Thursday, November 10th 2016
Intel Readies Skylake-X As its Next High-end Desktop Platform
Intel's next high-end desktop (HEDT) platform to succeed the current "Broadwell-E" LGA2011v3 will be the X-series "Basin Falls" platform. This consists of the "Skylake-X" and "Kaby Lake-X" processors, and a chipset derived from Intel's upcoming 200-series. Just as Intel changed sockets for its previous three HEDT platforms (LGA1366 for "Nehalem" and "Westmere/Gulftown," LGA2011 for "Sandy Bridge-E" and "Ivy Bridge-E," and LGA2011v3 for "Haswell-E" and "Broadwell-E,") the company will launch a new socket, the LGA2066.
As with its HEDT predecessors, "Skylake-X" and "Kaby Lake-X" will be multi-core processors devoid of integrated graphics, with double the memory bus width and up to triple the PCIe lane budgets as the desktop ("Skylake-D," eg: Core i7-6700) processors. In an interesting move, Intel will launch both "Skylake-X" and "Kaby Lake-X" in quick succession, with a catch - "Skylake-X" will come in 6-core, 8-core, and 10-core variants; while the "Kaby Lake-X" will initially only be offered in quad-core. The "Kaby Lake-X" chip will further only feature a dual-channel memory bus, and the LGA2066 motherboard will have half its DDR4 DIMM slots disabled, besides a few PCIe lanes.
The Core i7 "Skylake-X" processors, besides coming in 6-core, 8-core, and 10-core variants, could have sub-variants with fewer PCIe lanes. All chips will, however, feature quad-channel memory interfaces. Besides the DMI 3.0 (PCI-Express 3.0 x4 physical layer) chipset bus, "Skylake-X" chips will offer up to 44 PCI-Express gen 3.0 lanes. Interestingly, the chipset will have a much wider downstream PCIe lane budget than what we're used to seeing on Intel PCH chips for the past several generations - it offers a whopping 22 PCI-Express gen 3.0 downstream lanes. This could prove useful in driving bandwidth-hungry onboard devices such as Thunderbolt controllers, multiple PCI-Express SSDs, etc.
Intel plans to launch the Core i7 "Skylake-X" processors in as early as Q3-2017 (July-September 2017).
Source:
BenchLife.info
As with its HEDT predecessors, "Skylake-X" and "Kaby Lake-X" will be multi-core processors devoid of integrated graphics, with double the memory bus width and up to triple the PCIe lane budgets as the desktop ("Skylake-D," eg: Core i7-6700) processors. In an interesting move, Intel will launch both "Skylake-X" and "Kaby Lake-X" in quick succession, with a catch - "Skylake-X" will come in 6-core, 8-core, and 10-core variants; while the "Kaby Lake-X" will initially only be offered in quad-core. The "Kaby Lake-X" chip will further only feature a dual-channel memory bus, and the LGA2066 motherboard will have half its DDR4 DIMM slots disabled, besides a few PCIe lanes.
Intel plans to launch the Core i7 "Skylake-X" processors in as early as Q3-2017 (July-September 2017).
63 Comments on Intel Readies Skylake-X As its Next High-end Desktop Platform
10 core 6950Xs are really nice to use and I can not see any reason to upgrade from them.
I don't want to mess around with a new different platform that only has 10 cores max and a shedload of bugs like Haswell E had when it first launched just for an extra couple of percent extra performance.
Currently there are one CPU with good pricing in this segment; i7-6800K, which is a way better buy than i7-6700K. There are several cheap Xeons (with low clocks) as well, for those needing many cores but don't need high clocks.
I've been rocking a i7-3930K in my workstation for years, and it has been a tremendously good choice over the quad-cores. I'm looking forward to getting a octa-core, but they are still too pricey. I'm really hoping that AMD will finally provide some competition to lower those prices. A Skylake-X octa-core at $~550-600 would be an instant buy.
-----
I've observed the table in the article states 13.75 MB of cache for Skylake-X, I guess they mean it will start at 13.75 MB for the hex-core, in the following pattern (like Broadwell-E):
6-core: 6x256kB L2 + 13.5 MB L3 = 15 MB total (not counting L1)
8-core: 8x256kB L2 + 18 MB L3 = 20 MB total
10-core: 10x256kB L2 + 22.5 MB L3 = 25 MB total
One of the nice features of this platform is the much larger shared L3 cache, which not only is bigger "per core", but will also provide some benefit when some threads are more memory reliant.
I don't like the way the KL version is being deliberately hamstrung compared to Skylake, leading to a dilemma. This seems like a cynical move to sell the older platform, which should be obsolete by now and especially a year down the line.
However, I expected at least 20 PCIe lanes on the 4 core part, 16 for the GPU plus four for NVMe or an Optane drive, but alas...
As we know, the HEDT platforms tend to have a longer lifespan than their consumer platforms, so this does make some sort of sense in that way. Is it going to sell? Who knows, but I'm sure some people will buy into it, as it looks like you're getting something a bit more "exclusive", as you get an HEDT motherboard which generally tend to be quite feature rich. However, with the 4 core part being limited in terms of PCIe lanes, you might not being able to use some of the available features...
It almost seems like Intel is experimenting to see if this market space is willing to buy into something new, but Intel clearly hasn't committed properly by providing a gimped chip that not many people are going to be interested in, as it'll most likely cost more than the i7-7700k.
That will be all.
Well Z170 already offers 20 lanes and Z270 is going to offer 22. So X290 (assuming this is going to be the final product name) offering 22 lanes is nothing to write home about.