
Intel Launches 11th Gen Core Tiger Lake - pella
https://www.anandtech.com/print/16063/intel-launches-11th-gen-core-tiger-lake-processors-and-evo-branding
======
johnklos
Damn, they're going through generations quickly! Are they racing Firefox?

~~~
wmf
Intel has been releasing one "generation" per year for... over 11 years? It's
kind of tautological since they define a generation as whatever they release
in a given year.

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worldmerge
It will be interesting to see how these perform compared to AMDs laptop chips.
I imagine the graphics tech is where they'll be able to shine especially on
lower end laptops that don't have a discrete GPU.

~~~
OldHand2018
Forget about AMD chips for a moment. They're x86 and Intel can play that game
for years to come.

With a lineup of chips aimed at fanless ultraportables, pay attention to their
performance compared to the upcoming Apple Silicon chips, or more importantly,
the Qualcomm chips that Microsoft and Samsung are putting in their fanless
ultraportables. Intel needs to head off the rise of Windows on ARM.

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polskibus
Coffee Lake's i5 had 6 cores. Now it's down to 4 with HT. How is that an
improvement?

~~~
trynumber9
Tiger Lake is more a replacement for Ice Lake, not necessarily Coffee Lake. I
suspect 10710U will stay around for larger laptops, especially those with room
for a dedicated graphics processor. The laptops too small for dedicated
graphics will probably prefer Tiger Lake.

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akeck
Samsung might not be pleased about the "EVO" branding.

~~~
bserge
Eh, Mitsubishi didn't care :D

~~~
dyingkneepad
They bought the space from the fighting game competition that was cancelled
this year :)

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headmelted
Well I think collectively we can all say...

Ok?

Not a great time to be Intel.

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supernova87a
Since I'm not a gamer or CPU-news-watcher, would anyone be able to put this in
context?

Is this:

\-- a major improvement in power efficiency, heat?

\-- major gain in speed (and who is the consumer concerned with this)

Seems like everyone is more concerned with GPU capability as the bottleneck
for whatever application these days.

~~~
bserge
> power efficiency

A bit, yeah

> heat

just enough to make a laptop 0.5mm thinner in order to have it PROCHOT
throttle a lot of the time

> major gain in speed

Not noticeable by anyone. That's been the case for years, since everything
Intel has is an improvement upon Haswell/Skylake.

> GPU

For anyone who cares about GPUs, these processors will be paired with some
nVidia or (unlikely) AMD chips, so they'll be unused, just like most Intel
IGPs.

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AaronFriel
Intel needs to prove to consumers and investors that it can produce high
value, high margin parts on 10nm or 7nm soon.

------
yread
This article is really a lot more informative with synthetic benchmark
numbers.

[https://www.notebookcheck.net/All-core-4-3-GHz-
at-28-W-Intel...](https://www.notebookcheck.net/All-core-4-3-GHz-
at-28-W-Intel-announces-the-11th-gen-Tiger-Lake-lineup-for-laptops-Full-specs-
SKUs-and-preliminary-performance-comparison.490934.0.html)

Intel's 4 core parts getting within 3% of AMD's 8 core parts, 20% lead in
single core perf.

~~~
kasabali
Note that the 28W TDP number is for 3.0 GHz base clock. 4.8GHz turbo would be
50W.

------
userbinator
I wonder how much these will be deliberately crippled by laptop manufacturers
putting them in systems with barely adequate cooling and/or turning down the
power limits far below what they can actually handle.

I have heard others with relatively recent laptops say they see the CPU go
into power/thermal limiting if they barely exercise it with a few seconds of
compilation. The power limit can be worked around with utilities, the thermal
one not so much...

~~~
wmf
The point of Athena/EVO is to prevent this. Craptops won't get the EVO
sticker.

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fomine3
AV1 decode support is good news, as well as NVidia Apmere.

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abakus
What happens to Intel's independent GPU project? With the new nVidia 30xx
series it seems that Intel GPU will have a hard time finding its niches.

~~~
wmf
Officially, Xe-HPG (high performance gaming) is "in the lab" and not canceled.
[https://www.anandtech.com/show/15993/hot-chips-2020-live-
blo...](https://www.anandtech.com/show/15993/hot-chips-2020-live-blog-intels-
xe-gpu-architecture-530pm-pt)

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johncalvinyoung
Still wondering when we'll see Tiger Lake on H-class TDPs

~~~
wmf
Probably CES.

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dqope21
Seems like AMD will be gaining more market share in the near future

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jjoonathan
Is 10nm finally yielding or is this a paper launch / "10nm"?

EDIT: ah, these are laptop chips, that's the catch.

~~~
hydroreadsstuff
The rumor mill suggets the volume is similar to Ice Lake (very very low)

~~~
thunkshift1
Any links or sources?

~~~
hydroreadsstuff
Semiaccurate and his twitter
[https://twitter.com/CDemerjian](https://twitter.com/CDemerjian)

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doe88
Is there an official roadmap for NUCs with Tiger Lake / Xe or derivatives?

~~~
wmf
[https://www.techpowerup.com/268029/intel-nuc-roadmap-
peeking...](https://www.techpowerup.com/268029/intel-nuc-roadmap-peeking-
into-2021-tiger-lake-nuc-by-2020-end)

------
zionic
The contrast in community enthusiasm between this and Nvidia's 3xxx
announcement could not be more severe.

~~~
btian
Well, nVidia is selling a new GPU that's faster than 2080 Ti for $500, then
3090 that's faster and $1000 cheaper than Titan RTX.

Intel announced 10th Gen CPU lineup with a new logo.

~~~
jrockway
Also Intel's 10th Gen was their 9th Gen with a new logo, and their 9th Gen was
8th Gen with a new logo. Maybe 8 was the same as 7; I don't remember.
Basically, Intel isn't wowing people with their releases -- all their recent
progress is very incremental and doesn't unlock new computing possibilities
for the end user.

Meanwhile AMD is shipping 16 core CPUs to enthusiasts and 24/32/64 core CPUs
to high-end desktop users. Getting 56 extra cores is something to be excited
about; your 8 hour render is now a 1 hour render. Your 15 minute build is now
a 2 minute build. Making your 8 core processor do one synthetic benchmark 10%
faster is comparatively very "meh". People are expecting each Intel launch
event to be something revolutionary like Zen 2, but Intel just isn't doing
that. So people are consistently underwhelmed even though a computer with a
10th or 11th generation Intel chip is going to be quite adequate.

(As for nVidia, I am also not amazingly excited. The 30XX series feels like a
refresh of the 20XX series; yeah they're cheap, but if you already have a 20XX
your world is not going to change dramatically.)

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mcdirty
Snoozefest

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paulpan
Weird to see this "partial" announcement - since it's mostly for the U-series
chips (up to 28W TDP). This suggests that Intel must really be getting
pressure to release something competitive against AMD's Renoir offerings. The
more performance-orient chips (traditionally known as "H series" but who know
the new branding...) is still unannounced and unknown.

Will have for 3rd party benchmarks to determine the real performance
improvements. The single-core and GPU are certainly the highlights, but it's
odd that even the top-end i7 chips still retain the 4 physical cores. AMD's
4700U is already at 8 physical cores.

~~~
icegreentea2
Yeah. But I think 4 cores at 50% higher base single thread vs 8 cores is
actually a pretty reasonable tradeoff for many workloads. If they managed 6
cores though... would have been pretty awesome.

I hope this delivers. I'd hate to see Intel go down in flames.

~~~
paulpan
Right, that's perhaps a glaring omission. Last year's (Ice Lake) i7-10710U was
a 6-core, 12-thread part with a TDP of 25W.
[https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/196448/...](https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/196448/intel-
core-i7-10710u-processor-12m-cache-up-to-4-70-ghz.html)

But it's entirely missing from this announcement. Seems like a regression.

~~~
tarlinian
That is not an Icelake chip. IceLake and Comet Lake are both "10th Generation"
Core. Icelake was limited to more premium offerings and was only 4 cores and
lower.

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3JPLW
The chip image surprised me: where's the L3 cache? On previous generations, L3
cache was a significant amount of real estate. Is it no longer shared between
cores?

~~~
icegreentea2
L3 cache is under the "Coherent Fabric" block (it's the 12MB Last Level Cache
thing).

~~~
3JPLW
I'm talking about this image:

[https://images.anandtech.com/doci/16063/474551355-Intel-
Blue...](https://images.anandtech.com/doci/16063/474551355-Intel-Blueprint-
Series-11th-Gen-Intel-Core-Processors-pdf-page-034.jpg)

I don't see any coherent fabric blocks — what looks like large cache sections
to my eyes are entirely inside the "Core" blocks. Maybe they're just not drawn
correctly. Here are some much older i7s, for example:

[https://www.cs.uaf.edu/2009/fall/cs441/proj1/russell/images/...](https://www.cs.uaf.edu/2009/fall/cs441/proj1/russell/images/df94g6m6_4gxrw53gk_b.png)

[https://www.notebookcheck.net/fileadmin/_migrated/pics/Core_...](https://www.notebookcheck.net/fileadmin/_migrated/pics/Core_I7_LGA_2011_Die-1.jpg)

~~~
wmf
The labeling on that image is... approximate. You can see the orange L3 blocks
inside the area labeled as cores and it's still shared.

~~~
3JPLW
> it's still shared

Right, that was really my main question: besides the labeling (which is of
course approximate), the positioning sure looks like each core would have its
own "favorite" section of the cache. And being shared, it seems like this
could make for some interesting performance behaviors.

Ah, interesting, this topology was introduced with Sandy Bridge. I'm just out
of date: [https://www.anandtech.com/show/3922/intels-sandy-bridge-
arch...](https://www.anandtech.com/show/3922/intels-sandy-bridge-architecture-
exposed/4)

~~~
icegreentea2
Yeah, you need something like that to scale to large core counts, and
especially if you wanna pull off some chiplet goodness (like AMD did with
Ryzen). I think that's why it got lumped with the Fabric Interconnect layer in
one of the block diagrams.

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Aardwolf
Laptop chips, somewhat boring to me. I'd be interested in fast desktop chips
with fast single threaded performance, many cores, and AVX-512!

~~~
melling
The market for mobile devices far exceeds desktop computers

[https://www.statista.com/statistics/272595/global-
shipments-...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/272595/global-shipments-
forecast-for-tablets-laptops-and-desktop-pcs/)

------
jandrese
The article doesn't appear to mention the price points for these new chips.

I also find it interesting that the TDP maxes out at 50W. Is Intel entirely
focused on the medium/low end or is there a problem with doing higher TDP
chips using the "SuperFin" architecture?

~~~
rgbrenner
Lower tdp is one of the advantages of a smaller node.. and they have such low
yields on 10nm they have to prioritize chips where that matters: laptops.

In fact that’s been their strategy for a while from what I understand.

~~~
marmaduke
I think it matters for a data center as well: all the power you push into a
CPU has to be pumped back out by the air conditioning.

------
lend000
Not too interesting for those interested in high performance desktop and
server offerings. The fact that Intel's only new releases on 10nm are <=6 core
low power products suggests their yields are still poor.

AMD did a really smart thing with their processor designs. Instead of doing a
large monolithic multiprocessor like Intel (which may be able to eek out some
extra performance due to optimized wire placements), they use smaller
chiplets. This results in requiring no manufacturing errors on a much smaller
area of the die (which becomes exponentially less probable as the area
increases). Even if AMD was using Intel's 10nm process, their yields would be
better because of their modular designs that get soldered together after the
lithography. Intel can still bin out some errors (the 10300-10900k are all the
same chip with different parts turned off due to manufacturing errors), but
the less modular design likely makes this less efficient.

That's my understanding, anyway -- correct me if I'm wrong.

~~~
disillusioned
>(the 10300-10900k are all the same chip with different parts turned off due
to manufacturing errors)

Wow. Is this a relatively new phenomenon, or something that's been the norm in
processor mfg for a long time? I know that the Ks were usually just
binned/higher tested chips so they'd unlock those and charge a premium for
them, but the idea that they're disabling parts of the die and separating the
chip offering that way is crazy to me. Are the parts being disabled redundant
or are they reducing the instruction set space? I don't know anything about
how any of that would work.

~~~
cercatrova
This price differentiation actually occurs in all products and companies. Look
at SaaS, it's all the same software product but features are selectively
enabled for higher-paying customers.

Something that's different between software and hardware such as chips are
that the chips that have things disabled are done so because those disabled
parts actually don't work. If you only yield 2 out of 4 cores, it's easier to
just make it a dual-core CPU rather than throw the chip away.

------
varbhat
intel also has new LOGO .

~~~
userbinator
The "flat" trend has infected it too, and it's unfortunate because the new
logos look more like something from the fashion/cosmetics industry than a
serious semiconductor company.

...still not as bad as what happened to Atmel's logo, however.

~~~
varbhat
what happened to Atmel's logo ?

~~~
userbinator
Old:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Atmel_logo.svg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Atmel_logo.svg)

New:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Atmel_logo_svg.svg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Atmel_logo_svg.svg)

~~~
sgerenser
Not a big fan of the new Atmel logo but the old one screams 1978.

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dougmwne
From a quick read, in case anyone is wondering, this is built on the latest-
gen 10nm process which is a refinement on the previous 10nm process. Intel's
goal was to focus on clock increases, so the instruction per clock is
apparently not much changed. From looking at the tables, the whole line of
processors appear to have nicely improved one core max clock speeds, which
should hopefully help single core performance, which isn't something that has
been increasing much lately.

Anecdote: a family member and software dev just bought the latest macbook pro
coming from about an 8 year old macbook pro. Apparently he doesn't perceive
much real world performance difference between the 2 machines. He said single
core synthetic benchmarks were higher, but not by much.

~~~
tashoecraft
Worked swapped out my mid 2015, 2-core 16gb with a 2019 8 core, 32gb, and this
machine is night and day better. It's so much faster at every task I throw at
it.

~~~
srtjstjsj
In 2015 the 15" was 4-core.

~~~
tashoecraft
It was a 13’

