
Intel Rolls 14nm Broadwell in Vegas - matt42
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1325057
======
samstave
Jesus. When I worked at Intel, .18 to ~.14 MICRON chips were a big deal. (I
think that was the jump then... I am a bit foggy, this was in 1998).

I also recall when I was there having conversations and hearing the questions
of "Why don't we just stack multiple processors on a single die?" \-- and how
some people thought that was going to be impossible.

~~~
worklogin
When I started building computers in '04, I remember the old Newcastle AMDs
were 130nm, and the new Hotness was Venice/San Diego 90nm. Now we have 32nm in
Haswell, 14nm in Broadwell.

~~~
jacquesm
This is interesting:

[http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2012/05/14/intel-
proce...](http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2012/05/14/intel-process-
roadmap/1)

------
bd
Notable: these are all just low-power ultrabook range CPUs.

If you want high-power Broadwell CPUs that go into regular faster notebooks
(e.g. Macbook Pro, workstation Thinkpads, all gaming notebooks like MSI,
Gigabyte, Asus, Clevo, Alienware, etc), you will need to wait at least till
mid 2015.

Basically if you do anything non-trivial with CPU (gaming, rendering,
compiling), Broadwell CPUs launched so far are not interesting for you, you
will need to resort to old Haswell CPUs.

Intel's marketing managed to downplay this pretty well, most of news didn't
really notice this.

\------

Source: Intel Broadwell presentation slides

[http://www.notebookcheck.net/fileadmin/Notebooks/Sonstiges/P...](http://www.notebookcheck.net/fileadmin/Notebooks/Sonstiges/Prozessoren/Broadwell_ULV/5th_Gen_Core_LLPT_Final_16Dec2014_PDF-
page-004.jpg)

~~~
davidf18
My Macbook Pro Retina 13" comes with a 28 W TDP processor which the slides you
cite promise at end of Jan.

[http://ark.intel.com/products/75990/Intel-
Core-i5-4258U-Proc...](http://ark.intel.com/products/75990/Intel-
Core-i5-4258U-Processor-3M-Cache-up-to-2_90-GHz)

Hopeful to see rMBR 13" soon thereafter.

------
pmalynin
> "2/3 of the processor are dedicated for graphics"

That makes me sad. I would like to see a desktop version that instead puts in
more cores or whatever as when combined with any video card (GTX XXX or AMD
XXX) 2/3 of the processor are simply not used!

~~~
i_am_ralpht
Not me; I want a thin retina laptop with long battery life...

~~~
organsnyder
As long as "retina" means "high pixel density" and not necessarily an Apple
product, how about the new Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon?
[http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/01/hands-on-new-
lenovo-t...](http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/01/hands-on-new-lenovo-
thinkpad-x1-carbon-reignites-my-love-thinkpad-love-affair/)

~~~
MichaelGG
Oh wow, Lenovo finally got out of its own way. At least from a quick surface
glance. I spent a few days looking for something for me to just type on. I
gave up and got a new SSD for my X201 last night. But the heat is unmanageable
(under warranty I had the fan replaced thrice, to no real avail).

Still, one can hope this is a good sign and I'll be able to get a non-suck,
non-Apple, 12 inch machine this year.

Edit: Apparently it's a max of 8GB RAM which would be a huge sacrifice. FFS,
Lenovo.

~~~
organsnyder
I'm still rocking my T410. With 8 GB of RAM and an SSD, it does quite well.
However, I really want to get a lighter laptop with a high-DPI screen. Before
Lenovo's recent announcements (the T-450 also looks quite good) I wasn't sure
where to turn when my T410 no longer sufficed.

~~~
MichaelGG
Yeah the older ThinkPads are perfect if they just had a tech refresh. The
screens are useless, and the limit on CPU and RAM in them hurts, too.

I'm really annoyed. I went on to Lenovo right now to buy the new X1 - best
news I've had all year. I go to select RAM, and it's capped at 8GB. Just to
run my two dev machines I need at least 12GB (full Linux GUI + full Windows,
dev setup in both). Pretty lame. (The new X250 is also capped at 8GB, doesn't
offer a high-def screen. The new T450 fixes RAM, but apparently has only
1600x900 pixel screen, much less a proper 3K display. The T550 offers high-def
screens, but has an _offset keyboard_. It's like Lenovo is just flailing
around because there's no competition. ffs.)

I might get it anyways as my secondary in-bed laptop just to jot notes and
code on, but at $3000 ($3388 with 3yr warranty) properly kitted, I expect
more.

~~~
organsnyder
I've found 8GB to be acceptable for me, but it does seem strange that they
would cap it at 8GB. And at this point, they should be offering high-DPI
screens as an option on _every_ ThinkPad model (or at least the T, X, and W
series). My $400 phone should not have a better-looking screen than my $2000
laptop.

------
TrainedMonkey
While on average CPU's do not represent significant power draw anymore, it is
worthwhile to remember the "on average" part. As soon as you load your system
battery life drops down by at least half, so any kind of efficiency gains are
awesome.

------
higherpurpose
If you're already on Haswell, or even IVB, Broadwell isn't worth it. I'd wait
for Skylake.

~~~
nodata
Why?

~~~
skrause
Skylake will be able to run external 5K displays, more (smaller) CPUs will be
quad cores and it has support for DDR4. By then you'll also get a lot more
machines with the new USB Type C connector.

------
mrfusion
So is this a breakthrough in transistor size? Why or why not? How did they
overcome all the challenges they were saying in the 2000's that they would
have to reach this size?

~~~
wmf
Billions of dollars and thousands of PhDs. Considering that 14 nm is about a
year late, clearly there are some challenges left to fix.

------
pkaye
Will Intel build any NUCs with these chips? I was thinking of buying one with
the current generation and would rather wait if they have any plans.

~~~
higherpurpose
> While the new Core line has modest improvements in productivity, Intel hopes
> battery life gains will encourage users to buy new devices, said Karen
> Regis, director of notebook roadmap and strategy for Intel's PC Client
> Group.

It says right in the article that it doesn't have major improvements in
performance (like all of its chips since SNB), so why would it matter that you
have Broadwell in a NUC?

Intel is focusing on reducing power with all of its new generations for the
most part, and is only slightly increasing GPU performance with each new
generation (20 percent or so, for the same class of chips).

~~~
pkaye
Lower power would be nice for the energy savings and reduced fan noise. I'd
like to get one of these as a Linux home server.

------
brianolson
I was hoping for deeper tech dirt and architecture commentary from eetimes.
This article didn't say anything I didn't read in Ars Technica yesterday. :-/

------
bluthru
No HEVC decoding?

~~~
jolan
From AnandTech's coverage ([http://anandtech.com/show/8814/intel-releases-
broadwell-u-ne...](http://anandtech.com/show/8814/intel-releases-broadwell-u-
new-skus-up-to-48-eus-and-iris-6100/2)):

Support for HEVC is also present in terms of a combined (hybrid) hardware and
software solution, just as it was on Core-M. Intel stated that as parts of the
H.264 algorithm are near if not identical to those of the H.265, with a small
tweak to the hardware it can be used for both. This is still not an all-
encompassing hardware acceleration, but it does aim at some parts of the
codec. I would speculate that if a full section of the silicon could be made
for complete hardware acceleration, it might eat into certain power budgets.

~~~
bluthru
Thanks. I'm not qualified to discuss this, but Apple did include hardware
decoding for HEVC on the iPhone 6, and they're extremely power-conscious.

------
msoad
Everything is coming together for a new Macbook Air. I'm expecting a super
thin Macbook Air with a radical new design. They are removing the Fn keys from
keyboard to make it simpler. This is what I heard from someone inside.

~~~
masklinn
> They are removing the Fn keys

Well that's going to be fun.

~~~
lanna
Maybe pressing fn+1 would produce a F1?

~~~
orbitur
They would be removing the Fn key, which would mean the F-keys would go as
well. So just brightness, volume, etc., along the top.

You could probably still switch to the old F-keys in Keyboard Settings though.

~~~
nsxwolf
So then, there will be software you can't run without attaching an external
keyboard?

~~~
masklinn
Yeah. Well technically you'll be able to run it, and probably use it via menus
and buttons, but some keyboard shortcuts won't be accessible.

Mostly cross-platform stuff I'd expect, can't think of any OSX software using
function keys, but some of Firefox's developer tools are bound on F-keys for
instance.

