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posted by martyb on Friday October 20 2017, @12:12AM   Printer-friendly
from the 512-bit-management-engine dept.

Intel's upcoming 10nm Cannon Lake CPUs will include support for AVX-512 instructions, even in some consumer-oriented SKUs:

A new update to the Intel document for software developers indicates that the company will begin to introduce various AVX-512 instruction set extensions to its consumer CPUs soon. This will start from the codenamed Cannon Lake (CNL) and Ice Lake (ICL) processors, made using 10 nm process technologies. The new extensions will enable future chips to improve performance in certain applications. One of the main questions on AVX-512 is which consumer programs will actually support the AVX-512 when these CNL and ICL processors hit the market. In addition to the AVX-512, the upcoming processors will introduce a host of other new non-AVX-512 instructions.

According to the Intel Architecture Instruction Set Extensions and Future Features Programming Reference document, Intel's Cannon Lake CPUs will support AVX512F, AVX512CD, AVX512DQ, AVX512BW, and AVX512VL. This will bring the feature set of these CPUs to the current level of the Skylake-SP based processors. In addition, the Cannon Lake microarchitecture will support the AVX512_IFMA and AVX512_VBMI commands, but at this point, it is unclear whether the support will be limited to servers, or will also be featured in the consumer processors (the latter scenario is likely based on the document wording, but remains unclear).

Intel originally promised to release Cannon Lake processors in 2016 – 2017 timeframe, but delayed introduction of its 10 nm process technology to 2018, thus postponing the CPU launch as well. Initially it was expected that the Cannon Lake CPUs would generally resemble the Kaby Lake and Coffee Lake chips with some refinements, but the addition of the AVX-512 support means a rather tangible architecture improvement. For AVX-512, large the[sic] chunks of data require massive memory bandwidth, which the Skylake-SP cores get due to large caches and more memory controllers. Keeping in mind memory bandwidth and power consumption factors, the AVX-512 might not be supported by all Cannon Lake client CPUs, but only by those aimed at higher-performance machines (i.e., no AVX-512 for ULP mobile parts as well as entry-level desktop SKUs, but this is [speculation] at this point). Meanwhile, [the] good news is that by the time AVX-512-supporting Cannon Lake processors arrive, programs for client PCs that take advantage of the latest extensions will likely be available.

Previously: AVX-512: A "Hidden Gem"?
Intel's Skylake-SP vs AMD's Epyc


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 20 2017, @08:32PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 20 2017, @08:32PM (#585417)

    Jews pulling the strings at Intel and AMD on its way to being owned by a bunch of Arabs. Finally the religious war of which x86 processor is better can reach its penultimate apocalyptic conclusion.

    IMD (Islamic Micro Devices): If your processor doesn't burn hot with the rage of Allah it's not Halal!