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
Power Results (15W and 25W)
Based on the SKU table, Intel was very keen to point out that all of the Y-series processors for Ice Lake and all the 15W U-series processors have cTDP up modes. This means that OEMs, if they build for it, can take advantage of a higher base power of a processor which leads to longer turbo periods and a higher frequency during sustained performance levels.
While cTDP is a good idea, one of the issues we have with the concept is that Intel’s OEM partners that design the laptops and notebooks for these processors don’t ever advertise or publicise if they’re using a CPU in cTDP up or down mode. I could understand why a vendor might not want to advertise using a down mode, but an up mode means extra performance, and it’s hard to tell from the outside what is going on.
For what it is worth, most users cannot change between these modes anyway. They are baked into the firmware and the operating system. However there are a few systems that do expose this to the user, as I recently found out with my Whiskey Lake-U platform, where the OS power plan has advanced options to set the TDP levels. Very interesting indeed.
Also, for Ice Lake-U, Intel is introducing a feature called Intel Dynamic Tuning 2.0.
We covered this in our architecture disclosure article, but the short and simple of it is that it allows OEMs to implement a system whereby the PL1/TDP of a system can change based on an algorithm over time. So it allows for higher strict turbo, and then adjusts the turbo budget over time.
This feature will be branded under Intel’s Adaptix brand, which covers all these CPU optimizations. However, it should be noted, that this feature is optional for the OEM. It requires the OEM to actually do the work to characterize the thermal profile of the system. We suspect that it will be mostly on premium devices, but as the chips roll out into cheaper systems, this will not be there. Intel is not making this feature standard.
Testing Power
Based on the time available, we weren’t able to do much power testing. What I was able to do was run a power profile during the start of our 3DPM AVX512 test in both 15W and 25W modes for the Core i7-1065G7.
The test here runs for 20 seconds, then rests for 10 seconds. Here are the first four sub-tests, and there are a lot of interesting points to note.
The peak power in these systems is clearly the PL2 mode, which on the Intel SDS platform seems to be around the 50W mode. Given that the functional test system is a bit of a chonk, with a strong thermal profile and the fan on all the time, this is perhaps to be expected. The suggested PL2 for Kaby Lake-R was 44W, so this might indicate a small jump in strategy. Of course, with the Kaby Lake-R designs, we never saw many devices that actually had a PL2 of 44W – most OEMs chose something smaller, like 22W or 35W.
The fact that the CPU can sustain a 50W PL2 means that Intel could easily release Ice Lake into the desktop market at the 35W range. Easy. Please do this Intel.
Second to note is the AVX-512 frequency. Not listed here, but under the 15W mode we saw the AVX-512 frequency around 1.0-1.1 GHz, while at 25W it was around 1.4-1.5 GHz. That’s quite a drop from non AVX-512 code, for sure.
Third, we come to the turbo window. Increasing the base TDP means that the turbo window has more budget to turbo, and we can see that this equates to more than 2x on all the sub-tests. In the 15W mode, on the first test, we blow through the budget within 5 seconds, but on the 25W mode, we can actually turbo all the way through the 20 seconds of the first test. This means that there is still technically budget on the table by the time we start the second test under the 25W mode.
Also, that third test – if you are wondering why that graph looks a little light on the data points compared to the others, it is because the AVX-512 instructions took so much of the time on the CPU, that our power software didn’t get any for itself to update the power values. We still got enough to make a graph, but that just goes to show what hammering the CPU can do.
For the base power consumption, we actually have an issue here with the observer effect. Our polling software is polling too often and spiking up the power a little bit. However, if we take the average power consumption between 25-30 seconds, under 25W this is 2.96W, and under 15W this is 2.87W, which is similar.
For users interested in the score differential between the two:
For 3DPM without AVX instructions, the 15W mode scored 816, and 25W mode scored 1020 (+25%).
For 3DPM with AVX-512, the 15W mode scored 7204, and 25W mode scored 9242 (+28%).
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Phynaz - Saturday, August 3, 2019 - link
And it’s “than” not “then”. Perhaps your lack of grammar is part of your problem.Korguz - Saturday, August 3, 2019 - link
um ya ok sure.. anything you say...HStewart - Thursday, August 1, 2019 - link
Is useless to argue with AMD fans - they first state that 10nm is old fashion and that claims of 30% is based on 2015 Sky Lake cpus and when they find out it based on 8th generation they don't believe and then state G{U is not good enough. And that AVX 512 does not matter, bug Siggraph 2019 is going to change that.But people forget about the past, yes AMD did it 64 bit back in the older days when nobody care much about greater than 4G memory. They build memory management and we had the frequency wars with Pentium 4 days - but Intel came back with I Series and change ever. Past is be repeated again. But this time is the core wars but Ice Lake is beginning of iSeries like in those days.
Please keep in mind this is only the low power cpus that Intel has release - it only the top of iceburg.
HStewart - Thursday, August 1, 2019 - link
"G{U is not good enough. And that AVX 512 does not matter, bug Siggraph 2019"I wish we could edit, I am older so my eyes are not as good
"GPU is not good enough. And that AVX 512 does not matter, but SigGraph 2019"
Korguz - Thursday, August 1, 2019 - link
and its just a useless to argue with intel fans, right HStewart ?? you know 1st hand about that, as you are well known now to praise intel any chance you get, and seemingly forget the negative things intel has one over the years, especially the ones that cost intel a few billion dollars...HStewart - Friday, August 2, 2019 - link
Lets just keep Intel articles to Intel only and AMD articles to AMD only - not of this fan boy BS, I support Intel primary because the AMD fans are so rude to Intel supports and I will never support them because of that. I do change, I use to support only Apple and hated Android - but I change on that one primary because I saw that Apple was not changing it UI and that they require developer tools on Mac's. I not actually Intel fan, Intel user and Intel developer - that is different. I have 30 years development experience.jospoortvliet - Friday, August 2, 2019 - link
You know, nobody cares about your ‘support’. If you mean your support to help intel - it merely serves to make it look pathetic. If you have nothing intelligent to offer besides your ‘support’, whichever brand or product it is to benefit, you better just stay out of the conversation as that would improve its average quality substantially.I’m sure there are sites where comments from brand- supporting fans are appreciated. I sure as hell don’t read the comments here for that reason but to get insights and your comments just serve to make that harder as i need to weed through countless pointless conversations which involve you ‘supporting’ intel by lowering the collective intelligence of all readers here. Do everyone a favor and leave.
Korguz - Friday, August 2, 2019 - link
your are hilarious HStewart, maybe you should take your OWN advice for once.. oh wait.. you CAN'T cause you cant deal with the fact that intel isnt doing as good as it was before zen came out. when you stop with the intel fanboy BS, then maybe the rest of us will as well. no, you support intel cause you are a fanatic when it comes to them. " I not actually Intel fan " BS complete BS, and you have proved over AND over again, you are an intel fan.30 years of experience ?? BS, you dont know the DIFFERENCE between WATTS and VOLTS, and you KEEP spelling architeCture WRONG
Qasar - Friday, August 2, 2019 - link
" they first state that 10nm is old fashion and that claims of 30% is based on 2015 Sky Lake cpus and when they find out it based on 8th generation they don't believe " who is they ?? to be fair HStewart, most of intels iGP, were best suited for any thing that isnt games that arent played on facebook, or games that are a few years old, and office work. but looks like intel is trying to improve that :-)" yes AMD did it 64 bit back in the older days when nobody care much about greater than 4G memory " i can remember a few people wanting to be able to use more then 4 gigs of ram in their comps, with out having to go to server platforms, i was one of them, and a few of my friends did too.
" Please keep in mind this is only the low power cpus that Intel has release " from what i have read, seems like this is all intel can do with their current 10nm process right now, looks like intel, like with the desktop, thinks quad cores are " good enough ", cause if it isnt, why are these only quad core ? why not up the ante to 6 cores ? i guess, like the desk top, we have to wait to see if amd will do this...
RSAUser - Friday, August 2, 2019 - link
AVX512 really doesn't matter as I would find it strange for people to run such workloads on their laptops rather than on dedicated machines with way more processing power.For the common man, AVX512 does nothing though, but we can argue that most of the performance improvements don't really matter, I'm still using a device 5 years old with an i7 4720HQ and I feel no need to upgrade, only thing I am let down by is the graphics card (960M).
Intel will have a hard time convincing people to upgrade for this stuff before their machines basically keel over.