Intel Golden Cove P-Core Offers 19% IPC Gain Over Cypress Cove (Rocket Lake)

[btarunr]

The 8 "Golden Cove" performance cores (P-cores) present on 12th Gen "Alder Lake-S" desktop processors offer an IPC gain of 19% over the "Cypress Cove" cores powering current 11th Gen "Rocket Lake-S" processors, claims Intel. This would put them at roughly 35% higher IPC than the "Skylake" cores that powered Intel client desktop processors until as recently as 2020, with the 10th Gen "Comet Lake." This 19% number, however, is presented as a geomean of performance improvement at iso-frequency, across a wide selection of tests that include SPEC CPU 2017, SYSmark 25, Crossmark, PCMark 10, WebXPRT3, and Geekbench 5.4.1.

The high IPC of the P-cores, coupled with the high rumored frequencies for the enthusiast i9-12900K part running well into 5.30 GHz or beyond, begins to explain how 8 of these "Golden Cove" cores, coupled with 8 fairly fast "Gracemont" cores, closes in on the 16-core AMD Ryzen 9 5950X at Cinebench R20.



The "Golden Cove" performance core achieves this 19% IPC gain over its desktop predecessor by being "wider, deeper, and smarter." Any x86 core includes three basic components, the front-end, the execution stage, and the load/store stage. The front-end of "Golden Cove" sees a double-sized instruction-TLB, a "smarter" branch predictor; and double-wide decode unit. There are numerical increments to the decode unit, micro-op queue, and micro-op cache. The out-of-order (OoO) engine sees similar increments, with 6-wide allocation and 12-wide execution ports, compared to 5-wide and 10-wide for "Cypress Cove," respectively. The execution stage sees the addition of a 5th execution port and ALU; FMAs with FP16 support; and an updated FADD (fast adder). Similar improvements are made to the cache and memory sub-system. 1.25 MB is the size of the dedicated L2 cache for client versions of "Golden Cove," and 2 MB for server/HEDT versions.



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[Krzych]

I just hope this is not the same kind of 19% gain like with Rocket Lake, which ended up as 0% in games.

 

[Steevo]

Cache is the new IPC improvement, with OoO instructions the only other performance beyond our speculative cache ability is to slap more cache on die, and or to lower latency, which is a function of architecture and security at this point it seems

 

[ZoneDymo]

Can I report Intel for spam?

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

Can I report Intel for spam?

We wish

 

[GerKNG]

what the hell is intel trying to do with these weird low power laptop cores?

i want this!

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

With all these blurbs, we’re not hearing about power consumption as a whole. We get “Gracemont is way more efficient than Kabylake” and “Golden cove is faster than Cypress Cove,“ but if the last 2 generations of Intel are any guide, there will be something like “Adaptive Turbo Thermal Velocity Mega Super Boost” that can operate at 500W for 2ms before hitting 110C.

 

[Space Lynx]

Intel Golden Parachute! Trick the masses best we can when they walk buy our boxes in Best Buy stores! Yeeehaaa!!!

 

[tabascosauz]

This seems highly suspect. Why compare to Cypress Cove when it freaking sucks? Intel's current IPC champion should be Tiger Lake H45, as well as the under-the-radar desktop-but-BGA Tiger Lake 65W i7-11700B. That's like AMD advertising Zen 3 IPC gain compared to Zen 2......but using Renoir as a representative for Zen 2.

Golden Cove is the successor to Willow Cove with basically the same big L2/L3 setup. Cypress Cove was a shitty port of Sunny Cove, both have only the larger L1 but L2/L3 roughly on par with Zen 2.

what the hell is intel trying to do with these weird low power laptop cores?

i want this!
View attachment 213352

Probably because to achieve desired performance it would consume 10980XE levels of power, at 10ESF density, in a LGA1700 package, so basically uncoolable

 

[ratirt]

Cache is the new IPC improvement, with OoO instructions the only other performance beyond our speculative cache ability is to slap more cache on die, and or to lower latency, which is a function of architecture and security at this point it seems

I'm not surprised with your premise. Intel is releasing CPUs like baguettes now and the latency and more cache is the new IPC gain. Probably till the real improvements kick in but that would be next year probably.

 

[watzupken]

Will be good to know if its up to +19% or 19% on average. When they release Rocket Lake, they mentioned lofty IPC gain, but fell short in many cases with low single digit gains. Gaming even saw performance regress.

 

[Kelutrel]

Why Intel is doing 8+8 on a desktop ? They are just cutting the performances of their next flagship cores. Is it because 16 full performance cores can't stay in the 10nm process or is there any other actual advantage in having an 8+8 on a desktop ?

 

[ratirt]

Why Intel is doing 8+8 on a desktop ? They are just cutting the performances of their next flagship. Is it because 16 full performance cores can't stay in the 10nm process or is there any other actual advantage in having an 8+8 on a desktop ?

Lower power consumption is one advantage in certain scenarios.

 

[Kelutrel]

Lower power consumption is one advantage in certain scenarios.

That is what I don't buy. I would understand it in a notebook or laptop, but in a desktop the power you can save is actually minimal, like a few watts only, and can't compare to the huge limitation of performances that having only 8 gracemont cores, instead of 12 or 16, brings to the table.
People buy desktops to get the absolute max performances, and Intel is cutting out a large chunk of those potential performances just to save a few watts under small loads. It will be easy for any competitor to just release 16 full speed cores and win, I don't understand Intel move here.

 

[ratirt]

That is what I don't buy. I would understand it in a notebook or laptop, but in a desktop the power you can save is actually minimal, like a few watts only, and can't compare to the huge limitation of performances that having only 8 gracemont cores, instead of 12 or 16, brings to the table.
People buy desktops to get the absolute max performances, and Intel is cutting out a large chunk of those potential performances just to save a few watts under small loads. It will be easy for any competitor to just release 16 full speed cores and win, I don't understand Intel move here.

and that is the argument people have seeing small cores in a desktop CPU but from a marketing standpoint it looks good. Lower power consumption more cores you get me? 8+8 is 16 cores and how many max core AMD has in their desktop lineup? It is pretty simple.

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

and that is the argument people have seeing small cores in a desktop CPU but from a marketing standpoint it looks good. Lower power consumption more cores you get me? 8+8 is 16 cores and how many max core AMD has in their desktop lineup? It is pretty simple.

32, it is pretty simple?!.

Your looking at lower power use in standby or web browsing or video playback, possibly.

When works being done that's going straight outta the window(140/250watts), but we will see.

My browsing already couldn't get much more efficient personally, a pc can't beat a phone at browsing.

 

[ratirt]

Your looking at lower power use in standby or web browsing or video playback, possibly.

like I said certain scenarios but do you think this will be addressed in the marketing? I doubt it. Marketing focuses only on the pros side of the product not cons. Cons are being avoided.

32, it is pretty simple?!.

It is simple why Intel is doing this small cores thing.
And yeah AMD has 16 cores max for the 5950 not 32. Threadrippers are HEDT and they are different and the price segment is different so i dont think you should consider these as desktops.

 

[Jism]

what the hell is intel trying to do with these weird low power laptop cores?

i want this!
View attachment 213352

Apple uses it in their phones and its quite efficient. It makes sense since not all threads on your OS running are demanding.

But it would be better if we get some hardcore cpu's again that sets competition sharp and better in pricing for us as consumers.

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

like I said certain scenarios but do you think this will be addressed in the marketing? I doubt it. Marketing focuses only on the pros side of the product not cons. Cons are being avoided.


It is simple why Intel is doing this small cores thing.
And yeah AMD has 16 cores max for the 5950 not 32. Threadrippers are HEDT and they are different and the price segment is different so i dont think you should consider these as desktops.

32 logical cores /threads on 16 cores actually,,, verses Intel's 24 logical cores/ threads on 16 cores.

And they're comparing to Zen 3 with zen3+ and it's additional 25% imminent.

I'll agree on thread ripper, and the marketing.

 

[GerKNG]

Apple uses it in their phones and its quite efficient

yeah but a rtx 3090 desktop gaming rig is not a battery powered phone that needs to get through the day.

 

[Xaled]

Can I report Intel for spam?

They shoulve been sued for lying on people since the virtual cores thing, aka "threads" or "Hyper threading". Biggest ongoing cheating in technology history.

 

[iO]

A: they found the holy grail. 12-14 core multithread performance at the die size of a hypothetical 10 core CPU...

Or B: their only way to compete in the core wars due to monlithic design limits in power consumption, die size, cost etc...

 

[ThrashZone]

and that is the argument people have seeing small cores in a desktop CPU but from a marketing standpoint it looks good. Lower power consumption more cores you get me? 8+8 is 16 cores and how many max core AMD has in their desktop lineup? It is pretty simple.

Hi,
Indeed 16 cores and 16 threads just 8 of these cores are low bins guess people are used to 8 core 16 threads now days lol
Intel isn't binning the same as in the past where they disabled really bad cores.

Real question is, how bad/ hot will these small cores get at the same frequency as the large/ good cores, probably not too bad seeing hyper threading is disabled on them.

 

[BSim500]

Why Intel is doing 8+8 on a desktop ? They are just cutting the performances of their next flagship cores. Is it because 16 full performance cores can't stay in the 10nm process or is there any other actual advantage in having an 8+8 on a desktop ?

They've basically hit a wall with process node yet still want to say they have more cores than AMD, so the solution is "fake the cores". Power consumption advantages of small cores vs big cores throttling down is over-exaggerated, IMHO. With dGPU removed, I have an i5-10400 idling at just 24w (B460 board + 550w Platinum PSU). The only way that's going to go any lower is buy a notebook. I seriously doubt slapping 8x energy efficient cores onto 8x power hungry 12th gen ones will get actually lower idle power vs 10400F / 5600X and undo the massive efficiency losses that 11th gen introduced.

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

They've basically hit a wall with process node yet still want to say they have more cores than AMD, so the solution is "fake the cores". Power consumption advantages of small cores vs big cores throttling down is over-exaggerated, IMHO. With dGPU removed, I have an i5-10400 idling at just 24w (B460 board + 550w Platinum PSU). The only way that's going to go any lower is buy a notebook. I seriously doubt slapping 8x energy efficient cores onto 8x power hungry 12th gen ones will get actually lower idle power vs 10400F / 5600X and undo the massive efficiency losses that 11th gen introduced.

Sort of.
They can only make a core faster than a Ryzen core by designing a massive core, massive.
So they have, but 16 of those would shut down celafield .
Soo they dragged out their atom core's, gave them a polish and hey presto 90% of the user's, 90% of the time will actually have their big cores dark ,shut down while they stare at Google Chrome running on the pipsqueak core's.

They can claim single core crown while claiming an efficiency crown, not, and a level of core parity in gen publicos eye's.

But you'll pay, obviously.