
Intel's Kaby Lake CPU: The Good, the Bad, and the Meh - walterbell
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/intels-kaby-lake-cpu-good-bad-meh/
======
Meegul
The author of this article says that Kaby Lake is an 'anomaly' when it comes
to the tick-tock strategy that Intel has been following. However, this is not
the case. Following the rollout of Intel's 14nm lineup, Intel realized that it
was no longer feasible to move to a smaller processing node every 2 years. And
so tick-tock died.

It is currently not expected that after Kaby Lake or the 14nm node, that Intel
will move back to the tick-tock model. Kaby Lake is no anomaly - it's a normal
architecture update in the post 14nm world.

~~~
neverminder
I am all for such updates, especially when they bring new important features.
For some reason people always think it's all about clock speed, performance,
etc. It isn't. Kaby Lake new features introduce:

Native USB 3.1 Generation 2 (10 Gbit/s) support (personal favorite)

200 Series chipset (Union Point)

Support for 16 PCI Express 3.0 lanes from CPU, 24 PCI Express 3.0 lanes from
PCH (LGA 1151)

Support for Thunderbolt 3

Support for Intel Optane Technology

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaby_Lake](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaby_Lake)

~~~
mscrivo
You forgot HEVC 10-bit hardware decode, VP9 10-bit hardware decode

~~~
snaky
Does it mean support for h264 Hi10P profile too?

------
smlacy
What does it even mean for a processor to "not support Windows 7"? Does this
mean it's not fully x86 backward compatible, or is this just marketing speak
for "we have a strategic alliance with Microsoft, and they don't want you to
run Windows 7, so we've put hooks into our hardware to prevent it"

~~~
cptskippy
Intel removed EHCI support for USB in it's chips with Skylake in favor of
xHCI. This has been a long time coming and not a malicious or insidious act.
Windows 7 doesn't natively have XHCI support and Microsoft isn't adding
features to Windows 7. So, on Skylake, you can't install Windows 7 via USB and
you can't use a USB keyboard or mouse during installation because the USB
drivers are incompatible.

I suspect there are many other incompatibilities that exist and Microsoft has
just drawn a line in the sand.

Hardware and software don't always evolve in lockstep. Sometimes new hardware
arrives that breaks something or it doesn't keep up with the evolution of
software. Microsoft has taken somewhat bizarre actions in the past to correct
this situation when it happens.

In the 90s just a year after Windows 95 was launched you saw USB, AGP, UDMA,
PCI and other hardware advances come to market. Windows 95 supported none of
it. They released Windows 95 OSR2 to OEMs to add support for all the new
hardware. Windows 98 was a long way out and they needed to take action to
support new hardware or face being displaced in the market.

With all of the hardware advances of the late 90s and the rapid decline of the
16bit CPU, ISA, and a lot of other legacy systems, Microsoft wanted to make a
clean break in the 00s. Windows XP wasn't going to support any of the old
cruft of the 80s and early 90s. The problem was that in the years leading up
to XP, OEMs refused to start shipping PCs that met the minimum requirements.
They were still shipping with legacy hardware that wasn't compatible. So
Microsoft stopped shipping Windows 98 and instead replaced it with the crap
fest known as Windows ME. WinME was a rebranded Win98 with one key difference,
it had all of the "legacy" drivers removed giving it the same minimum specs as
WinXP. Unfortunately some of that legacy was so ingrained that WinME was
incredibly unstable.

~~~
agumonkey
No way to add/override driver on pre-install stage ? (memories of 2K era
setups)

~~~
4ad
Yes, you can still add drivers, however, someone (Intel probably) would have
to release those drivers for Windows 7.

If they are built for Windows 10 and use Windows 10 kernel-mode APIs, they
won't work on Windows 7.

However, I don't think Intel won't build drivers for Windows 7. It's against
their own interest. Intel just wants to sell hardware.

~~~
agumonkey
I was thinking of a non corporate effort, maybe some people from the linux
world. I don't think Intel cares because they surely have ties with MS ensure
Win10 on Kaby Lake boxes.

~~~
4ad
In today's mobile world I'd guess most Kaby Lake boxes are sold to enterprise
customers, who care a lot about Windows 7. It's just a guess though.

Porting/using as reference Linux drivers (a lot of which are written by Intel
people anyway) to Windows just doesn't seem to happen very often. Technical
difficulty aside, which is significant (I've written both Windows and Unix
(although not Linux) kernel mode drivers for years), nobody seems to care
about such things, so I wouldn't get my hopes up.

~~~
walterbell
One option could be running Linux as the host operating system on Kaby Lake
hardware, then running Windows 7 in a VM where drivers would mainly need to
support virtual hardware. CPU/microcode compatibility may still be an issue.

~~~
rbanffy
> then running Windows 7 in a VM

With the added benefit of being able to run on immutable disk images or to
roll them back to safe states in case some malware decides to take residence.

~~~
cptskippy
My mom works for a health insurance company and all of their machines boot off
immutable network images. The only downside seems to be longer boot times and
immutable desktop icons.

------
eloff
This article is written by someone who clearly doesn't understand the industry
well. And 10 nm for Intel is not directly comparable with 10 nm for TMC. Intel
still maintains their fab lead by pretty much a whole process generation.

~~~
rbanffy
Can you explain the differences in a muggle-friendly way?

~~~
eloff
"TSMC’s 10nm shrink would retain a 20nm minimum feature size, while its 7nm
would deliver a 14nm minimum feature size (10/20 and 7/14, respectively)."[1]

Intel is the only company with a "true" 14nm and 10nm process.

[1] [http://www.extremetech.com/computing/228806-arm-announces-
ne...](http://www.extremetech.com/computing/228806-arm-announces-new-artemis-
cpu-core-first-10nm-test-chip-built-at-tsmc)

------
protomyth
Microsoft could improve sales of Windows 10 by leaps and bounds by coming out
with a No Analytics edition. They may think its a techy problem, but I keep
having normal people tell me they won't upgrade because "it spies on you and
snoops your credit cards". This is getting silly and stupid.

~~~
sverige
Those same people use Google and Facebook without any qualms. Microsoft should
hire their marketing psych people.

~~~
protomyth
I don't disagree, but it feels a bit different when its something you
supposedly own. Frankly, some of the Facebook posts are a bit on the fringe
side, but we're talking about PCs here so they're instruments of the Twilight
Zone to begin with.

I keep thinking some Linux / BSD group would get it together and go for this
still big market, but they are worse at marketing than Microsoft. I had such
high hopes for ARM-based PCs.

~~~
rbanffy
You own the physical media. You are free to try to install it on your computer
(and, if you have a PS/2 meyboard/mouse, that can even work)

> some Linux / BSD group would get it together and go for this still big
> market

I don't think they'd be interested in writing Windows drivers and the NDAs
they'd need to sign would probably end their careers in open-source. What you
can do is to install a thin supported OS that can host VMs and install Windows
7 on one. Oracle's VirtualBox even has some support for GPUs.

~~~
protomyth
Uhm... I must of really missed on that - I don't want them writing Windows
drivers - I wanted someone to come up with an amazing alternative to Windows
boxes for end users.

~~~
rbanffy
The ReactOS guys are trying.

------
revelation
What's all this talk of "the CPU won't run Windows 7"? Is this just a confused
blogspam site?

~~~
quwert95
I believe it comes from here:
[https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2016/01/15/windo...](https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2016/01/15/windows-10-embracing-
silicon-innovation/)

"Going forward, as new silicon generations are introduced, they will require
the latest Windows platform at that time for support....For example, Windows
10 will be the only supported Windows platform on Intel’s upcoming “Kaby Lake”
silicon, Qualcomm’s upcoming “8996” silicon, and AMD’s upcoming “Bristol
Ridge” silicon."

~~~
revelation
This isn't saying anything either.

~~~
colejohnson66
That clearly says that if you have a Kaby Lake CPU, you can only run Windows
10. Not 7. Not 8 or 8.1. Only 10.

~~~
scott_s
The difficulty people have with the statement is that the relationship is
inverted: it's Windows 7 which does not support the new processor. The
processor does not have some explicit blacklist that prevents Windows 7 from
running. Rather, the processor does things that Windows 7 was never designed
to deal with, as Windows 7 is a decade old.

~~~
0x0
But can you run MS-DOS on it? Lilo? Grub? Does it no longer boot in 8086 mode?

If windows 10 is the only supported OS, why not get rid of 16bit real mode and
32bit protected mode, leaving only 64bit long mode as the only execution
environment?

~~~
rincebrain
While Microsoft has been trying to push for being able to run 64-bit Windows
without the 32-bit parts installed (starting with 2008 R2, the WoW64 bits are
optional for Server Core), I'm pretty certain that you can't (yet) get a
complete interactive environment using only 64-bit mode.

Just looking at the list of Microsoft applications currently running on my
64-bit Win10 desktop, there's still at least a half-dozen different Windows
desktop services that are running in 32-bit mode - including the "Microsoft
Bing Service".

I'm sure they'll eventually want to reach a point where they can cut that off,
presuming that a hybrid approach like x32 doesn't turn out to have phenomenal
benefits, but it's not yet here.

~~~
0x0
When I said removing 32bit protected mode, I meant the original 32bit
protected mode which is now called "legacy mode". I believe you cannot exit
long mode after enabling it, but there's a sub-mode in 64bit long mode that
allows running in 32 bits - which is distinct from legacy 32bit protected
mode.

I guess I should have said, "leaving only long mode" (which can be 64bit or
32bit)

~~~
rincebrain
Ah, my apologies.

I wonder how much they'd actually save, in die area, if they removed 32bit
mode while leaving in the ability to run 32bit code in 64bit mode. If it's
just decoding to similar microops with slightly different parameters depending
on the mode they're returning to, probably not that much, except in the
decoder itself...

------
technofiend
The linked website makeusof.com goes on the "never visit" list right next to
Forbes.com due to a buzzing full screen with no close options ad.

