from Hacker News

Intel Skylake Launch, with Architecture Analysis

by MekaiGS on 9/2/15, 3:28 AM with 97 comments

  • by nhaehnle on 9/2/15, 8:45 AM

    The most interesting to me is that Intel apparently stopped publishing transistor counts starting with the 14nm node.

    This is significant because as structure sizes become smaller, the restrictions on possible layouts (so called DRCs, design rule constraints) become ever stricter. For example, you can't just place wires wherever you want; you have to take into account the relationship to other wires. With stricter rules, the end result may be that the effective scaling achieved is worse than what the structure size suggests, because the rules force a lower density of transitors.

    So what are Intel hiding? Are they far ahead of the competition in terms of DRCs and don't want others to know how much, or are they struggling (like apparently everybody else) and want to hide a less-than-ideal effective scaling? Obviously, your guess is as good as mine, but it's certainly fascinating to watch the competition as Moore's law is coming to an end.

  • by tychuz on 9/2/15, 9:46 AM

    Intel processors are great and really blow competition away (on desktops). But that's kind of annoying - when there's no competition, Intel holds on releasing high end CPUs (w/ 6 cores) on new architecture and their price is insane...

  • by TheLoneWolfling on 9/2/15, 1:16 PM

    Call me crazy, but I want a processor that's just that - a processor. No integrated GPU that's just sitting there taking chip resources (die space, power leakage, etc) that could be used for better things (designing things for lower leakage current, async sections of the chip, etc).

    Among other things, discrete GPUs blow integrated GPUs out of the water, and the time-to-obsolescence of a GPU isn't anywhere near that of a CPU. It also makes sense from a cooling perspective - it's a whole lot easier to cool two chips in separate areas than one larger chip, generally speaking.

  • by skrause on 9/2/15, 8:17 AM

    It seems that all Skylake CPUs suitable for new MacBook Pros won't ship until early 2016. I was hoping for a new MBP this fall, but it seems that my old MacBook Air has to do it's job a little longer.

  • by MichaelGG on 9/2/15, 3:06 PM

    Intel SGX is possibly huge. With a trusted enclave that's verifiable, you could do things like verify that a server is actually running certain code (like a bitcoin mixer).

    Of course it also allows real DRM, where a remote server can verify you're running unmodified code.

    But how does the key management work?

    My personal interest is the continuing quest for a machine strong enough to develop, but not warm my hands at all. Macbooks are insanely hot (how can Apple even pretend to be about quality with those designs??), X250 ThinkPads is "alright" if I aggressively throttle the processor. Seems like the perf improvements are effectively dead so maybe we'll see cool laptops. Though OEMs seem to screw up as much as possible so who knows...

  • by chipaca on 9/2/15, 8:50 AM

    Am I alone in wanting a small (NUC or (thin?) mITX) board with a Core M on it? :-(

  • by currysausage on 9/2/15, 9:03 AM

    I wonder why there were so few laptops with iX-5... processors in the market. Most laptops with 5th generation Cores seem to have low-power U processors, but even these are hard to find with some manufacturers. Did the full-power versions arrive too late, so manufactuters just chose to wait for Skylake?

  • by throwaway7767 on 9/2/15, 1:31 PM

    I've seen a lot of references to skylake "supporting wireless charging" but with no explanation on what that means. I read this article hoping for an answer but it was not mentioned.

    Can someone enlighten me? What does the chipset and CPU have to do with the power supply method? I'm assuming they're not including an RF power antenna on-die, so is this just code for "we got peak power consumption below the threshold practical with today's wireless power transmission devices"?

  • by uxcn on 9/2/15, 2:58 PM

    I'm honestly still trying to figure out the implications of eDRAM. It seems like the main benefit is offloading traffic from the memory bus, particularly now that it's coherent.

    Am I missing something?

  • by tkinom on 9/3/15, 1:46 AM

    "4.5W ultra-mobile Core M" - does it means if someone uses it with a typical 2250 mAh cell phone battery, it only last half hour?

    That's a long way to catch up with ARM SOC, right?

  • by glasz on 9/2/15, 10:22 AM

    i'm pretty pissed. skylake-h chips will only have hd 530 graphics which is slower than the current version. and still no hdmi 2.0. just laughable.