Another day another post about intel

What exactly is the point of E cores in a desktop chip again?
I can understand why Alder Lake Laptop has - 8 E cores cuz battery. But why does desktop Alder Lake / Alder Lake P have 8 E cores?

blanarahulWhat exactly is the point of E cores in a desktop chip again?
I can understand why Alder Lake Laptop has - 8 E cores cuz battery. But why does desktop Alder Lake / Alder Lake P have 8 E cores?

For all those who leave their PC on all the time, and it's pretty much idling for the most part.

AsRockFor all those who leave their PC on all the time, and it's pretty much idling for the most part.

The way I see it - Its a question of - Energy spent in fabricating extra sand into extra 8 E cores vs Energy spent by idling on P cores instead of E cores

Now that I've thought more about it, the explanation is rather simple:

i9 11900K - 8 cores
Ryzen 5950X - 16 cores
i9 12900K - 16 cores*

*8 high perf cores + 8 low perf cores
Yay for more marketing confusion!

zo0lykasAnother day another post about intel

At least 14 more posts on the way

blanarahulThe way I see it - Its a question of - Energy spent in fabricating extra sand into extra 8 E cores vs Energy spent by idling on P cores instead of E cores

Now that I've thought more about it, the explanation is rather simple:

i9 11900K - 8 cores
Ryzen 5950X - 16 cores
i9 12900K - 16 cores*

*8 high perf cores + 8 low perf cores
Yay for more marketing confusion!

Well the factory is either going to spend the energy making P cores or E cores, but the E cores will later reduce energy consumption.

Just think of the MASSIVE amounts of people out there not turning their PC's off when they leave it for a bit, heck every workplace has their PC's running from 8 to 5 because they constandly have to half work with them.
E cores doing all the needed background tasks instead of P cores >COULD< save a substantial amount of energy and with the world how it is and where its going....that is meaningful, so I am all for it myself.... IF it works.

What about the middle ground? 12700K could be the most sensible purchase.
+4 E-Cores would unlikely justify the price hike.

AsRockFor all those who leave their PC on all the time, and it's pretty much idling for the most part.

Basically, the low energy cores do simple tasks to save power, the big cores kick in when tasks demand it such as gaming or heavy workloads.
At least that's my understanding.

blanarahulWhat exactly is the point of E cores in a desktop chip again?

Small, low power cores. Not only idle but also low load scenarios or background tasks can be handled at lower power level. This is what phone SoCs and maybe most notably a large part of what Apple's M1 is doing that makes it so power efficient.

I used an old Atom (J1900, Bay Trail) for network/semi-office machine for a long while. Atoms are enough for a quote lot of use cases.

Also, Atom cores are small. Really small. Lakefield die shots can be found in internet - 4 Tremont cores almost fit in the same space as 1 Sunny Cove Core.
With Alder Lake the exact sizes will change somewhat with Gracemont being quite a lot improved from architecture standpoint - although that applies to Golden Cove as well so we will have to wait and see. Intel Alder Lake block drawings have been showing the cores roughly in the same 1 to 4 ratio, so it should still be close enough.
www.anandtech.com/show/15877/intel-hybrid-cpu-lakefield-all-you-need-to-know/3

ZoneDymoWell the factory is either going to spend the energy making P cores or E cores, but the E cores will later reduce energy consumption.

Just think of the MASSIVE amounts of people out there not turning their PC's off when they leave it for a bit, heck every workplace has their PC's running from 8 to 5 because they constandly have to half work with them.
E cores doing all the needed background tasks instead of P cores >COULD< save a substantial amount of energy and with the world how it is and where its going....that is meaningful, so I am all for it myself.... IF it works.

Majority of workplace(office) PCs run i3 at best and according to leaks all i3 are quad cores without small atom cores, so how are those atom cores going to be useful in workplace again?

Intel can never trust press to not immidietly upload their review kit box pictures online
:laugh:

blanarahulWhat exactly is the point of E cores in a desktop chip again?
I can understand why Alder Lake Laptop has - 8 E cores cuz battery. But why does desktop Alder Lake / Alder Lake P have 8 E cores?

Intel needs to keep competitive approach and without chiplet architecture it would be very hard or impossible for now.
They need to satisfied all kind of users and their expectations(high single core boost, high all core performance, acceptable power consumption) and also marketing department :D:kookoo:. Therefor we see alder lake as a hybrid architecture, but I guess for desktop it will be only tempoprary solution, because performance cores when idle consume ridiculous small amount of energy and when 100% they can complete task very quick. In desktop PC saving few watts does not make sense.

If the 12600k really does outpace the 5800x in MT (cause in ST we already know) and it costs 250-300 bucks, it will sell well.

zo0lykasAnother day another post about intel

"daily leaks"

BzucoIntel needs to keep competitive approach and without chiplet architecture it would be very hard or impossible for now.

For mainstream desktop and 8 cores or maybe 8+8 Like Alder Lake? That is going to be perfectly fine without chiplets.
Actually, when it comes to current chiplet designs monolothic should be the preferred way. Maybe 3D Cache changes that equation but we'll have to wait and see.

blanarahulWhat exactly is the point of E cores in a desktop chip again?
I can understand why Alder Lake Laptop has - 8 E cores cuz battery. But why does desktop Alder Lake / Alder Lake P have 8 E cores?

You can fit 1P core for every 4E cores in the die. 4E cores outperform 1P core in multithreaded tasks. So there is your answer, 8P + 8E cores > 10P cores in every single regard.

ZoneDymoWell the factory is either going to spend the energy making P cores or E cores, but the E cores will later reduce energy consumption.

Just think of the MASSIVE amounts of people out there not turning their PC's off when they leave it for a bit, heck every workplace has their PC's running from 8 to 5 because they constandly have to half work with them.
E cores doing all the needed background tasks instead of P cores >COULD< save a substantial amount of energy and with the world how it is and where its going....that is meaningful, so I am all for it myself.... IF it works.

CPU idling was already in non issue land for power consumption. Its like leaving a light bulb on. You used to have one or several dozen of those in the house.

Lets not try to think E cores are sensible for desktop idling. P cores clock down too as they have for years. The real purpose on desktop is... marketing.

The actual purpose of E cores beyond desktop use cases is that improve mobile chips and battery life. Marginally. And, again, Marketing.

In real life scenarios this whole gen is trying real hard to make it look like its somehow achieving a Zen like progression when its really not - full blast P Cores are going to require the same water chiller plus nuclear plant as before and will royally exceed rated TDP.

E cores are not even present in half the desktop stack.

Vayra86In real life scenarios this whole gen is trying real hard to make it look like its somehow achieving a Zen like progression when its really not - full blast P Cores are going to require the same water chiller plus nuclear plant as before and will royally exceed rated TDP.

According to leaks so far, Golden Cove has higher IPC compared to Zen3. We will have to see how Intel's 7 compares to TSMC N7 but comparisons from mobile parts tend to show TSMC N7 is better at low loads but Intel 7 catches up on some point (which is below desktop TDP) and has higher frequency potential - although that potential is obviously up against that exponential power use per gained MHz.

It is going to be interesting in any case.

londistethat exponential power use per gained MHz

Not exponential, that's exaggeration. But it is not insignificant.

lexluthermiesterNot exponential, that's exaggeration. But it is not insignificant.

You are right, it is not quite exponential. At the 5GHz range it might as well be though :)

Vayra86CPU idling was already in non issue land for power consumption. Its like leaving a light bulb on. You used to have one or several dozen of those in the house.

Lets not try to think E cores are sensible for desktop idling. P cores clock down too as they have for years. The real purpose on desktop is... marketing.

The actual purpose of E cores beyond desktop use cases is that improve mobile chips and battery life. Marginally. And, again, Marketing.

In real life scenarios this whole gen is trying real hard to make it look like its somehow achieving a Zen like progression when its really not - full blast P Cores are going to require the same water chiller plus nuclear plant as before and will royally exceed rated TDP.

E cores are not even present in half the desktop stack.

E-cores are necessary for Intel to compete with AMD on multicore performance. The problem is there's also a ton of workloads that don't scale well with cores so you also need P-cores. If Intel was only interested in pure multicore CPUs then they'd probably go E-core all the way as they achieve much better results than P-cores both in terms of performance/W as performance/die. Most people don't seem to understand the Big.little approach and why it exists. The idea that marketing determines hardware and not the other way around is laughable. Of course for gaming E-cores are mostly worthless.

Atleast from the leaks it seems like a succesful approach. Intel increased multicore performance by 60-70% in a single generation. I doubt they could've reached 5950x MC performance wihout E-cores. There's no way 2 P-cores would outperform 8 E-cores. Most likely AMD will do the same thing in the future as it's the most efficient way to increase multicore performance. AMD can just delay it because their cores are much better in terms of performance/W than Intel's cores.

Bomby569"daily leaks"

marketing............

londisteYou are right, it is not quite exponential. At the 5GHz range it might as well be though :)

That depends on silicon lottery, but good point all the same.

@londiste
Yeah, in mainstream AL(if it had only P cores) will beat ryzen 5800x. But that probably will be not enough for 5900x and as we saw from leaks, it will definitely not beat 5950x. Therefor we see E-cores as addition.
Beat in my words mean sum of (what perf. + at what consumption + for what price).
So for the intel future chiplet design will be necessary to beat AMD 2/3/4 chiplet designs on one die, otherwise one of the metrics in the sum I mentioned will definitelly fail.

Vayra86CPU idling was already in non issue land for power consumption. Its like leaving a light bulb on. You used to have one or several dozen of those in the house.

Lets not try to think E cores are sensible for desktop idling. P cores clock down too as they have for years. The real purpose on desktop is... marketing.

The actual purpose of E cores beyond desktop use cases is that improve mobile chips and battery life. Marginally. And, again, Marketing.

In real life scenarios this whole gen is trying real hard to make it look like its somehow achieving a Zen like progression when its really not - full blast P Cores are going to require the same water chiller plus nuclear plant as before and will royally exceed rated TDP.

E cores are not even present in half the desktop stack.

Finally someone who speaks sense instead of just parroting that E cores are there for saving power while idling.

Guys, if the improvements were that significant, Intel and AMD would have done it long before ARM. They are engineering firms. Why would they not use an idea if it made engineering sense? Do you think AMD and Intel like that their laptops don't have better battery life?

My 10500H consumes about 2 watt at idle according to ThrottleStop. If it had 8 E cores I won't be saving more than a watt of power at best.

You guys seem to misunderstand why Apple is kicking so much butt with M1. Their big cores are just that ridiculously power efficient. They consume 50+% less power for the same level of performance.

Think about it, M1 Pro/Max have only 2 E cores, yet the new Macbooks claim 17/21 hour battery life.

Frankly this is why I wished Apple that M1 Pro/Max had only 8 P cores instead of 8 P + 2 E cores. Have a fair fight with the 11980HKs and 5980HSs of the world and let the reviewers/journalists decide who is more powerful and energy efficient.