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posted by martyb on Sunday March 07 2021, @04:43AM   Printer-friendly
from the notsogood-things-come-to-those-who-wait? dept.

Intel's next-generation "Rocket Lake" CPUs will be some of Intel's last desktop models on a "14nm" node, and include "backported" Willow Cove cores (referred to as "Cypress Cove") from "10nm" Tiger Lake mobile CPUs, with improved instructions per clock. Notably, the lineup only goes up to 8 cores, instead of 10 cores for the previous Core i9. The review embargo ends on the launch date, March 30th, but some retailers have been selling the CPUs early. AnandTech obtained an 8-core i7-11700K and wrote a review of it. The results were not great.

Power consumption of the 125 W TDP chip peaked at 224.56 W when running an AVX2 workload, compared to 204.79 W for its i7-10700K "Comet Lake" predecessor and 141.45 W for AMD's Ryzen 7 5800X. The i7-11700K reached 291.68 W with an AVX-512 workload.

The i7-11700K not only failed to beat the 5800X in many benchmarks, but trailed the previous-gen i7-10700K in some cases. The major exception is performance in AVX-512 workloads. Gaming performance of the i7-11700K was particularly bad, in part due to an increase in L3 cache and core-to-core latency.

It's possible that there will be some improvements from a final microcode update before launch. There's also models like the Core i9-11900K, which have the same 8 cores but can clock up to 300 MHz higher.

See also: Intel Core i7-11700K 8 Core Rocket Lake CPU Review Published By Anandtech – Very Hot, Consumes More Power Than Core i9-10900K & Slower Than AMD In Core-To-Core Tests

Related: Linus Torvalds: Don't Hide Rust in Linux Kernel; Death to AVX-512
Former Intel Principal Engineer Blasts the Company
Gigabyte Confirms Intel Rocket Lake Desktop CPUs Will Launch in March


Original Submission

Related Stories

Linus Torvalds: Don't Hide Rust in Linux Kernel; Death to AVX-512 50 comments

Linus Torvalds' Initial Comment On Rust Code Prospects Within The Linux Kernel

Kernel developers appear to be eager to debate the merits of potentially allowing Rust code within the Linux kernel. Linus Torvalds himself has made some initial remarks on the topic ahead of the Linux Plumbers 2020 conference where the matter will be discussed at length.

[...] Linus Torvalds chimed in though with his own opinion on the matter. Linus commented that he would like it to be effectively enabled by default to ensure there is widespread testing and not any isolated usage where developers then may do "crazy" things. He isn't calling for Rust to be a requirement for the kernel but rather if the Rust compiler is detected on the system, Kconfig would enable the Rust support and go ahead in building any hypothetical Rust kernel code in order to see it's properly built at least.

Linus Torvalds Wishes Intel's AVX-512 A Painful Death

According to a mailing list post spotted by Phoronix, Linux creator Linus Torvalds has shared his strong views on the AVX-512 instruction set. The discussion arose as a result of recent news that Intel's upcoming Alder Lake processors reportedly lack support for AVX-512.

Torvalds' advice to Intel is to focus on things that matter instead of wasting resources on new instruction sets, like AVX-512, that he feels aren't beneficial outside the HPC market.

Related: Rust 1.0 Finally Released!
Results of Rust Survey 2016
AVX-512: A "Hidden Gem"?
Linus Torvalds Rejects "Beyond Stupid" Intel Security Patch From Amazon Web Services


Original Submission

Former Intel Principal Engineer Blasts the Company 10 comments

What's wrong with Intel, and how to fix it: Former principal engineer unloads (archive)

In a blunt video posted late Thursday evening, outspoken former Intel principal engineer Francois Pidnoel offered his advice on how to "fix" Intel CPUs, criticized current leadership for not being engineers, said AVX512 was a misadventure, and declared that it's only luck AMD hasn't grabbed more market share.

"First, Intel is really out of focus," Piednoel said in the nearly hour-long video presentation. "The leaders of Intel today are not engineers, they are not people who understand what to design to the market."

[...] Pidnoel flat-out dismissed including AVX512 in consumer chips as a mistake. "You had Skylake and Skylake X for a reason," Piednoel said. "AVX512 is designed for a race of throughput that is lost to the GPU already. There's two ways to get throughput. One is to get the throughput is by having larger vectors to your core, and the other way is to have more cores."

[...] "Intel is very lucky AMD cannot get the volume, to be able to compete," Piednoel. "If they were getting volume, the price difference would definitely cost Intel market share a lot more than what they are losing right now."

Related: AVX-512: A "Hidden Gem"?
Intel CEO Blames "10nm" Delays on Aggressive Density Target, Promises "7nm" for 2021
Intel's Process Nodes Will Trail Behind Competitors Until at Least Late 2021
Linus Torvalds: Don't Hide Rust in Linux Kernel; Death to AVX-512
Intel Engineering Chief Out After 7nm Product Delays
Intel Faces Class-Action Lawsuit Over "7nm" Delays


Original Submission

Gigabyte Confirms Intel Rocket Lake Desktop CPUs Will Launch in March 30 comments

Intel Rocket Lake Desktop CPUs Will Launch in March, Gigabyte Confirms - ExtremeTech:

Gigabyte has confirmed that Intel will launch its Rocket Lake CPU refresh in March, as part of an announcement touting its own PCIe 4.0 support. Gigabyte announced today that if you own a Z490 motherboard, you'll be getting a UEFI update to support Rocket Lake CPUs with full PCIe 4.0 support.

The rest of the PR goes into detail on how Gigabyte engineered their motherboards to handle the higher heat output of PCIe 4.0, and the fact that addressable BAR support is coming to the company's motherboards as well. Addressable BAR is the same feature AMD debuted as Smart Access Memory earlier this year.

The March 2021 date confirms what we've heard previously — late March is more likely than early March. It's going to be genuinely interesting to see how Cypress Cove performs against AMD's Zen 3. Generally speaking, based on leaked benchmarks and early data, we're looking at impressive gains for Intel in single-thread performance. Multi-thread performance estimates for the Core i9-11900K have varied. In some cases, the 11900K is almost a match for the 10-core Core i9-10900K. In a few leaked results, it's actually been faster on eight cores than Comet Lake was on 10.

Are any of my fellow Soylentils doing PC builds right now, and if so what are you building? Let us know in the comments!

takyon writes: Intel announced more details about Rocket Lake at CES 2021. While dropping the top core count from 10 to 8, Intel estimates a 19% IPC increase for Rocket Lake-S. It also adds AVX-512 and "Deep Learning Boost" support. The integrated graphics should be about 50% faster, and can be used for stream encoding while discrete graphics is being used for gaming. AV1 video decode is supported. New Z590, B560, and H510 motherboards will support both Rocket Lake and Comet Lake. Intel's comparison of the 8-core i9-11900K to AMD's 12-core Ryzen 9 5900X shows the former performing 2-8% faster at several games at 1080p.

Also at Tom's Hardware and Wccftech.


Original Submission

Intel Says Goodbye to Rocket Lake CPUs 1 comment

Intel Says Goodbye to Rocket Lake CPUs:

Intel this week announced plans to discontinue its higher-end 11th Generation Core 'Rocket Lake' processors, which are made using its 14nm-class process technology. The CPUs will still be available to Intel's partners for a while, but their days are now numbered. Intel also said it will phase out its 400 and 500-series chipsets for processors in LGA1200 packaging.

[...] Intel's Rocket Lake processors for desktops have always been somewhat controversial: On one hand, they're based on the Cypress Cove microarchitecture (which derives from Sunny Cove microarchitecture) and are equipped with an Xe-powered integrated GPU, just like Intel's 10nm Ice Lake and Tiger Lake CPUs for mobile PCs and compact desktops. On the other hand — unlike Ice Lake and Tiger Lake processors — Rocket Lake chips are made using a refined 14nm-class process technology.

Because Rocket Lake chips feature backported general-purpose cores, Intel had to reduce the core count of these CPUs from 10 (in the case of Comet Lake) to eight. The new chips still offered better performance than their predecessors in loads of applications, but those who needed higher core count preferred AMD's Ryzen 9 3900-series CPUs with 12 or 16 cores, or even Intel's 10th Generation Comet Lake processors.

It's unlikely that Intel's 11th Generation Core Rocket Lake CPUs will be missed all that much, as Intel has since released two 10nm-based product families for desktops featuring competitive microarchitectures. But for those who would like to upgrade their LGA1200 machines, Rocket Lake chips will continue to be available for a while — but not forever.

Previously:
    AnandTech Reviews Intel's i7-11700K "Rocket Lake" CPU Early
    Gigabyte Confirms Intel Rocket Lake Desktop CPUs Will Launch in March


Original Submission

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  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday March 07 2021, @05:03AM (1 child)

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Sunday March 07 2021, @05:03AM (#1120961) Journal
    • (Score: 4, Funny) by driverless on Sunday March 07 2021, @11:42AM

      by driverless (4770) on Sunday March 07 2021, @11:42AM (#1121021)

      "Rocket Lake"? Sounds like a better name for it would be Lava Lake.

  • (Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 07 2021, @06:08AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 07 2021, @06:08AM (#1120968)

    Support Myanmar Democracy.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 07 2021, @06:53AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 07 2021, @06:53AM (#1120979)

      Democracy is a sham export of evil westerners.

  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by fakefuck39 on Sunday March 07 2021, @06:09AM (7 children)

    by fakefuck39 (6620) on Sunday March 07 2021, @06:09AM (#1120969)

    the tests they ran seem to completely disagree with every other person who ran these tests. in fact, not only does their overall conclusion disagree, the individual tests are not matching either. this makes me thing they screwed up their tests. but let's not stop the anger based on likely misinformation - this is soylent in 2021 after all, not soylent in 2019.

    https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i7-11700K-vs-Intel-Core-i7-10700K/4107vs4070 [userbenchmark.com]

    here we see the new one beating the old one in every category, despite being clocked lower. why did they clock it lower? one can theorize. AVX512 normally clocks the core at half speed. This is terrible when you're mixing in other instructions - so as you normally would in a mixed workload with multiple apps or VMs running. So they figured out a better way, had to clock a little lower, but no longer take the huge hit.

    so, much better CPU. Oh look - if we look at other sources it beat the crap out of the Ryzen they tested too.

    So, let me correct their conclusion to the real world:
    "The i7-11700K beat the 5800X in all benchmarks, as well as the previous-gen i7-10700K in all cases. We are a bunch of lying faggots who are not competent to conduct testing."

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 07 2021, @06:33AM (6 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 07 2021, @06:33AM (#1120975)

      It's cool that you based your opinion on the most unreliable and biased site - userbenchmark - against one of the oldest and most consistent sites - anandtech.
      Also AVX-512 very rarely, if ever, goes as low as you claim, which you'd know if you'd actually used a CPU with those instructions yourself.

      • (Score: 2) by fakefuck39 on Sunday March 07 2021, @06:53AM (5 children)

        by fakefuck39 (6620) on Sunday March 07 2021, @06:53AM (#1120980)

        AVX512 drops to about half the normal max (turbo) frequency in every test I've done. Yes, it's on a windows laptop, so the extra heat effect may be affecting it more. The other tests I did was on a 2000+ core esx farm. same thing. Yes, on paper the hit is 25% in performance. I'm talking about clock speed. when you go half the clock speed, you do not go half the performance.

        so I think anandtech may have mixed in some light AVX512 instructions into their tests, and this caused the chip to clock down more.

        and FYI, something that's common knowledge for people: anandtech went to shit after Anand left. Which was years ago. So now it's not a trustworthy source. It's a source that was trustworthy, the ownership and leadership changed, and now it's a site with a narrative, catchy headlines, bad testing, and results that aren't trusted. Welcome to 2016.

        • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 07 2021, @07:52AM (4 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 07 2021, @07:52AM (#1121000)

          AVX512 drops to about half the normal max (turbo) frequency in every test I've done.

          That's not consistent with what's supposed to happen unless your tests only use the heaviest instructions (https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/intel/frequency_behavior). It's also not consistent with my own testing.

          so I think anandtech may have mixed in some light AVX512 instructions into their tests, and this caused the chip to clock down more.

          Really? They are running standard benchmarks. Have you even read their conclusions and cache latency analysis? I'll tl;dr: the IPC increase is there, but it gets negated by increased cache latencies, which is the same problem earlier Ryzens had.

          One theory is that Rocket Lake will scale better with faster memory (again, just like Ryzen), but running above specified maximum 3200MHz for Rocket Lake 1) requires a Z-series motherboard, which is expensive 2) invalidates the warranty (at least outside of the EU) since Intel considers this overclocking.

          I found no fault in Anandtech's testing methodology apart from using a ridiculous 2kg copper cooler on Intel platforms, but that still makes the comparison between 10700K and 11700K valid since they used the same hardware for both.

          We'll have to see what other reviews say. One interesting dynamic is that Anand's review used a retail sample, and not a press sample which possibly might've been binned better...

          • (Score: 2) by fakefuck39 on Sunday March 07 2021, @08:36AM (3 children)

            by fakefuck39 (6620) on Sunday March 07 2021, @08:36AM (#1121009)

            the site i linked ran standard benchmarks and shows the opposite result. more importantly, does it make sense to you that the new and improved generation of a cpu is slower than the previous? does it make sense to you that a cpu with a smaller cache performs worse? yes, we know a larger cache increases latency slightly. and as is always the case, the speedup from the larger cache is expected to increase the overall performance.

            anandtech results don't match all the others out there - google it. they also don't make any common sense. what's interesting is people look at this one result, an uncommon and illogical result, and fight tooth and nail that it's correct, instead of the obvious -they're either lying for some reason, which they've been known to do under the new management, or they ran a bad test - also something they've been known to do under the new management.

            so take one of the rest of the tests - just from google - that shows the new cpu is faster. and examine That for the test methodology. find anything wrong? no? oh, so nothing wrong by your opinion in tests showing opposite results? then something's wrong with how you determine the validity of the test.

            • (Score: 2) by Reziac on Monday March 08 2021, @02:30AM (1 child)

              by Reziac (2489) on Monday March 08 2021, @02:30AM (#1121272) Homepage

              My cynical little voice wants to know if anandtech has an advertising contract with AMD.

              --
              And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
              • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 08 2021, @03:15AM

                by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 08 2021, @03:15AM (#1121279)

                That's from the Intel playbook.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 08 2021, @05:17PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 08 2021, @05:17PM (#1121426)

              more importantly, does it make sense to you that the new and improved generation of a cpu is slower than the previous?

              No... but can you tell we with a straight face that Pentium 4 was better than Pentium 3? And do you remember the scandal when some some Centrino CPUs were better than Pentium ones (and Intel subsequently gimped the Centrino ones to maintain market segmentation). Stuff happens.

              Frankly, given how much Intel games benchmarks, plus all the other scandals (e.g. The security flaw... rowhammer? Whatever, the one they tried to snowball the world and Linus into saying "not a bug, and even if it is, AMD has it too.), I'd trust Anandtech over them. They also have more vested interest in bias news than Anandtech does. Plus, as mentioned by others, Anandtech is a old and vaunted name in tech journalism and testing.

  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Sunday March 07 2021, @07:39AM

    by Rosco P. Coltrane (4757) on Sunday March 07 2021, @07:39AM (#1120997)

    Intel's next-generation "Rocket Lake" CPUs will be some of Intel's last desktop models on a "14nm" node, and include "backported" Willow Cove cores (referred to as "Cypress Cove") from "10nm" Tiger Lake mobile CPUs, with improved instructions per clock. Notably, the lineup only goes up to 8 cores, instead of 10 cores for the previous Core i9. The review embargo ends on the launch date, March 30th, but some retailers have been selling the CPUs early. AnandTech obtained an 8-core i7-11700K and wrote a review of it. The results were not great.

    Power consumption of the 125 W TDP chip peaked at 224.56 W when running an AVX2 workload, compared to 204.79 W for its i7-10700K "Comet Lake" predecessor and 141.45 W for AMD's Ryzen 7 5800X. The i7-11700K reached 291.68 W with an AVX-512 workload.

    The i7-11700K not only failed to beat the 5800X in many benchmarks, but trailed the previous-gen i7-10700K in some cases. The major exception is performance in AVX-512 workloads. Gaming performance of the i7-11700K was particularly bad, in part due to an increase in L3 cache and core-to-core latency.

    What a crock of techno-verbiage.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 07 2021, @04:17PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 07 2021, @04:17PM (#1121078)

    Fuck you Intel you can keep your IME-infested silicon.

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