Anandtech: Intel Unveils 10th Gen Core Ice Lake-U & Ice Lake-Y Mobile CPUs: 10nm Sunny Cove Later Th

S

Snowdog

[H]F Junkie
Joined
Apr 22, 2006
Messages
11,262
Anandtech pulls together the Ice Lake info form Intels Computex presentation. I know some of this was presented in pieces elsewhere, but this pulls it together.

It also the most important CPU news for Intel going forward. This Intels new core, and new IGPU. It may also be Intels only real "good news" for consumers in the next year.


https://www.anandtech.com/show/14436/intel-10th-gen-10nm-ice-lake-cpus
At Intel’s Keynote presentation here at Computex, the company finally lifted the lid on its first widely available new CPU design on its 10nm process, called Ice Lake. The official marketing name for these processors will be ‘Intel 10th Generation Core’, and will feature up to four CPU cores with Intel's new Sunny Cove architecture, new Gen11 graphics supplying up to 1TF of graphics/compute performance, and built in support for Wi-Fi 6 and Thunderbolt 3.
Click to expand...
Ice_Lake_Car.jpg



Highlights include:

10 nm process:
Intel's long delayed process finally comes to the mass market. Starting in mobile where power benefits are most needed, and lower clock speeds are not detrimental.

IPC improvement:
This is already being discussed here. Though largely with skepticism. Given the work noted, this seems like a reasonable increase given the changes:

For Ice Lake, the doubling of the L2 cache, the increase in execution ports, and the dispatch capabilities of the front end of the core all provide big improvements. Intel also states that the pre-fetchers are improved, which also helps with that 18% IPC increase.
Click to expand...

New Generation IGPU:
A big jump in gaming performance getting to about parity with AMD mobile parts, apparently without needing an extra L4 cache chip. Faster and Higher quality HEVC encoder.

I/O enhancements:
Integrated Thunderbolt 3. Wifi 6. LPDDR4X 3733 support.


On paper this looks like one of Intels biggest jumps forward in MANY years, and a tough to beat mobile platform, at least until AMD 7nm APUs show up.

Hopefully reviews can find a way to lock clock speeds on a laptop to see what Sunny Cove cores bring to the table.
 
Jim Kim said:
TLDR
iNtel's 10nm is still in it's infancy and not ready for primetime.
Click to expand...

You mean isn't ready to replace Intels 5GHz+ process on desktop? What is? TSMC 4.6GHz 7nm would be a step backwards for Intel on desktop.
 
eagerly awaiting reviews, to see if predictions pan out that 14nm++++++++++++++++ is so far optimized that 10nm will barely be able to hit parity at first.

Intel: "but mah 1TFLOP iGPU!!!"
also Intel: "1TFLOP Iris iGPU!"
a whole 20% more throughput than the 0.83TFLOP Iris GPU that Haswell had back in 2012?! Utterly earthshattering!

the last thing that got me excited about Intel CPUs was when they bumped their -U series parts to 4C/8T. That seemed like a big deal. This? Seems like a lot of marketing handwaving to cover up the fact 10nm got delayed so long that 14nm caught up.
 
KATEKATEKATE said:
This? Seems like a lot of marketing handwaving to cover up the fact 10nm got delayed so long that 14nm caught up.
Click to expand...

Barring actual reviews of shipping systems, I'd expect longer sustained boost clocks and better battery life. In something like an XPS13 that's pure gold. And in something like that where a discrete GPU is a no go, doubling the base IGP performance is also quite welcome.
 
Snowdog said:
Have there been IPC improvements since Skylake?
Click to expand...
single-digit
IdiotInCharge said:
Barring actual reviews of shipping systems, I'd expect longer sustained boost clocks and better battery life. In something like an XPS13 that's pure gold. And in something like that where a discrete GPU is a no go, doubling the base IGP performance is also quite welcome.
Click to expand...

that's a fair point, max boost clocks mean nothing if they can't be maintained.

I still think the iGPU thing is disengenous a.f. though. Intel spent a lot of time repeating "Gen11 iGPU 1TFLOP!" over and over which kind of gave the impression that 1FLOP would be the if not the baseline, than at least the mainstream. It is not. The baseline Intel iGPU is not going to compete with AMD iGPUs. Iris Plus graphics are going to compete with AMD iGPUs. Just like Iris graphics have been competing with AMD iGPUs since 2012. The baseline isn't doubling, it's going up by half (24EU to 32EU). Now maybe Intel will just throw Iris Plus in everything except budget parts but I don't think so. I think they're selling a 24-32EU bump as a 24-64EU increase and hoping that people forget that ~1TFLOP Intel iGPUs have already been available for a long time.
 
KATEKATEKATE said:
I still think the iGPU thing is disengenous a.f. though.
Click to expand...

Shoot, I don't even consider their Iris parts. By the time you get to those in systems available today, you're better off with a dGPU generally speaking. Perhaps that changes with Sunny Cove.

Unfortunately, there seems to be little information out there; after the 7000-series, Intel did not release any more 15w parts with Iris, only 28W parts and up, including the dual-core Coffee Lake parts.

AnandTech said:
However it looks like Intel is going to split up the U-series a bit; 32 EU parts are listed as "Ice Lake U UHD", while 48 and 64 EU parts are "Ice Lake U Iris Plus". So Intel's Iris Plus branding will remain; and hopefully Iris Plus Ice Lake SKUs will be more common than today's Iris Plus parts.
Click to expand...

So the regular parts are going from 24 EU to 32 EU, a 33% increase in cores, and the Iris parts are going from 48 EU max to 48 EU and 64 EU, for up to a 33% increase in cores here too. We don't see any of the Skylake-era 72 EU parts in Kaby Lake, Coffee Lake, or now Sunny Cove (with new Ice Lake cores).

We should also consider that Ice Lake cores may be faster than previous Skylake cores per clock, and may also run at higher clockspeeds, for more than a linear increase in performance per core.
 
Snowdog said:
Have there been IPC improvements since Skylake?
Click to expand...

I would argue that if there wasn't any IPC gain why would they not compare with the latest and greatest at same IPC ? I mean it sounds better to say you have 18% gain over last year than over 4~5 years ago right ? (numbers and date do not matter, sorry if not 100% accurate).
They choose to pick Skylake because it puts them in a better light. If I read 18% better than last year I would assume it's even more 4~5 years and tell myself wow, I should upgrade I'm on Skylake.... (Average Joe thinking, not mine).

Anyway, they choose Skylake and they knew what they were doing. If choosing a more recent release would yield same numbers, they would of done it.

EDIT: Googled a little, seems not much improvement, why would they do that then... They plan on comparing it with a patched OS later ? Is skylake more affected with mitigation ?
 
Last edited:
IdiotInCharge said:
Shoot, I don't even consider their Iris parts. By the time you get to those in systems available today, you're better off with a dGPU generally speaking. Perhaps that changes with Sunny Cove.

Unfortunately, there seems to be little information out there; after the 7000-series, Intel did not release any more 15w parts with Iris, only 28W parts and up, including the dual-core Coffee Lake parts.

So the regular parts are going from 24 EU to 32 EU, a 33% increase in cores, and the Iris parts are going from 48 EU max to 48 EU and 64 EU, for up to a 33% increase in cores here too. We don't see any of the Skylake-era 72 EU parts in Kaby Lake, Coffee Lake, or now Sunny Cove (with new Ice Lake cores).

We should also consider that Ice Lake cores may be faster than previous Skylake cores per clock, and may also run at higher clockspeeds, for more than a linear increase in performance per core.
Click to expand...

Right, we haven't see this kind of performance improvements since Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge. It's been a long time coming before they rebuilt the EUs from scratch- they've just been tweaking and adding more units since then.

They have never returned to the 72 EU era because of the embarrassing scaling over thew 48eu options. I'm interested to see how much better the performance scales between 32 and 64 cores, and how much better the performance will be with baseline 32 cores, versus Skylake.
 
defaultluser said:
and how much better the performance will be with baseline 32 cores, versus Skylake.
Click to expand...

My 8550U ultrabook, which boosts to 4.0GHz regularly but is absolutely thermally limited, has the UHD 620 which is 24 EUs and can hit 1080p60 at minimum settings in MOBAs.

Give me more thermal headroom, more cores, higher IPC... even at just 32 EUs you're covering a lot of ground. If the Iris parts are more common, that's a pretty strong showing for just integrated graphics, and the bandwidth from DDR4 -3733 will definitely help with scaling.

The upcoming Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 (7390) is pretty damn close to my ideal and will have the Iris parts available. About the only specs I'm missing from that are a 120Hz panel option and VRR.
 
Intel: Buy my Skylake retread that I made faster by cutting out security functions! ............ you big stupid assholes!

Me: Ya plaese can I haves these thing? I trust the Intel's becuz it has high stock price. Intel take cares of me!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top