Intel's 8th-Gen 'Coffee Lake' Core CPUs Will Be Revealed During the Great American Eclipse (pcworld.com) 98
Brad Chacos, writing for PCWorld: Intel's response to AMD's disruptive Ryzen processors is soon to get its time in the sun. Well, sort of. On Tuesday, Intel announced plans to livestream the launch of its 8th-generation "Coffee Lake" processors on August 21 -- the same day that the great American solar eclipse casts its shadow across the United States. Intel's throwing shade. Eighth-gen Coffee Lake chips will be built using a revised version of Intel's 14nm process technology for an unprecedented fourth time, following in the footsteps of Broadwell, Skylake, and Kaby Lake architectures. You'll probably also need a new motherboard to use them. But most notably, Intel claims 8th-gen Core chips will be up to 30 percent faster than today's Kaby Lake processors in some applications. Intel chips haven't seen a performance leap like that in years. Beyond that, little is officially known about Coffee Lake, though the churning internet rumor mill thinks that Intel will up the core counts this time around to combat the threat of Ryzen.
Central Penetration Units - right to the core (Score:3)
Covfefe lake processors have only the best cores. Believe me, it's true. And they're fast. They'll drain the process pool for you so quick, you've never seen so quick. No CPU respects threads like Covfefe processors do, it's unpresidented: it grabs them by the stack frame, programs let you do that, you know, when you're a Covfefe multicore CPU. Howe many cores? I'll keep you in suspense. Do Covfefe CPUs support hyperthreading? Yeah, I guess so.
Re: (Score:2)
Only Windows 10, not Windows 7.
Linux kernels 3+ are affected AFAICT, but I can't reproduce the problem on 2.6.39 on my Slackware box.
Can't trigger it in my Hackintosh but it hits FreeBSD.
That's not a hardware problem, that's an OS problem, specifically with newer SMT handling code.
Re: (Score:2)
To boot, it's only Ryzen, not EPYC or Threadripper. HotHardware says a kernel fix is coming. Yea, sounds like software problems to me.
Re: (Score:2)
That is false sir. There is a Ryzen bug but it only effects HIGH workloads, something average users don't do. The Bug is being investigated and will be repaired. FYI.
The Gandalf CPU... (Score:5, Funny)
Hero CPUs (Score:2)
They're only manufacturing the CPUs during solar eclipses to give them supernatural powers.
gasp Intel Blocks Sun! (Score:2)
I'm gonna buy 10 copies of that tabloid for my muthah
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Intel unveils their newest processor... and darkness falls across the land.
As AMD eclipses Intel's best. Again.
Re: (Score:2)
This CPU will deliver phenomenal performance but only during solar eclipses.
AMD will counter with a knockoff that works during those more common lunar eclipses.
Code Name (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:1)
Are you serial or Super Duper Serial!
I'm pretty sure he's cereal, or maybe parallel.
Re: (Score:2)
With TV's Patrick Duffy for a leg
Re: (Score:2)
They actually chose "Covfefe" but it leaked out at the Whitehouse.
More Intel BS (Score:5, Interesting)
Given that just yesterday, Intel announced a product release for September 25th isn't it a little early to talk about what comes after? We haven't had the chance to see how their current compares to AMD's offering which isn't due until later this month.
Guess Intel is afraid of something. Maybe AMD has given them some much needed competition.
Re: (Score:2)
You shit on AMD, fine. I prefer Intel too.
But you should be grateful that AMD is coming back, it will stimulate competition and hopefully result in better products from Intel.
The problem you mentioned was caused by AMD CPUs having no thermal protection and an exposed die, requiring you to be extra careful with your heatsink. So much that most shops had a "we don't take back burnt or chipped CPUs" sign. It is no longer the case. They addressed the issue with the Athlon X2, around 2005.
Re: (Score:2)
I was still holding only my anti-Intel angst from my Amiga days
Right, I mean, only a moron would blindly hold a grudge against a CPU company for years and years, right?
Presumably the same sort of moron who lacks the ability to regulate their own emotions, or use paragraphs.
Re: Suckky Offering (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
My understanding is this eclipse should be blocking a good deal of the sun all over the continental US. So no matter where you are, you're going to have a pretty damn good show. Go buy your eclipse viewing glasses.
Fuck glasses. I just wait until the eclipse happens to look at it.
Re: (Score:3)
Its Samsung and TSMC.
Intel was a generation ahead on process tech with AMD's last iteration.
Now Samsung has sold time to AMD for 14nm production (Ryzen)
and TSMC has sold time to AMD for 10nm production (PlayStation and XBOX console chips)
AMD has always had the better CPU design. What they didnt have was access to matching process tech for about 8 years or so.
AMD is not even close to Intels rival. The other fab companies are, and they are ahead and
Re: (Score:2)
AMD is still contracted with GlobalFoundries (which was previously completely owned by AMD) for CPU production.
Hynix makes the HBM2 chips for their Vega GPUs.
Samsung and TSMC get overflow and second bidding.
AMD is targeting 7nm with GloFo for 2018 on a "performance" node (the Zen architecture is on the "low power" node). If this pans out, late 2018 and early 2019 will be very interesting.
Further, Intel doesn't earn money by leasing its manufacturing out to others (I believe they actually do some of this no
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It's almost as if Moore's law has slowed down. Tick-tock-tock-tock...
Tri-Gates are dead! Long live FinFETs! (Score:3, Interesting)
Eighth-gen Coffee Lake chips will be built using a revised version of Intel's 14nm process technology for an unprecedented fourth time
Intel is switching to complete 14nm FinFET here. The reason is that some of the competing fabs that stayed with FinFET are now manufacturing 10nm FinFET while Intel spent 3 years now trying to make 10nm Tri-Gates economical and have failed miserably. The Tri-Gate lithography is just too expensive: Too many steps, and the yields too poor.
When Intel beat the world to 14nm it didnt matter so much that Tri-Gate's were not as economical as FinFET because Intel beat the world there by a big margin and didnt have to compete. Now they not only have to complete against 14nm FinFET but also 10nm FinFET and it wont be long until 7nm FinFET is in production by at least the companies that skipped 10nm on purpose (they are not the same fab companies as the ones producing 10nm FinFET's today)
Companies that beat Intel to 10nm (so far):
Samsung, TSMC
Companies that absolutely will beat Intel to 7nm:
Global Foundries, TSMC, Samsung. I predict that this is the order that it will happen in. GloFlo skipped 10nm on purpose to be the first to 7nm.
Re: (Score:2)
Intel manufacturers FinFETs, they don't call it "Tri Gate" anymore, and haven't for a while. Also it's well known that process nodes are meaningless these days, and transistor and metal densities are much higher on Intel processes for the same node name. If you really want to talk about lithography costs, you should look up LELE/LELELE vs. SADP/SAQP (the latter, which Intel uses, is cheaper).
TSMC had a delayed start to their 10 nm node, in a similar fashion as Intel did with their 14 nm. You can sure bet th
10nm != 10nm (Score:3, Informative)
Just to clarify, 10nm refers to the "process" and not the actual pitch of any of the resulting elements. Each fab implements it differently which results in different densities for the same "process". For example, the TSMC 10nm process has a gate pitch of 66nm and and interconnect of 44nm while Samsung's 68/51 respectively... the end result being that TSMC 10nm chips are denser than Samsung. Intel's is supposed to be 54/36 which is actually the same pitch as Samsung's proposed 8nm process and slightly sm
Re: (Score:2)
And TSMC has developed their 14nm, nope sorry their 16nm, into a smaller "12nm". Unless I'm saying something wrong/silly here.
I believe TSMC transistor densities on their 14nm is significantly higher than Intels now, yes, but thats because Intel moved back onto FinFET and are late to the game. The other companies have refined their 14nm node. Intel had to scrap theirs and start fresh. Thats a big thing.
Not at all unexpected.. (Score:2)
During all the hype about Ryzen I kept telling people that I imagine Intel has something sitting on the shelf they'll bring out now. They just didn't have a reason to until challenged.
Surely people didn't think their designers were just sitting on their hands while they were milking the the current lines?
Good to see some competition heating up again though..
Re: (Score:2)
Surely people didn't think their designers were just sitting on their hands while they were milking the the current lines?
I'll take that bet.
After all, I've got Nokia, Blackberry, 3dfx, Voodoo, Via to back me up... (to name a few)
Re: (Score:2)
Seems to me he's got it pegged exactly.
Re: (Score:2)
Except those companies weren't dependent on their competitor. Intel needs AMD for several reasons.
First, AMD is a credible competitor. You may be aware that Intel was under investigation for monopolistic practices that hurt AMD, so Intel's already got a taste of government regulation, You can bet killing AMD is not on Intel's radar - if nothing else, it keeps governments away from Intel. Having AMD we
Re: (Score:2)
>> First, AMD is a credible competitor.
Not in my opinion.They've clearly been the ghetto option for decades.
If budget isn't as much of an issue as reliability then Intel has always been a better buy.
Re: (Score:3)
Don't expect much, it's a rework on the same process. Intel has literally stalled out making it to 10nm, they've now redesigned the same cpu on the same process 4 times. The entire Intel advantage of being several process steps ahead of everyone else has evaporated over the course of the last 2 years. Coffee lake will likely be no faster than the generation before it or the 2 more before that.
They will claim it's 30% faster because it has some new instruction that allows it to perform a single task that muc
Re: Not at all unexpected.. (Score:2)
Actually, the 30% increase is on one particular benchmark when going from a two-core mobile part to the four-core part that sits at the same place in the Coffee Lake lineup. It sounds more like a power efficiency gain than a real throughput gain.
Timing is everything... (Score:5, Funny)
Intel's 8th-Gen 'Coffee Lake' Core CPUs Will Be Revealed During the Great American Eclipse
Quick! While nobody's looking!
Re: (Score:2)
That is so true.
As of late, Intel has been abusing the "up to" gimmick like there's no tomorrow.
Re: (Score:2)
They've even doubled down on the "up to" for clock speeds.
There's a base clock, TurboBoost 2.0 clock, and a TurboBoost 3.0 clock.
To be fair, AMD does the same thing now, I believe, with the base clock, all core turbo clock, and max, single core turbo clock.
Why is it always, always, 30%? (Score:4, Interesting)
Has there ever been a new generation where the promised increase wasn't "up to 30%" ? Because I've never heard any other number used.
Also, am I the only one that finds Intel a wee bit histrionic this last month or so? They've been throwing everything they can (including the chairs) at the wall, but nothing seems to stick so far.
Re: Why is it always, always, 30%? (Score:2)
You gave Intel too much credit. It's actually a two- to four-core transition for a mobile part.
Re: (Score:2)
The future for Intel will eventually be: 14nm to 10nm, then 10nm to 7nm,
But in this case it is almost certainly just due to an increased core count (making the chips bigger in the process)
Overthinking it (Score:3)
There's part of me that wonders whether Intel knows its offering is going to be underwhelming, and is therefore choosing to release it on a day when a lot of tech/science types will be somewhat distracted.
Re: (Score:2)
Coffee Lake... (Score:2)
Will there be a decaf version?
Re: (Score:2)
They had to launch during the eclipse ... (Score:2)
... because their claims can't stand the light of day.
Is Intel embarrassed? (Score:2)
I ask because I can't think of any other reason why you'd intentionally introduce a product at a moment when it's guaranteed that almost nobody will be paying attention.
Just bought Kaby Lake (Score:2)
New socket but no added pci-e or faster DMI will t (Score:2)
New socket but no added pci-e or faster DMI?
Will Coffee Lake-X also be 2 ram channels and only 16 pci-e as well?
Slogan (Score:2)