SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Intel shared a number of product announcements at its Intel Architecture Day 2020, and later, at Hot Chips 2020.
Intel's upcoming "Tiger Lake" mobile processors will improve performance with "Willow Cove" cores (a small IPC gain from "Sunny Cove", but higher clock speeds), and feature Intel Xe integrated graphics with up to 96 execution units. The chips use an upgraded "10nm" process Intel calls "10nm SuperFin", indicating improvements to the FinFET transistor technology. Intel claims this is the "largest single intranode enhancement in Intel history", with a 17-18% transistor performance jump from their original "10nm" node (and most elusive one?).
Intel's Alder Lake hybrid/heterogeneous desktop CPUs are set to be released in 2021. These will use a big/small core configuration that first appeared in Intel's Lakefield, and is similar to ARM's big.LITTLE (which was redesigned for more flexibility as DynamIQ). Alder Lake will use big "Golden Cove" cores which are the successor to Sunny/Willow Cove, and "Gracemont" Atom cores. Leaks point to configurations topping out at "8+8" (8 big cores, 8 small cores).
Intel plans to launch a high-performance discrete "Xe-HPG" GPU for gamers in 2021, but will use a third-party fab to build it. The GPUs will support real-time ray-tracing, like Nvidia and AMD's next-generation GPUs. Leaks indicate that TSMC will build the GPUs, using a "6nm" node.
Extra:
Intel Previews 4-Layer 3D XPoint Memory For Second-Generation Optane SSDs
Intel Xe-HPC GPU Status Update: 4 Process Nodes Make 1 Accelerator
Intel Next-Gen 10-micron Stacking: Going 3D Beyond Foveros
Intel Confirms Sapphire Rapids Processors In 2021 With DDR5, PCIe 5.0 And CXL 1.1
Spotted At Hot Chips: Quad Tile Intel Xe-HP GPU
Intel Details Tiger Lake at Hot Chips 2020, Die Revealed
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 18 2020, @04:25PM (1 child)
The performance hit.
We need in-oirder cores and a generation of slower but unpatented and drm-free expansion hardware (gpu, new ethernet cards, replacement intel 8x0/hda audio hardware, etc.)
It's almost doable now. Those 300nm fabs Google is offering open source products a trial run on would be enough for a stripped down x86 core, a stripped down vulkan gpu core (in fact if the patents expired and there is no copyright infringement involved, a modified VC4 instruction set with a PCI based mailbox could be an option for sub-Vulkan to minimal Vulkan 1.0 support.)
The problem is: few people are willing to pay for that and even fewer are capable/willing of designing it to utilize patent free parts and ensure integrity and openness for legacy software. If we can get this done (x86_64 patents should start expiring in 2001 btw!) we could finally limit or eliminate the corporation controlled management engines, and if still deigned necessary, provide a user controlled, although physically less secure management engine for users who truly do need them. Combined with a smartcard or similar keystore to interact with the management engine, it could provide the security benefits they claim for current end-users, while providing none for DRM manufacturers. You won't be watching your latestest proprietary videos/movies/music/games on it, but if you're fool enough to be into those, there are always cellphones and consoles!)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by DannyB on Tuesday August 18 2020, @09:06PM
Patents and Copyrights are two very different beasts from the same infernal nether region.
Even if old patents are expired, newer products will have patents on them. They will find some trivial patent to sue over. (In fact, that is a possibility for any RISC-V wannabe vendor, once they have some actual money to sue over.) They (Intel, AMD, IBM, etc) can always sue, even if they have no case. You still have to defend the lawsuit. Unlike copyright, a patent infringement lawsuit is not only very expensive, but also very complex and difficult to defend. Even if you are innocent. This is the way our system is set up to be.
Completely new architectures like RISC-V or others are more likely to be able to survive the "defendant" end of a patent litigation because it is more obvious that they didn't just copy outright. If you built an x86 processor, you've just handed them a more convincing argument (to a judge and jury) that you just copied, er . . . "stole their technology!" that they spent decades developing!
Better to let x86 rot in peace. Where it belongs. In the 9th circle of walmart. Sadfully there is too much legacy software for it (*cough* Windows *cough*).
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.