Intel "Comet Lake" Not Before 2020, "Ice Lake-S" Not Before Q3-2020, Roadmap Suggests

[Assimilator]

I thought he went to work for Intel just last March. You mean he only spent 4 months there after hardocp?

https://twitter.com/x/status/1134490508565393409

 

[Turmania]

they dont need to add cores bump the speed from existing offerings. I suppose they had a year to probably tweak a little more juice from current offerings to do that, assuming they did not sit around idle for a year...If they can you should be happy, competition is good for everybody.

 

[Joss]

Intel "Comet Lake" Not Before 2020, "Ice Lake-S" Not Before Q3-2020, Roadmap Suggests

I don't see how this is bad, their current lineup is fine.
This rush to always be ahead in every metric possible is stupid.

 

[efikkan]

It's almost like cramming more than 8 physical cores into a desktop-sized package is a challenge... yet AMD has a 12-core desktop CPU available today while Intel has 8 cores, and AMD will have a 16-core model available before Intel's "competing" 10-core CPU launches.

Intel doesn't have to have a counterpart for every AMD model. The 12-core and especially the 16-core AM4 CPUs will be very low volume products. This will be more a PR win for AMD than a huge loss for Intel.

As long as they remain competitive with 4-, 6- and 8-cores, they will have a solid market share in the consumer market. In terms of revenue in the desktop, laptop and server markets, Intel will remain strong for the next couple of years. The only markets where Intel will "struggle" is in the upper mainstream market (custom builders) and HEDT. These are products with very good margins, but the total revenue is not huge, but these are the markets that matters the most for "everyone" in this forum.

Even if the mainstream lineup of Intel is stuck on 14nm until 2021, the situation isn't as dire as you may think. At least until Zen 3 arrives, Intel have excellent per core performance, and as long as they keep that edge they will be fine. While AMD have an edge in efficiency and higher core counts, most buyers in this segment don't need more than 8 cores.

I surely hope that Intel make better backup plans for the next few years, not to keep market shares, I welcome a more split market, but to push the technology forward. Because that's the biggest tragedy of Intel's 10nm problems; they have a newer and much faster architecture, but just can't make it in greater volumes, so the market stagnates. Even with Intel being stuck at 14nm for now, they could have been in a much better position if they had made a backup plan. If Sunny Cove was also developed for 14nm, they didn't have to chase the 5 GHz boost, and could have had a much higher performing 8-core than right now, with a slightly larger die but better thermals.

As for the "stop-gap" Comet Lake, we don't know much of the finer details. But we do know Intel have excellent per core performance, but falls a little off with heavy multithreaded workloads. Comet Lake is rumored to feature better core-to-core bandwidth, it may get higher base clocks (Cascade Lake-X does ~4 GHz base on 10 cores, so why not?), and hopefully more individual boosting of cores (which is one of AMD's advantages right now), which should be enough to stay relevant up to 8-cores until Zen 3 arrives.
A side note is that Intel did some improvements in Cannon Lake, I wonder why they haven't backported that to other Skylake designs yet.

 

[Aerpoweron]

4 cores seem to be the most relevant for gamers at the moment.

https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/cpus/

But the 6 and 8 cores are rising in share.

It is still hard to justify an eight core cpu today if you only play on it. I tried to find people to reproduce a problem with my 9900K CPU. Not many have one.

Intel will be fine for now with the lower core count CPU. And i find it interesting that they are are allowing Hyperthreading on the i5 CPUs in the upcoming releases.

I wonder if they will have an answer for the AMD APUs at some point. For most people it seems a CPU with a reasonable integrated GPU is enough to game on.

 

[moproblems99]

This is Intel we are talking about here folks....

Anybody that upgrades cpu yearly deserves what they get.

 

[erixx]

Before the latest security patches for intel platform (Gruyere-platform) I was fine. Now I want to throw my slow Intel parts in the dustbin!

 

[mouacyk]

Intel at least should offer a refresh something like i9-9950K couple hundred more base clock, and more boost clock and perhaps they can tweak performance. They can do this on i9, i7 and i5 models.

As of right now, they don't have to do anything except reduce price to around $350 to closely match 3700X pricing. If Intel wants a refresh to widen the performance gap, they can simply double the L3 cache as well, because the die is not that big for 8 cores -- we know how well even L4 worked for the i7-5775C and how much the extra L3 on 3700X masks its memory latency. There is just no way 14nm++(+) can deliver any more significant clock bumps.

 

[Dave65]

This wont sit well with the fan babies.

 

[EatingDirt]

4 cores seem to be the most relevant for gamers at the moment.

https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/cpus/

But the 6 and 8 cores are rising in share.

It is still hard to justify an eight core cpu today if you only play on it. I tried to find people to reproduce a problem with my 9900K CPU. Not many have one.

Intel will be fine for now with the lower core count CPU. And i find it interesting that they are are allowing Hyperthreading on the i5 CPUs in the upcoming releases.

I wonder if they will have an answer for the AMD APUs at some point. For most people it seems a CPU with a reasonable integrated GPU is enough to game on.

How low is 'low core count' now? AMD is selling 6/12 CPU's for $200 that are better in almost every metric than the i5's intel are selling(3600 vs 9600k, the 9600 non-k doesn't seem to exist). Are we going lower than 6 core CPU's for $200? We go lower than that and we have $115 & $150 AMD AGP's like the 3200G & 3400G that perform just as well as intel's i3's all while having a better IGP than intel's offering.

Gaming is basically the one and only reason to buy an mid to High-end Intel CPU right now, and that's for less than 10% more FPS on average at 720p with a $1,300 GPU, while costing well over 10% more(3600 = $200 cooler included vs 9600k = $250+$20-$40(cooler) = $270-290).

 

[Ruru]

So it's a Skylake 5.0 like I've guessed.

4 cores seem to be the most relevant for gamers at the moment.

https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/cpus/

I'm pretty sure that there's so much results from not-so-rich countries where people use older hardware.

I still used a quad-core last year (7600K and even upgraded to 7700K) and now with Ryzen 5, there's no going back anymore.

 

[gmn17]

Intel dropped the ball or two this round
Get your act together, Intel!
Threadripper 3 FTW

 

[zo0lykas]

When amd release 1800x have the same problem, was hot as fck from the box so need setup in bios voltage, but later on they update chipseta drivers, few bios update, and look every one is happy, just give a time.

3900x has brutal temps at merely stock clock. 3950x? Forget it about it... 7nm doesn't look like the magic pill that allows high core counts with high clock speeds. I can now see why Threadripper got axed for this year's roadmap... wait for 7nm+.

 

[Ruru]

It's true that the BIOSes have been not that ready with AMD in some cases. But like we all know, an update or two has fixed those issues.

 

[oxidized]

By the time these launch AMD will be on 7nm EUV with Zen3

If the differences are what we've seen from ryzen 1000 to 2000 or from ryzen 2000 to 3000, i honestly would be a bit worried because intel this time is going to make a big jump with 10nm.

 

[Ruru]

If the differences are what we've seen from ryzen 1000 to 2000 or from ryzen 2000 to 3000, i honestly would be a bit worried because intel this time is going to make a big jump with 10nm.

And AMD has also time to do hella lot of improvements when that happens. We all know how damn long that's going to take, since 10nm has been nothing else than a joke yet.

 

[londiste]

If the differences are what we've seen from ryzen 1000 to 2000 or from ryzen 2000 to 3000, i honestly would be a bit worried because intel this time is going to make a big jump with 10nm.

Looking at AMD roadmap, Zen2 > Zen3 should be more akin to Ryzen 1000 > 2000. Optimization, better efficiency, perhaps slight shrink thanks to changed manufacturing process but no big jump in performance (small one, definitely).

 

[oxidized]

And AMD has also time to do hella lot of improvements when that happens. We all know how damn long that's going to take, since 10nm has been nothing else than a joke yet.

Time won't do much...Improvements with Zen have been pretty modest, and i honestly don't think that would get better with time, in fact i think it will get worse, making less and less improvements from a gen to the next.

Looking at AMD roadmap, Zen2 > Zen3 should be more akin to Ryzen 1000 > 2000. Optimization, better efficiency, perhaps slight shrink thanks to changed manufacturing process but no big jump in performance (small one, definitely).

And that's exactly what they'll need to counter intel at that point.

 

[Ruru]

Time won't do much...Improvements with Zen have been pretty modest, and i honestly don't think that would get better with time, in fact i think it will get worse, making less and less improvements from a gen to the next.

Modest?! Damn, that's where I'm disagreeing!

 

[oxidized]

Modest?! Damn, that's where I'm disagreeing!

There's mostly fixing (especially 1000>2000), performance improvements were never that big, cmon.

 

[Ruru]

There's mostly fixing (especially 1000>2000), performance improvements were never that big, cmon.

Still, there was improvements. When I was getting my 2600, I got an offer for a cheap 1700 but everyone said that "get that 2600". And I don't regret. Even a small IPC improvement is something. What's Intel done since Skylake..? Exactly, IPC is identical between 9900K and 6700K.

 

[ppn]

I think 7nm EUV by TSMCis now called 6 nm and it offers 114 Mtr/mm2 density. intel 7nm is 237 and 10nm is 101,
75 mm2 chiplet contains 4800 Mtr which is barely 64 Mtr/mm2 how can you even claim this is 7nm.. and NAVI is even worse than 10nm by tsmc with 10300/251=41 Mtr/mm2
so the Comedy lake can stay on 14nm - 44 Mtr/mm2 density for many years, there will be 65 watt 8 core mainstream boosting to 4.2Ghz on low voltage 175 mm2 sized die that is all I need for homePC for the next decade, compared to amd chiplet of 75mm2 7nm plus 100mm2 12nm I/O chip that looks a bit messy to be fair and offers the same thing more or less. But I will wait for the 7nm by intel how ever long it takes must resist.

 

[londiste]

There's mostly fixing (especially 1000>2000), performance improvements were never that big, cmon.

1000>2000 was fixing but 2000>3000 is a big difference in performance. Big things that changed were not fixes as such but catching up to competition. AVX2 is a big thing which helps a lot with many productivity benchmarks. Cache is dual-purpose - helping with performance is one, hiding memory latency the best they can is the other. Both of these together give a very big boost in many situations as we can see from reviews now.

I think 7nm EUV by TSMCis now called 6 nm and it offers 114 Mtr/mm2 density. intel 7nm is 237 and 10nm is 101,
75 mm2 chiplet contains 4800 Mtr which is barely 64 Mtr/mm2 how can you even claim this is 7nm.. and NAVI is even worse than 10nm by tsmc with 10300/251=41 Mtr/mm2
so the Comedy lake can stay on 14nm - 44 Mtr/mm2 density for many years, there will be 65 watt 8 core mainstream boosting to 4.2Ghz on low voltage 175 mm2 sized die that is all I need for homePC for the next decade, compared to amd chiplet of 75mm2 7nm plus 100mm2 12nm I/O chip that looks a bit messy to be fair and offers the same thing more or less. But I will wait for the 7nm by intel how ever long it takes must resist.

TSMC has announced 3 nodes after current 7N - 7N+ (more EUV), 6N (density improvement, IIRC they estimate 15%) and next-gen 5N.
Density claims from foundries has a lot of marketing in it. Density depends a lot on what exactly is on the chip. SRAM is dense, logic - less so, IO doesn't scale down well to 7nm etc. High-performance versions of nodes are also much less dense than normal/mobile versions where top performance is less of a priority besides size (=cost) and efficiency (=power consumption/heat).

 

[oxidized]

Still, there was improvements. When I was getting my 2600, I got an offer for a cheap 1700 but everyone said that "get that 2600". And I don't regret. Even a small IPC improvement is something. What's Intel done since Skylake..? Exactly, IPC is identical between 9900K and 6700K.

O well absolutely, that's especially if you wouldn't have put to use those extra cores, intel has done even smallest improvements, IPC got better with time, but still small improvements, simply because the architecture was already old, and 14nm optimizations can't do miracles.

1000>2000 was fixing but 2000>3000 is a big difference in performance. Big things that changed were not fixes as such but catching up to competition. AVX2 is a big thing which helps a lot with many productivity benchmarks. Cache is dual-purpose - helping with performance is one, hiding memory latency the best they can is the other. Both of these together give a very big boost in many situations as we can see from reviews now.

Big is far exaggerated honestly, there were modest improvements, frequency is the same, IPC is slightly better, memory latency got even worse looking at the benchmarks, i agree adding instructions sets helps performance, but not on any workload, what helps performance in ANY workload is frequency, and that hasn't got that much better.

 

[Ruru]

O well absolutely, that's especially if you wouldn't have put to use those extra cores, intel has done even smallest improvements, IPC got better with time, but still small improvements, simply because the architecture was already old, and 14nm optimizations can't do miracles.

Exactly, this is why many user is switching to AMD. Better prices, better multithreaded performance. Intel has better singlecore IPC but hey, it's 2019, not 2009..