The Ice Lake Benchmark Preview: Inside Intel's 10nm
by Dr. Ian Cutress on August 1, 2019 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
- Intel
- GPUs
- 10nm
- Core
- Ice Lake
- Cannon Lake
- Sunny Cove
- 10th Gen Core
Synthetic and Legacy Results (15W)
The realm of synthetic testing is a tricky one, given that there are plenty of benchmarks in the wild that provide a number, but aren’t actually based on real workloads, or are very limited in what they actually test. The issue here is that this software tries to emulate real-world, but it isn’t immersed in the harnesses or matrix of what a user might actually experience. For that reason, we only tend to use these benchmarks based on reader requests.
Legacy benchmarks are included for similar reasons, but can help to get a historical perspective.
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The_Assimilator - Thursday, August 1, 2019 - link
Not to mention that all Intel's CPU fabs have been on 14nm for so long that the capital costs are long paid off.I think we will see ICL on desktop via 14nm, simply because Intel can't afford to not compete with Zen 2. We won't get the full 20% IPC uplift because Intel will have to spend some of that to deal with 14nm's power/heat issues at high frequencies, but even a 10% bump would be enough to decisively regain the performance crown from Zen 2.
dwbogardus - Thursday, August 1, 2019 - link
Pretty much every major architectural change and most every process shrink Intel has made over decades has initially resulted in only very modest improvements. But over time, as volumes and yields improved, they did process tweaks and minor die spins, and the yield had higher frequencies gradually improved. The very first Pentiums/Pentium Pro's struggled to out-perform the then-fastest 80486DX2-66's, on then-existing applications. There has been a slow, by consistently steady over decades improvement in IPC, and generally in frequency, with temporary setbacks in frequency at each new process introduction. But over time, they always ratchet up, with the cumulative effect over the years being very dramatic. While we're all surprised and disappointed that it has taken as long as it has for Intel to get 10 nm out, no one should be surprised that initial yields and frequencies are very modest. They always are, but they always improve, and in the case of 14 nm, they managed to improve them so much that they have been hard to let go of and move on from. In fact, 14 nm is still the best fit for some applications, and will remain so for so time.nevcairiel - Thursday, August 1, 2019 - link
Unfortunately Intel decided a long time ago to not bother to backport Ice Lake to 14nm. Ice Lake had been "done" for years, basically, afterall.On the other hand, they did say that in the future, and with growing uncertainty of process gains, they want to develop architectures in a manner more independent from the actual process, so hopefully Ice Lake is the last µarch thats very tightly married to its process.
hbsource - Thursday, August 1, 2019 - link
Was that an HST reference with the Good Thing trademark?konbala - Thursday, August 1, 2019 - link
How does Integer Scaling working out to be? Really curious, can’t wait to play games smoothly at low res.Alistair - Thursday, August 1, 2019 - link
Kind of what we were expecting, which isn't much. 3 percent ST gains. Can now play AAA titles at 720p at 19fps... not exciting. We don't even get an upgrade from 4 to 6 cores at the same price, like what happened in the desktop. Terrible if you ask me. Guess I'll be keeping my laptop another year.twotwotwo - Thursday, August 1, 2019 - link
Curious if this ends up a return to Intel's old routine or if there's still constrained supply, etc. In particular, the longer 10nm server chips take to arrive, the longer AMD could grow off server revenue.Two tick+tocks a few weeks apart! Busy times for AT, heh.
trivik12 - Thursday, August 1, 2019 - link
Obviously AMD Loons are nervous. Intel will ultimately figure out process issues and then AMD will be back where they were few years back.Alistair - Thursday, August 1, 2019 - link
Maybe you didn't understand what you just read. This is the smallest improvement in CPU performance that Intel has had for years in mobile. Go look at that image again.https://images.anandtech.com/doci/14664/Blueprint%...
maroon1 - Thursday, August 1, 2019 - link
The iGPU gain is massive