• Welcome to TechPowerUp Forums, Guest! Please check out our forum guidelines for info related to our community.

Die-Shots of Intel Core Ultra "Arrow Lake-S" Surface, Thanks to ASUS

btarunr

Editor & Senior Moderator
Staff member
Joined
Oct 9, 2007
Messages
47,296 (7.53/day)
Location
Hyderabad, India
System Name RBMK-1000
Processor AMD Ryzen 7 5700G
Motherboard ASUS ROG Strix B450-E Gaming
Cooling DeepCool Gammax L240 V2
Memory 2x 8GB G.Skill Sniper X
Video Card(s) Palit GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER GameRock
Storage Western Digital Black NVMe 512GB
Display(s) BenQ 1440p 60 Hz 27-inch
Case Corsair Carbide 100R
Audio Device(s) ASUS SupremeFX S1220A
Power Supply Cooler Master MWE Gold 650W
Mouse ASUS ROG Strix Impact
Keyboard Gamdias Hermes E2
Software Windows 11 Pro
As Intel's Core Ultra "Arrow Lake-S" desktop processors near their launch, ASUS China put out a video presentation about its Z890 chipset motherboards ready for these processors, which included a technical run-down of Intel's first tile-based desktop processor, which included detailed die-shots of the various tiles. This is stuff that would require not just de-lidding the processor (removing the integrated heat-spreader), but also clearing up the top layers of the die to reveal the various components underneath.

The whole-chip die-shot gives us a bird's eye view of the four key logic tiles—Compute, Graphics, SoC, and I/O, sitting on top of the Foveros base tile. Our article from earlier this week goes into the die areas of the individual tiles, and the base tile. The Compute tile is built on the most advanced foundry node among the four tiles, the 3 nm TSMC N3B. Unlike the older generation "Raptor Lake-S" and "Alder Lake-S," the P-cores and E-core clusters aren't clumped into the two ends of the CPU complex. In "Arrow Lake-S," they follow a staggered layout, with a row of P-cores, followed by a row of E-core clusters, followed by two rows of P-cores, and then another row of E-core clusters, before the final row of P-cores, to achieve the total core-count of 8P+16E. This arrangement reduces concentration of heat when the P-cores are loaded (eg: when gaming), and ensures each E-core cluster is just one ringbus stop away from a P-core, which should improve thread-migration latencies. The central region of the tile has this ringbus, and 36 MB of L3 cache shared among the P-cores and E-core clusters.



Next up, is the SoC tile. This chiplet is built on the 6 nm DUV TSMC N6 node. Both edges of the tile has PHYs for the various I/O interfaces. One side has the dual-channel DDR5 PHY, while the other has a portion of the chip's PCI-Express PHY. The SoC tile puts out 16 PCIe Gen 5 lanes meant for the PEG interface (the x16 slot on your motherboard). The I/O tile puts out four PCIe Gen 5 lanes, and four PCIe Gen 4 lanes, besides the DMI 4.0 x8 chipset bus. The Gen 4 x4 from the I/O can be reconfigured as Thunderbolt 4 or USB4. The SoC tile also contains the NPU 3 unit, which appears to be carried over from the SoC tile of "Meteor Lake." It has a peak throughput of 13 AI TOPS. The SoC tile also contains the chip's platform security processors, and a few allied components of the iGPU, namely the display engine, the media accelerators, and the display I/O.

Lastly, there's the Graphics tile. Intel built this on the fairly advanced 5 nm TSMC N5 process (same one that current NVIDIA Ada and AMD RDNA 3 GPUs are built on). This slender tile only contains the 4 Xe cores available to this iGPU variant, and graphics rendering machinery.

The filler tiles appear like voids under the microscope.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site | Source
 
Joined
Jan 3, 2021
Messages
3,605 (2.49/day)
Location
Slovenia
Processor i5-6600K
Motherboard Asus Z170A
Cooling some cheap Cooler Master Hyper 103 or similar
Memory 16GB DDR4-2400
Video Card(s) IGP
Storage Samsung 850 EVO 250GB
Display(s) 2x Oldell 24" 1920x1200
Case Bitfenix Nova white windowless non-mesh
Audio Device(s) E-mu 1212m PCI
Power Supply Seasonic G-360
Mouse Logitech Marble trackball, never had a mouse
Keyboard Key Tronic KT2000, no Win key because 1994
Software Oldwin
each E-core cluster is just one ringbus stop away from a P-core, which should improve thread-migration latencies
How often do those thread migrations occur anyway? And when they do, the contents of L2 has to be discarded (simple but adds latency) or transferred to the other core/cluster L2 (complicated and adds latency). Both possibilities seem very un-optimal.
 
Joined
Dec 12, 2016
Messages
1,948 (0.66/day)
It still blows my mind that almost all the tiles are TSMC.
1729595989958.png

 
Joined
Mar 7, 2011
Messages
4,624 (0.92/day)
It still blows my mind that almost all the tiles are TSMC.
View attachment 368482
Even when using TSMC it seems like they are power hungry beasts.
 
Joined
Dec 12, 2016
Messages
1,948 (0.66/day)
Even when using TSMC it seems like they are power hungry beasts.
My intuition tells me that Intel is slowly migrating away from P cores to an E core only design after 1-2 more generations. Power usage will be out of control until then.
 
Joined
Jul 31, 2024
Messages
444 (3.08/day)
which included a technical run-down of Intel's first tile-based desktop processor,

So Intel is also gluing together their equipment now like AMD did?
 

btarunr

Editor & Senior Moderator
Staff member
Joined
Oct 9, 2007
Messages
47,296 (7.53/day)
Location
Hyderabad, India
System Name RBMK-1000
Processor AMD Ryzen 7 5700G
Motherboard ASUS ROG Strix B450-E Gaming
Cooling DeepCool Gammax L240 V2
Memory 2x 8GB G.Skill Sniper X
Video Card(s) Palit GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER GameRock
Storage Western Digital Black NVMe 512GB
Display(s) BenQ 1440p 60 Hz 27-inch
Case Corsair Carbide 100R
Audio Device(s) ASUS SupremeFX S1220A
Power Supply Cooler Master MWE Gold 650W
Mouse ASUS ROG Strix Impact
Keyboard Gamdias Hermes E2
Software Windows 11 Pro
How often do those thread migrations occur anyway? And when they do, the contents of L2 has to be discarded (simple but adds latency) or transferred to the other core/cluster L2 (complicated and adds latency). Both possibilities seem very un-optimal.
The L3 cache doesn't have a single ringbus stop, but several. To the software, this is one large piece of cache memory, but on the hardware, Intel can write L2 victims to slices of the L3 cache with the fewest ringbus stops to the intended core-type if a thread is migrating between two core types.
 
Joined
Feb 26, 2024
Messages
99 (0.33/day)
My intuition tells me that Intel is slowly migrating away from P cores to an E core only design after 1-2 more generations. Power usage will be out of control until then.
IMHO, Intel cannot afford to give up that much performance. There are important apps that need that speed.
 
Joined
Mar 6, 2017
Messages
3,358 (1.18/day)
Location
North East Ohio, USA
System Name My Ryzen 7 7700X Super Computer
Processor AMD Ryzen 7 7700X
Motherboard Gigabyte B650 Aorus Elite AX
Cooling DeepCool AK620 with Arctic Silver 5
Memory 2x16GB G.Skill Trident Z5 NEO DDR5 EXPO (CL30)
Video Card(s) XFX AMD Radeon RX 7900 GRE
Storage Samsung 980 EVO 1 TB NVMe SSD (System Drive), Samsung 970 EVO 500 GB NVMe SSD (Game Drive)
Display(s) Acer Nitro XV272U (DisplayPort) and Acer Nitro XV270U (DisplayPort)
Case Lian Li LANCOOL II MESH C
Audio Device(s) On-Board Sound / Sony WH-XB910N Bluetooth Headphones
Power Supply MSI A850GF
Mouse Logitech M705
Keyboard Steelseries
Software Windows 11 Pro 64-bit
Benchmark Scores https://valid.x86.fr/liwjs3
My intuition tells me that Intel is slowly migrating away from P cores to an E core only design after 1-2 more generations. Power usage will be out of control until then.
Actually, some reports indicate that somewhere around 2027 e-Cores will be gone and will be replaced by a more unified core architecture similar to that of Zen and Zen C cores.
 
Joined
Jan 3, 2021
Messages
3,605 (2.49/day)
Location
Slovenia
Processor i5-6600K
Motherboard Asus Z170A
Cooling some cheap Cooler Master Hyper 103 or similar
Memory 16GB DDR4-2400
Video Card(s) IGP
Storage Samsung 850 EVO 250GB
Display(s) 2x Oldell 24" 1920x1200
Case Bitfenix Nova white windowless non-mesh
Audio Device(s) E-mu 1212m PCI
Power Supply Seasonic G-360
Mouse Logitech Marble trackball, never had a mouse
Keyboard Key Tronic KT2000, no Win key because 1994
Software Oldwin
Actually, some reports indicate that somewhere around 2027 e-Cores will be gone and will be replaced by a more unified core architecture similar to that of Zen and Zen C cores.
The E-core performance seems to be approaching P-core performance - we'll soon see, and if true then what you said is logical to expect. If necessary, many variations are possible within just one type of core. Less L2, slower AVX-512 or AVX10, smaller transistors for lower clock - all of these make sense without deep architectural changes. Use of the same core type both as independent cores and in clusters? Maybe.

Intel now has LPE cores too, those are much smaller, meaning that they will be developed independently.
 
Top