By: anon (anon.delete@this.anon.com), April 22, 2015 12:14 am
Room: Moderated Discussions
Exophase (exophase.delete@this.gmail.com) on April 21, 2015 11:53 pm wrote:
> anon (anon.delete@this.anon.com) on April 21, 2015 11:24 pm wrote:
> > This is no longer exactly true for high performance CPUs. If you halved the power consumption of a device,
> > then you could design something equivalent to previous design in performance using fewer transistors.
> >
>
> But a major redesign of the CPU uarch is not what Intel has been doing with their ticks. The floorplans look
> very much like a shrunken version of their last node, this has been consistent for several generations now.
Point is: the goal has always been cost per performance. In the past, cost per transistor has been a good proxy for that. It is not any longer.
>
> > It's especially not true for mobile when you look at the whole device
> > cost, you also reduce cost of battery and thermal design.
> >
>
> If we're talking laptops, and even to some extent large tablets, power consumption savings in the CPU are
> starting hitting diminishing returns for typical use patterns where the CPU isn't heavily loaded that much
> (so, ie, the display, wifi, and other components take a proportionately larger share of the power consumption).
> Thermal design costs, maybe, although this isn't something that Intel saves directly on, and instead will
> have to charge more for the device while convincing OEMs they can save costs here.
Of course that's all worth money to OEMs, so it adds value to Intel's product.
>
> > Transistors are so cheap now that 4-8 multithreaded cores and 8-20MB of
> > cache is common on a desktop CPU, and laptops are not so far behind.
> >
> > Selling close to previous design for lower cost has never been Intel's
> > game. They've always pushed to improve on designs and maintain prices.
> >
>
> The enthusiast line is not common, not cheap, and still lags the mainstream line by several months per generation.
You must have missed the "4 cores" and "8MB" end of the range that I quoted.
> The mainstream i7s have not been growing in core count or cache whatsoever over the past few generations.
That's because they are already far beyond diminishing returns for most workloads.
> They
> very much have been selling close to previous design, especially with ticks. Some of the die space has been
> reclaimed by GPU, but that too is giving way towards overall trending towards smaller die sizes.
They have actually been able to improve performance quite significantly over the past few years. Nothing like when power scaling was still in play of course, but that is not for lack of *wanting* to, it's for inability to do so with current silicon scaling. That's the point: they don't want transistors for lower cost, they want transistors that can give better performance.
> anon (anon.delete@this.anon.com) on April 21, 2015 11:24 pm wrote:
> > This is no longer exactly true for high performance CPUs. If you halved the power consumption of a device,
> > then you could design something equivalent to previous design in performance using fewer transistors.
> >
>
> But a major redesign of the CPU uarch is not what Intel has been doing with their ticks. The floorplans look
> very much like a shrunken version of their last node, this has been consistent for several generations now.
Point is: the goal has always been cost per performance. In the past, cost per transistor has been a good proxy for that. It is not any longer.
>
> > It's especially not true for mobile when you look at the whole device
> > cost, you also reduce cost of battery and thermal design.
> >
>
> If we're talking laptops, and even to some extent large tablets, power consumption savings in the CPU are
> starting hitting diminishing returns for typical use patterns where the CPU isn't heavily loaded that much
> (so, ie, the display, wifi, and other components take a proportionately larger share of the power consumption).
> Thermal design costs, maybe, although this isn't something that Intel saves directly on, and instead will
> have to charge more for the device while convincing OEMs they can save costs here.
Of course that's all worth money to OEMs, so it adds value to Intel's product.
>
> > Transistors are so cheap now that 4-8 multithreaded cores and 8-20MB of
> > cache is common on a desktop CPU, and laptops are not so far behind.
> >
> > Selling close to previous design for lower cost has never been Intel's
> > game. They've always pushed to improve on designs and maintain prices.
> >
>
> The enthusiast line is not common, not cheap, and still lags the mainstream line by several months per generation.
You must have missed the "4 cores" and "8MB" end of the range that I quoted.
> The mainstream i7s have not been growing in core count or cache whatsoever over the past few generations.
That's because they are already far beyond diminishing returns for most workloads.
> They
> very much have been selling close to previous design, especially with ticks. Some of the die space has been
> reclaimed by GPU, but that too is giving way towards overall trending towards smaller die sizes.
They have actually been able to improve performance quite significantly over the past few years. Nothing like when power scaling was still in play of course, but that is not for lack of *wanting* to, it's for inability to do so with current silicon scaling. That's the point: they don't want transistors for lower cost, they want transistors that can give better performance.