
Intel: We 'Forgot' to Mention 28-Core, 5-GHz CPU Demo Was Overclocked - buserror
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-28-core-cpu-5ghz,37244.html
======
nolok
This really went wrong for intel. Let's sum it up:

\- People who don't follow the corrections and follow up are now expecting
them to release it (you can especially find a lot of people who says "intel
will release it this year" in reddit for some reason). Now whatever intel
actually releases will feel like a let down.

\- By all account Amd only planned to release their 24 core threadripper 2 at
computex, but after intel demo they moved to the 32 core model directly (with
all 4 unit activated instead of 3 out of 4). Intel pushed the bar it has to
compete with higher (also, good reminder that competition benefits the
customer). Pricing wise TR2 is not even EPYC so intel also has trouble there.

\- Additionally, Amd / Global foundry whispered that with their new process
getting those chips at 5 ghz barrier in the not so distant future is on the
table. Nobody had that barrier in mind a few weeks ago, and now all we know is
Intel had to cheat to look like it can, while Amd is on its planned course to
reach it. And this right after intel's numerous failure to get their new
miniaturisation process to be on schedule the last few years.

\- Once Asus and Gigabyte spilled the beans on how intel did it (aka it was
overclocked, and the cooling unit was gigantic), intel came to their booth and
gave them 30 minutes to hand back the cpu, ending the demo. Which moved it
from "intel does a tech demo of what could be" to "intel tried to pull one
over us and got caught".

After the ME security failure, the meltdown/spectre "working as intended"
joke, the multi-release of various chips to try and stop ryzen in a few
months, we now have the classic "oh we're sorry we got caught" ... Could
someone at intel PR and marketing get a grip and stop making so much stupid
moves ?

Nobody would have cared if they had come out and said "this is overclocked, a
demo to show what we aim to do in the near future". Instead we got ... that.

Remember, Computex is a PR event. It's a tech show, not an investors call. You
can't "lose" there, it's people coming to drool over what you have planned
next. On most of these things, I don't doubt Intel and Amd are neck and neck,
or even Intel ahead. Somehow, they managed to make themselves look like the
ones who can't follow. Utterly terrible.

~~~
cornholio
It's a PR hit but certainly not a disaster. Everybody and their grandmother
knew that a chip demoed to run at 5GHz is an overclocked hand picked
engineering sample, Intel has been pulling the supercooled CPU stunt for
decades.

At 250W thermal, the 4 die, 7nm Threadripper AMD announced will have similar
cooling issues, a dead give away was that Lisa Su completely omitted Cinebench
results - despite those being prominently featured before.

Bottom line is that AMD and Intel have roughly similar products and can easily
cover for any performance differences using the large financial margins high
end CPUs enjoy. The game then becomes a marketing one, who can keep more of
that margin by convincing it's fan base they have decisively won the match.

~~~
asdgionionio
Nonsense. We know the new Threadripper was running on air cooling. We know
whatever Intel showed needed _more than one horsepower_ of phase change
cooling. They're both monstrous chips, but not even in the same ballpark.

250W << 2 horsepower

~~~
cornholio
Before calling what you read 'nonsense', please follow the argument. We have a
massively overclocked and unrealistically chilled chip from Intel, with
massive results. And we have a cool chip sitting in Lisa Su's hand, that
claims no performance numbers. Both use comparable technology, have comparable
number of cores and per core performance and, we expect, comparable real life
frequencies and dissipation when air cooled.

My conclusion is that the chips are roughly comparable in performance and we
are witnessing a marketing war, not a performance showdown. Nothing you said
seems to disprove that or even address that conclusion.

------
jdietrich
I think the bigger story is that Intel is really starting to sweat. You don't
pull this kind of stunt if you have an unassailable market lead - you do it
when you're really worried about your competition. It's been a long, long time
since Intel had any real competition at the high end.

~~~
agumonkey
They seem to be losing faith in themselves. I thought intel, after a decade of
market domination, was sitting on piles of options and brains. But AMD made
them drown (on the PR side) way faster than I expected. The only thing they
had was Premium 10cores models. No innovative design or idea.

I don't know if they sunk all their energy in the new fabs or not ..

~~~
wolfgke
> I thought intel, after a decade of market domination, was sitting on piles
> of options and brains. But AMD made them drown (on the PR side) way faster
> than I expected. The only thing they had was Premium 10cores models. No
> innovative design or idea.

Intel has AVX-512, which is in my opinion one of the greatest innvoation in
the x96 instruction set for a long time. The problem is that Intel wants to
introduce AVX-512 only very slowly into consumer CPUs (slowly beginning with
Cannon Lake, which will only be available in small quantities for some time if
rumors are to be believed). Even more: For some parts of AVX-512 (e.g. 4FMAPS
and 4FMAPS which are very useful for deep learning), Intel seems to be willing
only for special expensive accelerator cards (Knights Mill) to include them to
segment markets even further.

Similarly it is often complained that Intel offers no ECC support for the Core
i... series of CPU (IMHO this complaint is rightful). Again: Intel _does_
offer it, but only in the much more expensive server/workstation CPUs (Xeon).

So in my opinion Intel is sitting on a lot of options and brains - but they
seem only willing to sell this in the really expensive CPUs for much higher
prices than lots of market segments are willing to pay.

~~~
Dylan16807
AVX-512 itself isn't really an innovation. It's just making vector units
bigger again. At best you struggle to fit two AVX-512 units. The equivalent of
four AVX2 units isn't hard to keep fed with instructions, and would actually
win in some scenarios due to being more flexible.

Intel having significantly more vector capacity than AMD in each core is just
a design decision, not an innovation.

Adding a single-precision FMA instruction is also nice but not particularly
'innovative'.

And it's not like ECC is innovative either. Intel is sitting on _options_ ,
but it's not sitting on _ideas_.

~~~
vardump
> AVX-512 itself isn't really an innovation. It's just making vector units
> bigger again.

No, AVX-512 is not only about doubling everything and calling it a day. I
think the main innovation in AVX-512 is making it an easier vectorization
target for compilers.

[https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/the-intel-
advanced...](https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/the-intel-advanced-
vector-extensions-512-feature-on-intel-xeon-scalable)

------
loser777
I would argue that this is extremely shady by Intel. It being an overclocked
part means that this could be the single best 28-core die Intel has ever
produced, so good luck getting one yourself (even then it still required a
1700W+ water chiller). And doing a one-off demo of overclocked (suggesting it
would be a product) silicon just as competitors are announcing new products at
COMPUTEX? There is no reason for this other than to mislead.

~~~
m-p-3
The only image I have in mind is an old-school strongman show where the
weights lifted are "assisted" with some invisible wires to help the strongman
to lift a little more than he normally can.

This is basically what Intel did.

~~~
jedimastert
Or just straight up lying about what's written on the dumbbells? Or juicing
the strongman. Actually, I think your analogy works better.

------
imaffett
Any current or former employee will all tell you the same; Intel did NOT
forget to mention this.

After the fiasco with compilers and chips in the past, they have to go through
rigorous approval for any marketing claims. This was 100% planned by Intel.

~~~
MaxBarraclough
At least they're not in the memory business.

~~~
colejohnson66
Does Optane in a DDR4 module count?

~~~
MaxBarraclough
Oh _that_? I forgot ;-P

------
Angostura
... and went to a fair degree of trouble to hide the massive, noisy,
watercooler.

~~~
zaarn
Purely by accident of course. Same for the 16 phase mobo to supply upwards of
1kW of power to the CPU. All an accident.

No ill intent to find here.

~~~
nolok
Especially since, once ASUS and Gigabyte showed how it was done, intel went to
get their chip back and only gave them 30 minutes to comply. Way to show this
wasn't supposed to be hidden from the public.

------
d3ckard
I'm a long time AMD fan, since my first computer had Athlon XP inside.
However, over many years I have been using exclusively Intel CPUs, because in
laptop space there was no other viable choice(and I use Macs). Nevertheless, I
always hoped AMD can come back and shake the market a little.

After Bulldozer fiasco, I was skeptical about Ryzen. I would have never
guessed that it will mark their comeback to high performance market. What is
really surprising here is how bad Intel has failed. You would expect company
with its own fabs, virtual monopoly on the market and loads of capital to be
prepared for such a situation. Everybody thought Intel to slow down progress
because of no competition. I guess very few people thought they are actually
clueless and that's how the situation looks right now.

Processor market appears to be something to watch in the coming years.

~~~
gkya
> because in laptop space there was no other viable choice

Uhm, how? For casual to complex personal computer use, how is an AMD chip is
different from Intel?

~~~
nolok
The last generation of AMD chips before ryzen were eating power like it was
cake. You don't want your ultrabook to sport a gigantic power block and last
10 minutes on battery ...

------
raverbashing
This reminds me when Intel "tried" to sell overclocked PIII (Coopermine) @
1.1GHz (IIRC) and then recalled it when it failed because it was an effective
overclock (processors were unstable and overheating).

(It worked up to 1.2GHz, maybe 1.3GHz when they went to Tualatin based PIII -
those also kicked the behind of higher clocked Willamette P4s)

~~~
nolok
Well to be fair pretty much everything kicked the P4, the only way for it to
compete was "let's go higher" (clock wise). Then they reached the higher ghz
barriers and were in deep trouble until they figured out to re-purpose their
core-m mobility chip into what become the basis for all their desktop core and
i* cpu. Meanwhile AMD was owning everything.

Without their anticompetitive behavior, Intel would have lost their place back
then already.

------
amelius
This makes me think of the VW emissions scandal.

And of:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17262510](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17262510)

------
floor_
They also say that this isn't intended for the gamer crowd and then shows a
kid with gamer headphones on in a gamer chair on a pc.

------
mehrdadn
Dumb question: What is the difference (implication-wise) between being
overclocked at 5GHz and not-being-overclocked but still at 5GHz? My CPU (just
like any other modern CPU) limits its clock speed to regulate its own
temperature despite the fact that it's not even unlocked to let me overclock
it, so it's not the difference is throttling. So what's the difference?

~~~
gaius
_What is the difference (implication-wise) between being overclocked at 5GHz
and not-being-overclocked but still at 5GHz_

It’s like extrapolating from an athletes 100m sprint time to their Marathon
time. In other words, taking peak performance and presenting it as something
that can be sustained for long periods.

~~~
floatboth
This analogy is not about overclocking in general: if you OC for daily use you
run stress tests and make sure it's stable.

But yeah, this is absolutely the case with the Intel demo. Their demo proved
that the chip can run _Cinebench_ at 5GHz.

Cinebench is not the heaviest load and it finishes very, very quickly. If they
showed Prime95 AVX with small FFTs running for a couple hours, that would
count as stable :D

------
OJFord
What's the definition of overclocking that allows us to say the manufacturer
has done it to its own chip?

Just that it will be sold as lower?

~~~
white-flame
If it comes with a massive cooling facility bundled, then sure, that's
presented as manufacturer's spec.

------
patrickg_zill
Steve Martin, famous American comedian:

You.. can be a millionaire.. and never pay taxes! You can be a millionaire..
and never pay taxes!

You say.. "Steve.. how can I be a millionaire.. and never pay taxes?"

First.. get a million dollars.

Now.. you say, "Steve.. what do I say to the tax man when he comes to my door
and says, 'You.. have never paid taxes'?"

Two simple words. Two simple words in the English language: "I forgot!"

How many times do we let ourselves get into terrible situations because we
don't say "I forgot"?

Let's say you're on trial for armed robbery. You say to the judge, "I forgot
armed robbery was illegal."

Let's suppose he says back to you, "You have committed a foul crime. you have
stolen hundreds and thousands of dollars from people at random, and you say,
'I forgot'?"

Two simple words: "Excuuuuuse me!!"

------
f1nalpr1m3
Intel Confirms Some Details About 28 Core / 56 Threads 5GHz CPU:
[https://www.anandtech.com/show/12932/intel-confirms-some-
det...](https://www.anandtech.com/show/12932/intel-confirms-some-details-
about-28core-5-ghz-demonstration)

------
dis-sys
I think the problem is that many people at Intel are just doing the rest and
vest most of the time. For those people, their logic is like -

\- Why bother pushing for higher core count? Just leave it to the marketing
department to convince customers 4 cores are enough.

\- Why bother pushing for 10nm? Just leave it to the marketing department to
talk about Intel's fancy 14nm++++++++++.

\- Why bother pushing for higher frequency? Just leave it to the cooling
solution vendors to bring in their 1400W aircon.

These are exactly what Intel actually did to its home users.

If you look at the whole drama, the most shocking parts are -

\- They didn't deliver anything new when they know full well that AMD has been
busy pushing for higher core count for the last 12 months.

\- No one from Intel's management team is going to step down for such PR
disaster.

Customers are lucky to have AMD.

