Intel's 8P+32E "Arrow Lake Refresh" Rumored Cancelled

[oxrufiioxo]

I'm so sad, I was so excited for more ecores..... Not sure what to do with my life now.

 

[phanbuey]

I'm so sad, I was so excited for more ecores..... Not sure what to do with my life now.

time to link 32 raspberry pis together and play DOOM II?

 

[john_]

That would be kinda sad if true and another testament to how deep in shit Intel is. Intel Arrow Lake was originally supposed to be produced on Intel's 20A node before that node was scrapped/cancelled. Intel were forced to go with TSMC N3B for ARL because their own IFS is too incompetent to produce Arrow Lake.

I would have expected that Intel would bring the ARL refresh back home, i.e. ARL-R on the Intel 18A process node next year to demonstrate that the node is at least equal or more advanced than TSMC N3B.

So, my theory is that ARL-R has been cancelled specifically for that reason. Intel want to shy away from that comparison because they know exactly that TSMC N3B is kicking their 18A node's ass to hell and back. So much for catching up, or even outperforming, TSMC next year. Not gonna happen.

I have a somewhat more optimistic theory.
Intel sees that it's manufacturing is doing well, probably better than expected, so they might think they can bring their next CPU line(Nova Lake) closer for release, meaning a refresh of ARL wouldn't be making sense, especially when they will have to pay TSMC to build it.

 

[Eskimonster]

No more waste of sand

hahahahahha

 

[kondamin]

I doubt there are enough memory lanes to feed 8+32 if the new e cores are as powerful as claimed

 

[bonehead123]

Agent 47, you have a new task... The leakers have gone rampant - they are now cancelling the rumours they had previously created themselves. This has got to end, their meddling is no good for the sanity of our Agency. The methods are up to your choice. Good luck, 47.

Yea, but now that they know that we know that they know that we know, is it REALLY that big of a surprise anymore ?

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

I doubt there are enough memory lanes to feed 8+32 if the new e cores are as powerful as claimed

Intel is pushing 10000mt/s with arrow lake on the extreme end. That's 160GB/s.

 

[watzupken]

32 E-cores is insane at this point in my opinion. There are trade offs with HT vs physical cores. Removing HT also means you need more physical cores to improve multithreaded performance. While performance is expected to be better with physical cores, it also requires more power.

 

[ratirt]

Intel is not going to increase the number of the ecores and the CPU is cancelled?

 

[Minus Infinity]

You might be on the money here

Mobile is more important, so no way they take precious 18A supply away from Panther Lake for an Arrow lake refresh. 18A isn't even ready for prime time. They have a lot of work to do.

 

[azrael]

Yeah Intel is getting smarter, nobody like refreshes that bring nothing to the table except accelerated degradation

"The candle that burns twice as bright burns half as long ...and you have burned so very very brightly..."

 

[persondb]

Intel is pushing 10000mt/s with arrow lake on the extreme end. That's 160GB/s.

That is overclock, there is absolutely no guarantee on anything.

Yes, there will be probably be quite a few people running such thing, but it's absolutely not at stock and they can't sell a chip on such grounds.

 

[InVasMani]

I wonder what the reason behind canceling it actually is. It could be any number of things given the recent events that have developed around Intel.

 

[Minus Infinity]

I wonder what the reason behind canceling it actually is. It could be any number of things given the recent events that have developed around Intel.

Cost cutting. Why would it be bad for a cpu lifecycle to be 2 years anyway? Buy Arrow lake or wait for Nova Lake. 40 core desktop would only be needed by someone wanting HEDT anyway and they'll buy TR/ Xeon W IMO.

 

[JWNoctis]

A not-quite-relevant trivia: Early versions of the Larrabee were also supposed to have 32 of what could now be called E-cores.

A 32-core x86 processor in PC would have been pretty outlandish back in 2008, even though it was supposed to be a GPU.

 

[persondb]

A not-quite-relevant trivia: Early versions of the Larrabee were also supposed to have 32 of what could now be called E-cores.

A 32-core x86 processor in PC would have been pretty outlandish back in 2008, even though it was supposed to be a GPU.

It did happen as Xeon Phi, the successor of Larambee. The first version released which was Knights Corner used a modified version of the original Pentium cores, with a notable addition being SMT 4(i.e. 4 hardware threads per core).

The next iteration of Xeon Phi which is Knight Landing then used a modified Atom core(Airmont) also with SMT 4 having chips with up to 72 cores. Those atom cores are what we know today as E cores or rather being a direct lineage from it as architecture wise it went

Airmont -> Goldmont -> Tremont -> Gracemont(Alder/Raptor lake E-core) -> Crestmont(Meteor Lake E core) -> Skymont (Arrow and Lunar Lake E-cores).

So it did already happened in the past though those were modified versions of it, with the mentioned Hyper Threading x4 and also having full fat AVX512 implementations.

For other consumer products, we could argue that the PS3 processor, the Cell engine, was also very similar. It had a single 'fast' core and 8 others slower(same clock but lower IPC due to simpler design) cores(but which had strong vector capabilities).
Though those cores didn't have direct access to the system memory and had only indirect access through DMA.

It doesn't seem like the idea of many very simple cores paid off as the Atom line basically developed into basically big cores with very complex out of order designs instead of the simpler in order designs of the past. And maybe that is why Intel cancelled 8+32, there was just too little tangible benefit to have that many cores for the intended consumers.

For those who actually can use such high core counts, they would likely be best served by the Xeon W or Threadrippers series.