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Is it a backport? I read somewhere that it's a continuation of Skylake evolution and not a new architecture.

imajoo 6y ago
According to the article, "The new generation Rocket Lake is the combination of two different backported technologies. Intel took the Sunny Cove core from 10nm Ice Lake, and re-built it on 14nm, calling it now Cypress Cove. Intel also took the Xe graphics from 10nm Tiger Lake and re-built those on 14nm, but these are still called Xe graphics." So, yes, it appears to be a backport.
deleted 6y ago
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guardiangod 6y ago
Rocket Lake was designed for 10nm, but Intel couldn't get 10nm to work, so they backport Rocket Lake to 14nm. https://semiaccurate.com/2020/10/29/intels-palpable-desperation-on-display-with-rocket-lake/ https://semiaccurate.com/2020/10/29/intels-palpable-desperat... Just filter out Charlie Demerjian's grudge against Intel. Companies don’t backport because a core is designed for a process. It’s efficiency and architecture is based on the transistors that it will use from the design start, caches are sized based on the process too, and a lot of the architectural gains are due to the added transistor counts. If you backport a CPU you lose the efficiency of these new transistors so the energy use goes up and the clocks likely go down as well. Cores take up 2x the size, or at least a lot more than the older core did on the older process, so costs go up too. You can either cut out bits of the core and lose performance or eat it on area and therefor cost. Backporting a design not made for portability isn’t a lose/lose proposition, it is a lose/lose/lose/lose proposition. But Intel is desperate so…
- dralley 6y ago
  Grudge or not, it's not like he's been wrong the last few years. Turns out all the negativity is well justified...
  - Firehawke 6y ago
    Yep, he's been saying the sky was falling for some time, and it turns out he was pretty accurate in his statements on Intel's problems. This review makes it clear that unless Intel magically gets a process improvement they're entirely screwed. This is precisely the same kind of design issue that hit with the latter end of the P4 era, where thermal limitations were so severe that they were crippling the chips. I'd have to do some digging, but I absolutely remember reading an interesting set of benchmarks that made it clear that you were 99% likely to thermally throttle those P4s even with proper thermal paste and an improved high-end heatsink/fan.
    - dragontamer 6y ago
      Are they really? AMD will make gains for sure at this rate, but TSMC can't serve the whole market. Intel owns fabs, and these rocket lake chips will sell to the mainstream just fine. I expect intel's fabs to be a big asset in these COVID times with sold out computers.
      - wtallis 6y ago
        This chips really don't seem to be a good use of Intel's limited fab capacity. The CPU cores are substantially larger while offering basically no benefits other than AVX-512 support. It looks like Intel would have been better off pairing the upgraded IO and integrated graphics with their existing, smaller Skylake cores.
        dragontamer 6y ago
        https://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph16535/111160.png https://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph16535/111160.png Pretty much every Rocket-lake score is faster than Skylake across the board. I'd definitely buy a Rocket Lake over any old Skylake based off of these reviews. Rocket Lake seems a wee-bit inferior to Zen3, but AMD Zen3 is pretty much sold out, so if you need a computer, Intel is still there.
        6y ago
IanCutress 6y ago
If you read the first page, it'll tell you?

According to the article, "The new generation Rocket Lake is the combination of two different backported technologies. Intel took the Sunny Cove core from 10nm Ice Lake, and re-built it on 14nm, calling it now Cypress Cove. Intel also took the Xe graphics from 10nm Tiger Lake and re-built those on 14nm, but these are still called Xe graphics." So, yes, it appears to be a backport.

deleted 6y ago

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guardiangod 6y ago

Rocket Lake was designed for 10nm, but Intel couldn't get 10nm to work, so they backport Rocket Lake to 14nm. https://semiaccurate.com/2020/10/29/intels-palpable-desperation-on-display-with-rocket-lake/ https://semiaccurate.com/2020/10/29/intels-palpable-desperat... Just filter out Charlie Demerjian's grudge against Intel. Companies don’t backport because a core is designed for a process. It’s efficiency and architecture is based on the transistors that it will use from the design start, caches are sized based on the process too, and a lot of the architectural gains are due to the added transistor counts. If you backport a CPU you lose the efficiency of these new transistors so the energy use goes up and the clocks likely go down as well. Cores take up 2x the size, or at least a lot more than the older core did on the older process, so costs go up too. You can either cut out bits of the core and lose performance or eat it on area and therefor cost. Backporting a design not made for portability isn’t a lose/lose proposition, it is a lose/lose/lose/lose proposition. But Intel is desperate so…

dralley 6y ago
Grudge or not, it's not like he's been wrong the last few years. Turns out all the negativity is well justified...
- Firehawke 6y ago
  Yep, he's been saying the sky was falling for some time, and it turns out he was pretty accurate in his statements on Intel's problems. This review makes it clear that unless Intel magically gets a process improvement they're entirely screwed. This is precisely the same kind of design issue that hit with the latter end of the P4 era, where thermal limitations were so severe that they were crippling the chips. I'd have to do some digging, but I absolutely remember reading an interesting set of benchmarks that made it clear that you were 99% likely to thermally throttle those P4s even with proper thermal paste and an improved high-end heatsink/fan.
  - dragontamer 6y ago
    Are they really? AMD will make gains for sure at this rate, but TSMC can't serve the whole market. Intel owns fabs, and these rocket lake chips will sell to the mainstream just fine. I expect intel's fabs to be a big asset in these COVID times with sold out computers.
    - wtallis 6y ago
      This chips really don't seem to be a good use of Intel's limited fab capacity. The CPU cores are substantially larger while offering basically no benefits other than AVX-512 support. It looks like Intel would have been better off pairing the upgraded IO and integrated graphics with their existing, smaller Skylake cores.
      - dragontamer 6y ago
        https://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph16535/111160.png https://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph16535/111160.png Pretty much every Rocket-lake score is faster than Skylake across the board. I'd definitely buy a Rocket Lake over any old Skylake based off of these reviews. Rocket Lake seems a wee-bit inferior to Zen3, but AMD Zen3 is pretty much sold out, so if you need a computer, Intel is still there.
        6y ago

IanCutress 6y ago

If you read the first page, it'll tell you?