Intel Announces Atom x6000E Series "Elkhart Lake", 11th Gen Core Tigerlake-UP3

[skeevy420]

wswartzendruber because with most processors, they can't actually handle the turbo frequency on all the cores so it doesn't seem that much different than 4 vs 8 core AMD FX processors from a marketing bullshit perspective.

Our new 7nm* 8 thread** 5.4Ghz*** processor is better than anything else**** on the market.

*based on 14nm++++++++++++ technology
**4 cores, 8 threads; AMD screwed that marketing gimmick for the rest of us
***only on one core with liquid nitrogen cooling, sold separately, everything else is still limited to 3.3Ghz.
****tested against a 32nm Athlon X4

Is all fine and well until you read the fine print and see that the reality is closer to CochainComplex's terrific car analogy. It's like those "track ready" Corvettes that the owners are suing over. Run that car a lap or two around a track and they get software throttled until they cool down enough. Turbo boost until you get throttled isn't any different.

[mlau]

Turbo boost until you get throttled isn't any different.

It's essentially a "benchmark boost" or "marketing boost"

[edwaleni]

If Intel wants to make waves in IoT, then they have to lower their pricing. IoT boards are entering a new price realm as ARM costs get lower and lower.

Intel boards on average run 2x to 4x in price of their ARM peers, and it is getting harder to find value with Linux for ARM becoming more ubiquitous.

[wswartzendruber]

wswartzendruber because with most processors, they can't actually handle the turbo frequency on all the cores so it doesn't seem that much different than 4 vs 8 core AMD FX processors from a marketing bullshit perspective.

Is all fine and well until you read the fine print and see that the reality is closer to CochainComplex's terrific car analogy. It's like those "track ready" Corvettes that the owners are suing over. Run that car a lap or two around a track and they get software throttled until they cool down enough. Turbo boost until you get throttled isn't any different.

A Zen 2 chip will boost as high as it can so long as:

1. The CPU silicon isn't too hot.
2. The motherboard VRM is willing to supply more power.

Now the maximum speed any 3950X core will go with factory settings is 4.7 GHz. In single threaded workloads, conditions #1 and #2 above are almost never violated. One maxed out core won't generate that much heat and the motherboard's VRM certainly won't have issues powering it. But now let's add more worker threads. The silicon will heat up and the VRM will be put under heavier load.

In my testing, I have gotten my 3950X to hit 4.3 GHz across all cores. This is with a 400 amp VRM and a cooler with six heat pipes and a fan that puts through 171 CFM.

So should AMD advertise the 3950X as having a max all-core boost of 4.3 GHz, then? What if I put active cooling on my VRM and switch to liquid cooling for the processor itself, thereby letting me reach an even higher all-core boost? Or perhaps more interestingly, what about someone who tries to do this with a 200 amp VRM and a cooler meant for the much weaker 3600 CPU?

How should max boost clocks be advertised?

[woife]

It's essentially a "benchmark boost" or "marketing boost"

No, it's not. It is quite useful, it just depends on your application.
If you need the same amount of processing power for a long time, then turbo boost won't help you (that would be the corvette + race track example).
But if you have an application where the need for processing power typically happens in bursts, then turbo boost will give you a performance advantage.

[zxy_thf]

No, it's not. It is quite useful, it just depends on your application.
If you need the same amount of processing power for a long time, then turbo boost won't help you (that would be the corvette + race track example).
But if you have an application where the need for processing power typically happens in bursts, then turbo boost will give you a performance advantage.

Another case is when making buying decisions, you don't need to decide to buy more cores or higher frequency but fewer cores.
(Some algorithms cannot be parallelized. However I didn't not read too many benchmarks about this perspective.)

[DanL]

Obliged, flagged dumbass.

The 'overly defensive Intel fanboy' flag would have worked as well.

[Vasant1234]

Any idea on the pricing for the Atom chips and how does it compare with ARM. Intel was losing money on their Z8530 Android tablet before they decided to pull the plug on it.

[milkboy]

So, coming back to the topic at hand, does anybody know if those new Atoms are from a completely different family architecture, or are just bottom of the barrel Core chips rebranded as Atoms?

I ask because AMD choose to abandon having different architectures (like Jaguar's on the AM1socket), and just offer defective chips at lower prices, instead of having the trouble to make something knew and optimised for the low end.

Looks like "reworked" Core chips. compared to their pentium/celeron counter parts. atom operate on industrial temp range and, on its lowest models, has less feature.

https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/compare.html?productIds=207903,207909,207904,207900

[bridgman]

I ask because AMD choose to abandon having different architectures (like Jaguar's on the AM1socket), and just offer defective chips at lower prices, instead of having the trouble to make something knew and optimised for the low end.

In fairness, one of the early design constraints for Zen was the ability to scale efficiently enough to cover all of our current-at-the-time product ranges, so other than waiting to make sure we had met those design goals everything else was more-or-less planned.

One of the market realities was that in most segments the value of high single-thread performance never went away, even if that is the least efficient way to approach CPU design. Back in the Bulldozer days the conventional wisdom was that low end products should be designed for less power consumption and less peak IPC, but in fact what ended up mattering was high and efficient single-core performance plus aggressive power-gating for unused cores.

You can see the impact of this self-destructive market reality in ARM products as well, with a much larger focus on wide & deep microarchitectures to extract high peak IPC at the expense of power efficiency.