Friday, April 21st 2017
Intel's X299 Platform to Counter AMD's X399 with 12-core CPUs
Intel's X299 HEDT platform, whose launch we recently covered as having been pushed forward by the company so as to better compete against AMD's upcoming X399 HEDT platform, has some new, juicy rumors floating about it. Namely, Bench.Life has reported that Intel's upcoming Kaby Lake-X and Skylake-X lines of high performance CPUs will also feature 12-core offerings on its Skylake-X materialization, instead of just the previously reported 6, 8, and 10-core designs.
This really looks like an Intel that's stretching its manufacturing and chip design prowess so as to prevent itself from being buried in higher-performing, higher core and thread count offerings from its rival AMD, which has turned Intel's line-up in the mainstream consumer market head-over-heels already. Latest reports peg the new series as being presented on Computex 2017 (specifically, on may 30th), with availability being expected on June 26th. Which platform are most interested in, and what do you think of this move from Intel?
Sources:
Bench.life, Videocardz
This really looks like an Intel that's stretching its manufacturing and chip design prowess so as to prevent itself from being buried in higher-performing, higher core and thread count offerings from its rival AMD, which has turned Intel's line-up in the mainstream consumer market head-over-heels already. Latest reports peg the new series as being presented on Computex 2017 (specifically, on may 30th), with availability being expected on June 26th. Which platform are most interested in, and what do you think of this move from Intel?
68 Comments on Intel's X299 Platform to Counter AMD's X399 with 12-core CPUs
The new Xeon "E5s" and "E7s" would have arrived regardless of Ryzen, and obviously with the new Xeon "E5" Intel would also released Skylake-X regardless of Ryzen, since they would not have made another chip for consumers. These releases has nothing to do with Ryzen, and that's a fact. End of discussion.
The 12 core is most likely a response to Ryzen though, as it was not on any roadmaps until just now. And Xeons and HEDT are the same chips, with slightly different chipsets. Intel has the ability to quite easily disable features of its chips to make them fit their product plan, this is why we have i7, i5, 3, Pentium and Celeron chips that are all cut from the same die.
There is no evidence of new SKUs, since SKUs are usually not public until the release. The 10 core for Broadwell-E was not on early roadmaps either, was that a response to Ryzen, Bulldozer or something? This is just silly. That's not even remotely true.
The Xeon E3, E5, and E7 lineups are usually made from 2-3 different dies in each segment. Exact core count and features varies from generation to generation. In total Intel has 6+ dies for desktop, some of which are also used for consumer products.
But we'll see. I don't believe it'll quickly become a popular server platform in actual business solutions, as moving to a totally different arch is very difficult and expensive. And of course today the primary limitation in servers is in storage, not in processing power. :) But I'm sure we will see some interesting high-profile implementations (the Top500 list).
Not to mention No one that runs servers takes scores from HEDT or consumer chips seriously.
Sorry when people are doing deep learning or or heavy virtualization im looking at CPU instruction sets, cache size, architecture clock cycle performance and thermal output. Not how fast some kids water cooled skylake CPU is rendering balls in cinebench.
Servers =/= Workstations and the comparisons really shouldn't be such.
We don't value the same things. The chips are also different.
@Solaris17 - you care to explain? :)
The few servers I worked with are aimed at good stable virtualization and be able to handle a drop in military base infrastructure (in a sandy environment at that). A poor 5960X or 1800X would scream bloody murder with that load.
Few notes to remember on why ryzen is disruptive that i feel reviews completely missed:
1. Ryzen at this stage is on its first revision which is why it reaches a wall around 4.2ghz or so, but with that in mind its quite impressive.
2. Below that 4ghz mark Ryzen cores scale very well with voltage and run excellent with what i perceived as superior power efficiency than intel broadwell and perhaps even skylake(that remains to be seen)
3. Ryzen offers 8 cores(with broadwell ipc) that scale up to 3.7ghz with 65w tdp, something that i looked for on intels website out of curiosity but could find no match for.
4. Amd cores have a smaller footprint than intel and their chips are manufactured in third party fabs making them cheaper (although intel has finer control over the process but with greater operational cost)
6. Desktop is only the tip of the iceburg with that 4ghz wall being meaninless in mobile and server which are both more profitable and seem like a perfrct fit for ryzen in its current state.
7. With future revisions/iterations of ryzen I would expect much greater clockspeed along with a healthy ipc increase as again ryzen right now is a first iteration making it a worst case scenario with plenty room for modification and ironing out.
8. I skipped point number 5 but you haven't noticed
What is different about Ryzen is how steep the curve becomes in OC. This is why there is such a noticeable "wall".
It's not like Ryzen lacks power or something, but AMD will have to work hard on the manufacturing process to clock the next generation higher.
It's difficult for your "7" to be called "expectations", as these are usually made on a basis of some analysis or experience. For now they are merely hopes. :) AMD's TDP is much different to Intel's. Ryzen is in fact very power efficient, but just don't get to attached to those 65W, because it'll draw quite a bit more. AMD Zen cores are smaller than Intel's because of inferior node. Intel core is a bit better and a bit faster, but also a bit larger. Well... there's always some cost. Ryzen is not a server CPU (that would be Naples). Mobile Zen platform is still a mystery.
As far as mobile solutions go - Ryzen doesn't have an IGP, so there will always have to be an additional chip included (unless it's the APU you're talking about). Either way, there goes a lot of the price/performance difference.
I'm sure Zen will work well in servers, but I'm just not sure if better than the competition...
As far as HPC - we don't know. In previous I've seen arguments that this arch does not favour HPC (chiefly because of slightly poorer instruction implementation). We'll see how that goes. :)
AMD does use an inferior node but they almost always achieve greater density than intel due to using a gpu like methodology which ends up with zen being smaller and with greater efficiency on lower voltages with the trade off being scaling in higher voltages