Rumor: Cannonlake will feature up to 8 cores

Mr. Bluntman

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Intel engineer spills the beans

Intel's next-generation Cannonlake consumer-targeted processors could be the chip to leap from quad-core designs for the great unwashed.


An Intel engineer has been caught boasting on this Linkedin profile that he had a hand in Cannonlake system-on-chip (SoC) parts which integrated four, six, or eight processing cores with a Converged Coherent Fabric (CCF). He described this as acting like the Northbridge of an old-fashioned chipset setup.

Intel has not used this phrase before but it does explain some rather strange job adverts wanting a 'Coherent Fabric Architecture Engineer.' We have not met anyone in the fashion industry who was coherent let alone a fabric maker.

Chipzilla has been making products with lots of processing cores but it seems addicted to four cores on consumer desktops (with or without the HyperThreading technology that extends it to running eight simultaneous threads.)

If the leak is right, then the 10nm Cannonlake family could be offered in hexa- and octa-core varieties.

Boosting the number of CPU cores on its next-generation products would allow the company to continue to tell software developers to concentrate on making the best use of CPU cores rather than looking to HSA and other than the general-purpose GPU to boost performance.

About fucking time (if true).

As seen here: http://www.fudzilla.com/news/processors/38933-cannonlake-moves-intel-from-quad-core

Discuss.
 
Intel might be poised to release 6 and 8 core non-enthusiast platform parts, but the question remains: will they? That is going to depend on how Zen stacks up.
 
That would actually make me interested in buying one. I'm not paying > $500 for a cpu and I'm not buying one that isn't that much better than my 2500k.
 
I've been saying, now that a 6 core on the performance platform is under $400, it's only a matter of time before it's on mainstream. And DDR4 opened up enough bandwidth to feed more than 4 cores.

Would be interesting to see if the Core i3 goes 4 core, and the Pentium goes HT. Would massively change the value of a low-end Intel build!

And for notebooks, this opens up the possibility of mainstream notebooks with 6 or 8 cores!

One thing is for sure: they can't price them TOO high, simply because if they did people would just buy the 5820k.
 
Nothing in the original posting suggested it's a desktop processor, not that you could tell from the terrible as usual fudzilla "reporting". Products over 4 cores could be a high density server SoC or other scalable MP models, as suggested by the "High Speed Fabrics" part of the posting.

VimyzTi.png


All the speculation of how many cores desktop Cannonlake has is based on information in that image. derp
 
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Nothing in the original posting suggested it's a desktop processor, not that you could tell from the terrible as usual fudzilla "reporting". Products over 4 cores could be a high density server SoC or other scalable MP models, as suggested by the "High Speed Fabrics" part of the posting.

VimyzTi.png


All the speculation of how many cores desktop Cannonlake has is based on information in that image. derp

While you do have a point, Xeons are shipping now with what, 18c/36t? Next gen may up that to 24c/48t? Xeon-D parts are octal-core only. Why would they regress rather than add to that in further generations?

That kind of narrows the field, and while he has been wrong before, I'm sure Fudo at least took that much into account.
 
One thing is for sure: they can't price them TOO high, simply because if they did people would just buy the 5820k.

There's already too much overlap between the price of the 5820k and the 6700k. Why all the fuss over the 6700k when the 5820k is cheaper (MC) or near the same price is baffling. You can always OC the chips, you can't add more cores to the 6700k.
 
While you do have a point, Xeons are shipping now with what, 18c/36t? Next gen may up that to 24c/48t? Xeon-D parts are octal-core only. Why would they regress rather than add to that in further generations?
CPU core counts for those particular segments (highly scalable MP servers and high density servers, given your 2 examples) are unlikely to regress. Xeon D comes in 2 models currently, a 4 core version and a slightly lower base clocked 8 core version.

Desktop and mobile are separate segments, bounded by their own limitations. Mainstream sockets and consumer SOCs top out at 4 cores.

Xeon D is a great example of a 4c/8c SoC though. Imagine if it were to become more scalable than 1P per node... maybe Intel should hire someone to work on that. Let's see, it would require a high speed fabric and maybe a new optimized coherency scheme to go with it. lol :p

(I deleted the other part of your post because that horrifyingly poor "news" post on fudzilla should never give anyone the impression that any sort of actual journalism goes on there, and Fuad remains as clueless as ever.)
 
There's already too much overlap between the price of the 5820k and the 6700k. Why all the fuss over the 6700k when the 5820k is cheaper (MC) or near the same price is baffling. You can always OC the chips, you can't add more cores to the 6700k.

Plus the 20 lanes 6700K vs 28 lanes 5820K for PCIe. With some of the more budget friendly X99 MoBos available, the 6700K makes almost no sense right now.
 
Xeon D already comes with 8 cores in the 1540. I'd welcome this too. 8 legit cores, 2 threads per core with HT, or more, what if we got, 4 threads per core. That'd be awesome!
 
Xeon D already comes with 8 cores in the 1540. I'd welcome this too. 8 legit cores, 2 threads per core with HT, or more, what if we got, 4 threads per core. That'd be awesome!

Ludicrousthreadding!

/Space Balls reference
 
CPU core counts for those particular segments (highly scalable MP servers and high density servers, given your 2 examples) are unlikely to regress. Xeon D comes in 2 models currently, a 4 core version and a slightly lower base clocked 8 core version.

Desktop and mobile are separate segments, bounded by their own limitations. Mainstream sockets and consumer SOCs top out at 4 cores.

Xeon D is a great example of a 4c/8c SoC though. Imagine if it were to become more scalable than 1P per node... maybe Intel should hire someone to work on that. Let's see, it would require a high speed fabric and maybe a new optimized coherency scheme to go with it. lol :p

(I deleted the other part of your post because that horrifyingly poor "news" post on fudzilla should never give anyone the impression that any sort of actual journalism goes on there, and Fuad remains as clueless as ever.)

1. I did not know Xeon-D had quad variants as well. All the hoopla I saw was about the 8 core version.

2. It is suggested that this will change. Whether if this prediction comes true or not is highly debatable at this point, given that Intel has no competition at the high and midrange segments.

3. 2P Xeon-D processor systems would be great for throwaway servers and workstations, but would partially cannibalize the extremely expensive traditional socketed Xeons. Probably will never happen, sadly, due to how much Chipzilla loves their profit margins.

4. I only read Fudzilla for entertainment and speculation, not facts - and I only repost things from said site that I find that others may find interesting because we all know that speculation is fun. :)

Ludicrousthreadding!

/Space Balls reference

They've gone to plaid!
 
Plus the 20 lanes 6700K vs 28 lanes 5820K for PCIe. With some of the more budget friendly X99 MoBos available, the 6700K makes almost no sense right now.

Unless you don't need 28 lanes of PCIe...
 
guys... guys... Intel have 18 core silicon, and you can't buy more than 40% or those cores at the consumer level. Intel has continually added more cores to their top-teir silicon.

Core 2: dual core. (with dual-chip quads)

Core i7 P55: quad core.

Core i7 X58 6 core,

Sandy bridge xeon 8 core,

ivy bridge xeon 12 core,

haswell xeon 18 core...

Its just that they have no reason to sell such power at the consumer level. They have no competition.
 
Plus the 20 lanes 6700K vs 28 lanes 5820K for PCIe. With some of the more budget friendly X99 MoBos available, the 6700K makes almost no sense right now.

Budget friendly boards = basic. ;) I am very happy with having gone with the 6700K at home with a Gigabyte Z170X Gaming 7. If I want an equivalent motherboard in the X99 arena, I would need to spend at least $100 more.

However, next year around this time at work, I will probably be upgrading to the 5820k or the Skylake - E processor. (That depends on Zen though.)
 
Budget friendly boards = basic. ;) I am very happy with having gone with the 6700K at home with a Gigabyte Z170X Gaming 7. If I want an equivalent motherboard in the X99 arena, I would need to spend at least $100 more.

However, next year around this time at work, I will probably be upgrading to the 5820k or the Skylake - E processor. (That depends on Zen though.)

...
 
I dunno GearChoices, it sounded pretty clear to me.

Different needs for different workloads. The 6700k is already fairly overclocked for you out of the box, plus the lower power can open up all sorts of different case options that can't handle an overclocked 5820k. Just ask sblantipodi, lol.

And he's not paying for the upgrade at work :D

It's still an excruciatingly tough choice for everyone, he just posted his reasoning.
 
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I dunno GearChoices, it sounded pretty clear to me.

Different needs for different workloads. The 6700k is already fairly overclocked for you out of the box, plus the lower power can open up all sorts of different case options that can't handle an overclocked 5820k. Just ask sblantipodi, lol.

And he's not paying for the upgrade at work :D

It's still an excruciatingly tough choice for everyone, he just posted his reasoning.

Actually, you are correct in everything but the who is paying for the upgrade, that would be me. :) I prefer to have my own tools which is why I built my machine at work. :D Right now, I am using an FX8350 with 32 GB of DDR3 ram so I do not want to upgrade that one just yet. However, I have another 16 GB of DDR4 ram incoming for my home computer so it will have 32 GB of ram. :) (Never can have too much.)
 
For your average enthusiast. I see no real or necessary application for more than 8 logical processing threads. Only reason I can see it is because MOAR!!
 
is this thread really going to devolve into a debate between an X99 platform and the Z107 one?

Anyways, back to the subject: remember skulltrail? how cool would a 2P Xeon-D system be?
 
I dunno GearChoices, it sounded pretty clear to me.

Different needs for different workloads. The 6700k is already fairly overclocked for you out of the box, plus the lower power can open up all sorts of different case options that can't handle an overclocked 5820k. Just ask sblantipodi, lol.

And he's not paying for the upgrade at work :D

It's still an excruciatingly tough choice for everyone, he just posted his reasoning.

Ahh no wonder I was confused. I missed that part and thought he was saying he was going to "upgrade" the same computer next year to a 5820k lol.
 
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