Thursday, March 3rd 2022

Intel is Now Fusing Off AVX-512 support in Alder Lake CPUs

If you have already bought a 12th gen Intel Alder Lake CPU, you could be sitting on a collectors item, as according to Tom's Hardware, Intel is now fusing off AVX-512 support in production. It's possible this could be in preparation for the arrival of the Core "W" series of CPUs that might be replacing the Xeon-W series of processors for Intel. It should be noted that this isn't a rumour, as Tom's Hardware has had an official statement on the matter from Intel.

The statement reads, "Although AVX-512 was not fuse-disabled on certain early Alder Lake desktop products, Intel plans to fuse off AVX-512 on Alder Lake products going forward." As to exactly when this will go into full effect isn't clear, but according to Tom's Hardware, they've already had reports of batches of non-K Alder Lake CPUs that are lacking AVX-512 support. In all fairness to Intel, the company never claimed that its Alder Lake CPUs would support AVX-512 and the support has never been guaranteed to be flawless on the chips that have shipped with it enabled. Intel has also disabled AVX-512 via a microcode update that shipped to motherboard makers in January, but at least some motherboard makers have added a toggle to allow people to re-enable AVX-512 support. It's unlikely that this will affect many potential customers, since AVX-512 instructions aren't widely used in consumer facing software.
Source: Tom's Hardware
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36 Comments on Intel is Now Fusing Off AVX-512 support in Alder Lake CPUs

#26
Unregistered
windwhirlRPCS3 supports AVX512, last I heard
Tried this, works fine on my CPU/980ti
#27
R-T-B
bugOn the desktop? For what? Office? Web Surfing? Games?
N-body simulation in KSP using principia mod. Compiled with avx512 support you can get quite a few more vessels on the map then without.

Fact is, a lot of games could benefit. But it's a chicken and the egg problem, and product segmentation makes it only worse. Devs won't add support until it's mainstream, etc.

This actually makes Rocket Lake more appealing to me than Alder Lake, lol.
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#28
looniam
so does this make my RKL purchase not as regrettable?
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#29
R-T-B
looniamso does this make my RKL purchase not as regrettable?
I'd certainly be more likely to be in the used market for it someday...
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#30
ThrashZone
TiggerGlad i still have the option for it on my 12700k
Hi,
Don't believe I've ever seen bios avx 512 offset ever kicking in at any level I've ever used.
Posted on Reply
#31
Frank_100
bugOn the desktop? For what? Office? Web Surfing? Games?
Mathematica uses it.
R uses it.
If you write any optimized code on an Intel machine and use an Intel compiler or just link to an Intel Library (i.e. MLK, Performance Primitives) it will try to use AVX-512.
Probably Intel wants to sell Xeon's to the I9 consumers.
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#32
Unregistered
ThrashZoneHi,
Don't believe I've ever seen bios avx 512 offset ever kicking in at any level I've ever used.
Well the chip still has it, seems only later ones will be fused off. Whether i can or will ever enable it is another matter.
#33
ThrashZone
TiggerWell the chip still has it, seems only later ones will be fused off. Whether i can or will ever enable it is another matter.
Hi,
I'd have to look at the description of what avx 512 offset set at auto actually does lol
Posted on Reply
#34
bug
Frank_100Mathematica uses it.
R uses it.
If you write any optimized code on an Intel machine and use an Intel compiler or just link to an Intel Library (i.e. MLK, Performance Primitives) it will try to use AVX-512.
Probably Intel wants to sell Xeon's to the I9 consumers.
Well, the software you described belongs mainly to a workstation. Requiring a workstation CPU isn't all that outrageous.
Posted on Reply
#35
quadibloc
I have always thought that AVX-512 was the one important feature that would allow Intel CPUs to be so superior to AMD CPUs as to blow them away. So I was pleased to see Intel finally bringing competition back to the CPU marketplace - after AMD brought so much competition, what with Intel's 10nm woes, that the lack of competition traditionally present turned around in the other direction.
So I see this as Intel shooting itself in the foot. Yes, the efficiency cores don't support AVX-512. So there should be a software solution.
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#36
bug
quadiblocI have always thought that AVX-512 was the one important feature that would allow Intel CPUs to be so superior to AMD CPUs as to blow them away. So I was pleased to see Intel finally bringing competition back to the CPU marketplace - after AMD brought so much competition, what with Intel's 10nm woes, that the lack of competition traditionally present turned around in the other direction.
So I see this as Intel shooting itself in the foot. Yes, the efficiency cores don't support AVX-512. So there should be a software solution.
The idea is fine (I mean, who can argue more instructions aren't better than fewer of them?). The problem is AVX512 is so complex to implement, it eats a significant part of the die area, area that could be used to speed up other non-specialized things instead. And it's also power hungry. So hungry that using AVX512 on one core, will cause other cores to throttle.

Perhaps Intel should do what they did back in 80386 days and put these instructions in a co-processor again.
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