I mean that anything that runs real-time needs a reliable source of predictive calculations which hybrid systems are not. Gaming, rendering, video editing etc.
Mobile phones are mostly used for one or two actively used pieces of turd like a bank app and a FB client running in the foreground and about 69 various apps idling in the background.
Laptops aren't a common number crunching tool, either. Some niche users are unable to have a desktop/HEDT for that but most laptop users do nothing more complex than "meditating" and playing random video games. And, sometimes, removing their cellulite in Photoshop.
Desktop and especially HEDT is where the fun starts. And the fun is being a little bit slown down by an architecture that the most common OS has very little idea how to work with. Linux, I remind you, is still a niche product.
But we only have 8 in total. Sans HT, it's too little.
Desktop CPUs have about a square kilometre of unused space so it only comes down to manufacturing costs. Kinda moot since these ain't gonna skyrocket if you enlarge your CPU by, like, 20 percent. I think simplification will also enable less factory defects = cost optimisation. Having CPUs more all-rounded also enables higher retail pricing.
Also do I need to remind you where PhysX ended up at?
Only space-wise which I already mentioned before.
There's a load of game developers that don't care about E-cores and just do whatever. Even some rich AAA titles exhibit some micro- or nano-stuttering with E-cores enabled. FPS might be great, 1% lows might be improved but having just more P-cores crunching it will amount to smoother experience.
E-cores are very terrible in gaming. I tried playing E-cores only and despite theoretically being similar to 3 or 4 P-cores, 16 E-cores managed to lose to 2 P-core configurations in almost every single game. And it wasn't particularly close. One of examples: Cyberpunk 2077 was laggy but barely playable with 2 P-cores (with HT) at 5.4 GHz (50 FPS average, bad but not terrible lag spikes to about 10 to 20 FPS in most CPU-taxing areas); totally fine with 3 P-cores + HT / 5 P-cores sans HT (almost always 60+ FPS, only some select areas in City Centre and Dogtown spiked below 40 FPS); and it was just constantly below 30 FPS with 0 P-cores and 16 E-cores at 4.3 GHz with some areas just outright crashing. Of course a lot of gamers don't care about this title but it's not the only one showcasing such a massive E-core gaming performance deficite.
If Intel ever plan on targeting gamers (which they obviously don't as of yet) they need a P-core exclusively SKU. Preferrably with a thread count exceeding 10.
Linux, at the very least, demonstrates what Windows could achieve... If Windows wanted to. On the Win+AMD side, I believe we'll see the realisation of Fine Wine soon enough. I'm less sure about Wintel.
I cannot tell if you are joking...or if you want to pretend that the only usage for computers in your scenario is the home computer. If you look at the home desktop only (not stipulated in you post...but the target does appear to be moving on that front), then Linux is niche. If, on the other hand, you look at servers you'll find 96.3% of web servers run Linux (
ZDNet article).
As an engineer, speaking layman, I would use an anecdote. I'm sure you've seen campers driving around towing a car. There should be a part of you that looks at that, and scratches their head. You burn more gas towing a car, and a camper by definition is a vehicle. So...why do it? Well, if you're just popping off to the grocery store it's way more fuel efficient to drive that towed vehicle...no matter how efficient the camper, and its ability to hold more stuff, you cannot be better even if the camper is 30% more energy efficient...moving 50% more load. Hyper threading was the idea that the camper could separate and reconnect...thus being more efficient while on a grocery run but even less efficient regularly because all of that hardware to connect and disconnect needs to be included as well.
So I guess my point is that e-cores are great for a vast majority of work loads. Think processing simple requests, sending data, and the like. These do make up the bulk of regular work loads...as gaming might be big business but bigger business is the infrastructure of the web and companies that want to run server farms that don't require a nearby lake to cool them and a nuclear power plant to keep them going. Intel is compromising doing the best at any one thing (only p or only e cores) because on one side they've got RISC power sipping to success, and on the other the artificial war with AMD is making the "just push more power" theory non-viable. As such, e-cores are Intel giving birth to something which does the big stuff, can downclock to do the little stuff, and appeals to their higher margin business (server markets). Technically this is soft sell marketing...but your initial post pre-assumes that this is not a "viable" reason. From the position of an engineer it's listening to my highest margin consumer and tailoring solutions to them...without going full ARM and searching for power.
You don't really need to take this as my opinion.
Intel's Datacenter share shrinking.
As an engineer, my statement is "wouldn't it be great if I could plow resources into a unified server and desktop environment heterogeneous enough to run everything on servers and still powerful enough to do heavy lifting?" From that comes the push for e-cores to supplement p-cores...and the desktop market gets sloppy seconds because most people aren't running workloads that would require e-cores, but it makes no sense to have p-core only because heterogeneous interactions are the way of the future. This is all while removing the awkward and difficult to realize hyperthreading solutions of the past...assuming of course your CPU scheduler is up to the task.
Anyone remember the "good old days" where 6 core Phenoms had issues in windows with scheduling because it had too many cores? (
Thuban and scheduling)
It's almost like the past is repeating itself with Windows scheduling being the cause yet again. I feel old having to point out the same trends repeating themselves...and enjoying that there are 192 core CPUs out there that basically only work with Linux or niche windows server environments.
And even then I doubt they could hit high clocks and still reach a reasonable core count target, that's where Ryzen chiplets kick in
