Intel’s 14000 series of processors are about to come out and they look to be kind of like
the 13000 series but slightly faster.
Boring.
But Intel have also been talking about their next, next-generation stuff.
There’s a lot to cover, but I’ve picked 3 main reasons for why it’s exciting which
I’ll briefly cover in this video.
Reason number 1: TILES So first of all, Intel are finally splitting
their processors up into multiple parts.
AMD has been doing this since 2017 already, in the form of their chiplet designs.
But Intel’s method is slightly different.
AMD strings multiple chiplets together using Infinity Fabric, meaning that instead of using
one chiplet for 4 cores, they can use 2 chiplets to get 8 cores.
Or 4 chiplets to get 16 cores.
The way they connect these together comes at a latency and power consumption cost.
Intel, on the other hand, are using a technology they’re calling ‘FOVEROS’ which essentially
connects several ‘tiles’ together, each of these tiles being like a separate chiplet
with a different purpose, so they’ve got one for graphics, another for the processing
cores and so on.
And this kind of connection comes with minimal power consumption cost.
Being modular, it allows for each individual bit to be made separately and from a different
manufacturing plant, which I’m imagining would enable all sorts of benefits.
For a start, each bit is smaller which helps minimise cost and defects.
Second, some parts of the processor may benefit more than other bits from the most expensive
and advanced nodes, while others may be able to save money by using a cheaper older one.
So this may be why they mix and match 3 different types here.
It may also help with supply to use more than one node.
But the most immediate benefit I can see to this modular approach is that Intel is no
longer bound to creating things from just one large die.
Instead, they can use multiple smaller parts, enabling larger, more complex, more modular
processor designs overall.
Reason number 2 – A third core type.
Up until now, Intel’s best counter to AMD’s chiplets has been their E cores, which they
designed to be a core that was as small as physically possible, which enabled improved
multicore performance on their processors without the need for much larger chip.
Well, now they’re making a THIRD type of core!
Which happens to be an E core again, only it’s now like a whole, self-contained processor
situated within just one of their new processors’ tiles.
You see this SoC tile?
This here is the mini processor!
They’ve called this a Low Power Island, which comes with its own memory, graphics
processing, and 2 E cores to handle light workloads.
And the purpose of this is to keep power consumption as low as possible.
So when work comes in for the processor to do, it tries to get it done on this little,
self-contained, power-efficient bit of the processor first.
If it can’t do this, and the workload proves too demanding, then it will pass it on to
the other, more powerful E cores in the processor.
And if even these aren’t enough for it then it awakens the powerful P cores.
This is the opposite of how Intel processors currently work, which involves all the work
going to the fast and power-hungry P cores first, before being passed onto to the E cores
if it deems it beneficial to do so.
So this change has all been done in the name of power efficiency, which I initially thought
was done for their laptops, but now I can see benefits all-round from this new strategy
provided it doesn’t take too long for it to figure out that I want my gaming to be
handled by the fastest P cores.
It’s not so much a 3rd type of core, so much as it is a place for work to go before
being assigned elsewhere.
Reason number 3 – NODES Intel have had a pretty rough time with their
nodes, infamously stuck on 14 nm for much, much longer than they had intended, and they’re
currently sitting on 10 nm while their competitors have moved to much better and smaller nodes,
several times.
Which is another reason why Intel has struggled to compete in terms of power consumption and
core counts!
WELL, now Intel’s playing catch up, promising 5 different nodes in 4 years.
But they are all misleadingly named.
Intel 7 is still 10 nm.
Intel 4 is 7 nm, Intel 3 appears to be a refined version of Intel 4, then because it gets difficult
to drop down under 2 nm without decimal points, they’re calling it 20A, only it’s probably
not 2 nm but they’re just using that name to say that it’s roughly equivalent to what
their competitors might be using at this stage.
It’s been a long time since any naming scheme of any process has accurately represented
the size of its transistors.
So this 20A process is essentially 2nm in every way… except actual size.
In conclusion: This has been an extremely simplified summary of a very complex new processor
architecture, but just take away from this that Intel are catching up after years of
being behind in several areas.
And it’s interesting that this time around, performance improvements have taken a backseat.
Sure, they’ve briefly mentioned that their E and P cores are ‘improved’, saying that
their Performance cores have become more Efficient, and their Efficient cores, more performant.
Raw speed hasn’t been Intel’s weak point recently and improvements in this area seem
to be less important than the other changes that I’ve covered in this video.
The focus seems to be on moving away from being at a chiplet and node disadvantage,
in order for Intel to level the playing field against their competition.
So there will be all sorts of benefits for this for Intel, but for us I hope it will
lead to more power-efficient processors… which are hopefully faster as well!