing we are seeing from Zen in the enthusiast desktop is likely to extend to servers and notebooks. imo Intel needs to split their core development into two. Their client core could combine the best of Atom and their current big core - power efficiency and very good performance without the unnecessary baggage of AVX-512. Their server core could go for wider AVX units as thats Intel's strategy for HPC against NVIDIA / AMD.

 

[IntelUser2000]

The problem for Denverton is its too little too late against the ARM competition. Intel has basically lost the mobile war to ARM.

Really?

I know you are smarter than this. Denverton is a server product. Actually my memory tells me the first Atom server product, the Centerton did quite fantastic against ARM competition.

Here's real mobile Atom news: http://www.spreadtrum.com/en/show_news.html?id=fe766282-e9cc-4ffd-b211-e3d19675d3f7

8 core Airmont. The graphics are bit anemic compared to the CPU but its 8 core Atom, and an integrated LTE modem.

Now I know what Intel's problem was in mobile. Segmentation. Spreadtrum made a better Atom chip than Intel, the maker of Atom did. Intel was too afraid to make a good Atom cannibalize their Core line. The funny thing is Kirk Skaugen, the guy that got fired by current CEO Kraznich said they wouldn't allow such thing to hinder progress again(was referring to Itanium vs x86 but Atom vs Core is the same thing).

How about this Intel? If you created a good Atom just for mobile, and didn't have a PC version, there would be no cannibalization. iPads and iPhones are better than your Core chips by a long shot, but PCs still sell right? That's the same argument almost-delusional Intel investors think anyway. There's no OS crossover so Apple chips being better than Intel has no effect on Intel.

 

[Nothingness]

I know you are smarter than this. Denverton is a server product. Actually my memory tells me the first Atom server product, the Centerton did quite fantastic against ARM competition.

Link? I think you misremember with Rangeley.

Here's real mobile Atom news: http://www.spreadtrum.com/en/show_news.html?id=fe766282-e9cc-4ffd-b211-e3d19675d3f7

8 core Airmont. The graphics are bit anemic compared to the CPU but its 8 core Atom, and an integrated LTE modem.

Now I know what Intel's problem was in mobile. Segmentation. Spreadtrum made a better Atom chip than Intel, the maker of Atom did. Intel was too afraid to make a good Atom cannibalize their Core line. The funny thing is Kirk Skaugen, the guy that got fired by current CEO Kraznich said they wouldn't allow such thing to hinder progress again(was referring to Itanium vs x86 but Atom vs Core is the same thing).

The main issue Intel had (apart from a poor CPU) is that their SoC were lacking, for instance a poor GPU, which seems to be the case here. So I'm not sure this will change anything.

 

[Arachnotronic]

Link? I think you misremember with Rangeley.


The main issue Intel had (apart from a poor CPU) is that their SoC were lacking, for instance a poor GPU, which seems to be the case here. So I'm not sure this will change anything.

Poor GPU, poor image signal processor, poor memory controller (no support for the latest mem technologies), etc.

Intel just sucks at mobile SoCs.

 

[Arachnotronic]

The problem for Denverton is its too little too late against the ARM competition. Intel has basically lost the mobile war to ARM. For the PC desktop, notebook and server market AMD is back with a vengeance. AMD has a single core which will run all of AMD's products going forward from ultra low power notebooks to high end desktops and servers. The kind of disruptive pricing we are seeing from Zen in the enthusiast desktop is likely to extend to servers and notebooks. imo Intel needs to split their core development into two. Their client core could combine the best of Atom and their current big core - power efficiency and very good performance without the unnecessary baggage of AVX-512. Their server core could go for wider AVX units as thats Intel's strategy for HPC against NVIDIA / AMD.

They have split their core development into two, Skylake-X has AVX-512 and other changes that are not in Skylake/Kaby Lake-S.

In fact, you were suggesting in other posts that AVX-512 would be a millstone around Intel's neck as it would hurt clocks relative to Zen-based Opteron. Good thing it's in Skylake-X but not in Kaby Lake-S

 

[dark zero]

Poor GPU, poor image signal processor, poor memory controller (no support for the latest mem technologies), etc.

Intel just sucks at mobile SoCs.

Actually Moorefield was decent. SoFIA was a true dissaster and that killed Broxton. Broxton would easily give a decent fight on the mid tier.

The problem apart from that suffers also from poor x86 Android support... Just the opposite on the PC segment.

 

[IntelUser2000]

Link? I think you misremember with Rangeley.


The main issue Intel had (apart from a poor CPU) is that their SoC were lacking, for instance a poor GPU, which seems to be the case here. So I'm not sure this will change anything.

 

[IntelUser2000]

Link? I think you misremember with Rangeley.

I get my mistake now. Apologies. Avoton vs Centerton. The successor to Avoton is still Denverton, so its not mobile. Avoton did really well against ARM competition.

The main issue Intel had (apart from a poor CPU) is that their SoC were lacking, for instance a poor GPU, which seems to be the case here. So I'm not sure this will change anything.

It's not marketed as a bleeding-edge SoC though. The point here is Spreadtrum, a Chinese Partner licensing Atom cores, did all that Intel never could. And that's proper integration of everything. They had so much trouble with integration, including graphics, LTE, and image processor. All that money, and resources couldn't allow them to gather themselves in a coherent fashion. I am quite amazed at the Chinese companies making their in-house chips in record time.

We wouldn't have seen 8 Atom cores anytime soon either. If Goldmont never died, Intel would have introduced a quad core Goldmont mobile chip. Xiaomi is talking about their in-house Surge S1 design taking 28 months from inception to completion. 28 months! When Intel claimed competitive mobile chips coming with dual cores, we'd have thought the "next" chip was going to be dual core, which would have been barely fine. But then they go release single core one, and the dual core one came a year later. Maybe the "complexity" regarding x86 is true.

 

[AMDisTheBEST]

Atom has been a favorite among the many little known Chinese manufactures who builds cheap windows tablets under $200 bucks. I got one from one such manufacturer called chuwi just because I was curious. The performance... was absolute shit. Now atom has been discontinue, it means these manufacturers can no longer build dirt cheap which means they must build higher performance parts and charge more which means they will all be out of business because they can't compete with the more established brands at the same price points which means no more shitty devices, knock off clones, and ect in the market. Rejoice!