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Intel Hardware

Intel Discloses Core M Broadwell Speeds, Feeds and Performance Expectations 60

MojoKid writes: Intel's next-generation Broadwell Y (now known as the Core M processor) is set to ship on schedule for the end of the year. The company, occasionally flagged with criticism of its delays on the chip and with its IDF show rampingup next week, is sharing more detail on the upcoming speeds, feeds, features and performance characteristics of its new 14nm mobile platform. Intel's Broadwell-Y lineup initially consists of three chips with apparently very little difference, except for clock speed. Base idle frequencies tip-toe along at 800MHz to 1.1GHz, with max turbo frequencies up to 2.6GHz for the dual-core chips that Intel is announcing today. All parts are able to hit a very low 4.5 Watt TDP (Thermal Design Power) power envelope. Intel is also claiming clock-for-clock gains at the CPU level but also a 40 percent gain in graphics performance, versus the previous generation low power Haswell architecture. Larger, premium tablets and 2-in-1 devices are expect to start shipping at a trickle in Q4, with a larger volume ramp in Q1.
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Intel Discloses Core M Broadwell Speeds, Feeds and Performance Expectations

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  • by CajunArson ( 465943 ) on Friday September 05, 2014 @01:41PM (#47836565) Journal

    and the GPU drivers have been mainlined in the Kernel for everyone to see for several months already.

  • It looks like Intel is making the GPU larger and more powerful with each iteration.
    • Yep, indeed they are. And fortunately capability and drivers are getting slightly better with each revision as well.
      • It is at the point now where I can comfortably recommend to people that unless they are gaming, they don't need a separate video card whether it is Intel or AMD that they select as their CPU.
        • by lucm ( 889690 )

          You don't get comfortable quick... Over the last 10 years the only time I've decided to upgrade a mobo videocard was during a drunken weekend when for some reason I felt ashamed of having an item with a 4.5 score on the Windows Experience Index utility - I went out and bought a pair of high-end Radeon (with the SLI thing). About $600 to get a 9.1 score.

          Fans were noisy and I was annoyed each time I had to move the computer because I could never tell in which card I should plug the main monitor. But Youtube v

    • Re:MOAR GPU (Score:4, Informative)

      by Kjella ( 173770 ) on Friday September 05, 2014 @05:05PM (#47838111) Homepage

      It looks like Intel is making the GPU larger and more powerful with each iteration.

      Well, these chips are primarily for tablets. Fanless tablets. Pretty much the exact opposite of where you'd like to do any serious computing. The CPU is these things mostly exists to support it as a presentation device. I think many people haven't realized how much Intel has moved into the GPU space though, simply because they still think of it as a CPU with integrated graphics. True, they're not competing in the high end discrete graphics cards but they're eating away at the dGPU chips that used to be in all laptops, now you just find them at the very high end. If they took their EUs, put them on a separate chip and multiplied it up to a 250W power budget I wonder how far up the totem pole they'd reach.

      • I don't think you realize the performance level of a latest Intel dual core CPU that scales between 1.0 and 2.6GHz. It's fucking good enough. Better than Pentium 4, Atom and slightly old ARM, which is what people often are actually using. If you're doing video encoding or RAW photo importing and don't give a fuck whether it takes 5 or 15 minutes, one or two hours.. Good enough, can use AVX/AVX2 for that and you can still use the computer while background processing is occuring anyway.

  • As in no discernible improvement in performance even across multiple generations. Intel's process-reduction strategy made sense in the past for improving battery life but now that notebooks are pushing 8+ hours on reasonably-sized batteries I don't think it's enough anymore.
    • by Anonymous Coward

      The gimmick with these chips is that they will enable "fanless" (maximum temperature of 41C, not much more than body temperature) and thin form factors with plenty of performance (hoping for a Surface revival or that people will cool on tablets and get 2-in-1s for "productivity"). TDP nearing that of Atom, but with much better performance. Much of that might be from this huge gulf between the base and turbo frequencies. I can't recall seeing such a large difference between them before. That also means that

    • by Kjella ( 173770 )

      Well, if you look at their power distribution graphics it's now primarily screen, then CPU and then SoC. Even though Intel is improving the last two it seems that to take anything to the "next level" we need more power efficient screens.

    • by Bengie ( 1121981 )
      Many data centers are entirely limited by power and cooling. Advances in power savings indirectly increases speeds. Not to mention smaller batteries.
    • Well as long they have little competition why should they push anything?

      I can only hope that AMD and TSMC or GloFo will do something about that.

  • I hear these are headed for the premium end of the tablet market, with the usual unsat display resolution. I.E. not going to move units.
  • 4ghz per core "turbo" to 5.1 is what is needed, and where the hell is the 8 core i9 processor?

    • by Anonymous Coward

      You're looking for the Core i7 5960X.

  • Why just tablets? This sounds like a full powered, full featured processor for smart phones and a serious attack against AMD's mobile market share.

    Their marketing promises are largely useless (productivity up to 19% better? 3-D graphics up to 47% better? What does that even mean?) but with graphics, wireless, and fast processing in a low power chip they're already there.

    When I saw a mention of a "small L3 cache" I looked at Intel's [intel.com] site (warning: PDF) which also didn't five actual L3 cache sizes. By the way

    • by Bengie ( 1121981 ) on Friday September 05, 2014 @02:40PM (#47837071)
      Smartphones CPUs use more along the lines of 0.2watt max with below 0.01watt idle.
      • So they can run on a potato?
      • These days phone chips have TDPs running around 8-10W, like Exynos 5250's 8W max TDP. If you look at perf/watt at the top end, Intel's chips are still very securely in the lead.

        Yeah, the ARM chips can still clock down way lower, but throwing around numbers like 0.2W max is just being disingenuous.
      • by Kjella ( 173770 )

        That sounds low, here's a test [notebookcheck.net] of the iPhone 5 and at maximum power draw they killed a 6000 mWh [leancrew.com] battery in two hours meaning a power draw of ~3W. Of course that includes the screen and the whole SoC, but if you can put a 5W processor in a tablet I'm thinking 1W in a smartphone seems reasonable. P.S. My Google-fu says that <10 mW is only if the CPU is in suspend/standby mode, basically it's off and waiting for the network or user input to wake it up again. Idle but active draw seems to be more like 30-50

    • "Up to x% better" means the same as "less than x% better."

  • The bookBook [youtube.com] requires a lot less than that.

  • by fnj ( 64210 ) on Friday September 05, 2014 @04:10PM (#47837745)

    It's pretty clear that both the summary and the article are only concerned about mobile Broadwells, and only a very few models at that. But good luck finding that specified anywhere in the verbiage. Myself, I couldn't care less about mobile. For god's sake, throw us a bone about what to expect from Broadwell DESKTOP.

    • Myself, I couldn't care less about mobile. For god's sake, throw us a bone about what to expect from Broadwell DESKTOP.

      Myself, I couldn't care less about desktop, since my hexacore AMD chip is still serving my needs and I therefore have no plans to buy a desktop chip any time soon. I care only about server and mobile. SERVE ME, AND IGNORE ALL OTHER USERS OF THIS SITE.

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