Intel Mixes Atom, Core and 3D Stacking in Lakefield

[AlphaAtlas]

At their CES 2019 press conference, Intel refreshed their desktop processor lineup with IGP-less variants and unveiled the "Sunny Cove" CPU architecture in their laptop Ice Lake SOCs, but one of the most interesting designs Chipzilla displayed at the announcement is undoubtedly "Lakefield." The chip itself uses a "hybrid" CPU design, with 4 small Atom cores, one big Sunny Cove core and graphics all on one slab of silicon. Using their "Foveros" 3D stacking technology, they take that 10nm CPU die and sandwich it between a 22nm "Cache and I/O" die on the bottom and some DRAM stacks on top. The result is an entire SoC with memory squeezed into a 12mm x 12mm package, all of which fits on a motherboard that looks about as large as an M.2 NVMe SSD. Even if you aren't interested in the thin, low power laptops Intel is squarely aiming this system at, these design concepts and technologies will undoubtedly diffuse into Intel's higher-power products.

Check out the "Lakefield" video here.

The result is a smaller board that provides OEMs more flexibility for thin and light form factor design and is packed with all the technology people have come to expect from Intel including long battery life, performance and connectivity. Lakefield is expected to be in production this year.

 

[Uvaman2]

My experience with atom has not been one that gives me great hopes for this thing.

 

[Nobu]

Maybe the atom+other combo, but I doubt we see stacking in the high power socs for a while, if ever. Maybe once we get past si for the substrate...

 

[Paladin21]

If they can get the scheduler right to allocate low-priority background junk to the Atom cores while leaving the important work to the beefy core, this could be a nice setup. I'd like to see this extended even into larger configurations such as having a couple of "helper" cores on an i7/i9 to handle background Windows processes and such while gaming or transcoding. You could think of it as the hardware version of "Game Mode" where everything other than the focused app gets offloaded to secondary cores, freeing up your main CPU power for uncontested access to your primary app.

 

[Mohonri]

If they can get the scheduler right to allocate low-priority background junk to the Atom cores while leaving the important work to the beefy core, this could be a nice setup. I'd like to see this extended even into larger configurations such as having a couple of "helper" cores on an i7/i9 to handle background Windows processes and such while gaming or transcoding. You could think of it as the hardware version of "Game Mode" where everything other than the focused app gets offloaded to secondary cores, freeing up your main CPU power for uncontested access to your primary app.

I like this idea, especially given how games tend to utilize one core far more than the others.

 

[Bigdady92]

So Chiplets?

 

[andrewaggb]

I like this idea, especially given how games tend to utilize one core far more than the others.

I think this would have been a great idea a few years ago... considering phones have been doing it for years - it was. For a modern desktop with 6-32 actual cores (possibly with HT) I don't see the point other than for laptops where it might save a few watts. It'll be interesting to see how this compares to AMD's new chromebook solution.

 

[Arcygenical]

My experience with atom has not been one that gives me great hopes for this thing.

Ive used all iterations of Atom save for the newest generation, in small car and embedded systems... even loading music and flash interfaces (dont ask) they were mediocre at best.

 

[Link]

Looks like Intel is copying the mobile SoC designs.

 

[Megaslug]

I only ever built on Atom system, but my experience is completely opposite what others have said. I built a SFF cube system to run my model railroad. Pre-affordable SSD days, and actually I went with a 5400 RPM drive for power savings. I initially was going to run Windows on it, but thought better and installed Linux. Apart from having to compile my own driver for the wireless card I pt in it (silly me, when the product mentions that it is Linux compatible I assumed they actually had a driver - nope). Thing ran like a champ, I had no issues running various applications on it, even a CAD program, or using it to stream music from my server while working on something else. Still have it, still runs, but I haven't had a use for it since I moved, so it's just sitting on a shelf. I had no reliability and no performance issues, it did the job it was built for and then some with no headaches. Seems like it could also work just fine for a typical internet user who just wants to read email and Facebook. And this is an old machine, at least 10 years old now. Second gen Atom I think, or first of the dual core ones, something liek that, I'd have to go look up what I bought to know for sure. And the newer Atoms are even faster.