In the myriad of stories and early critiques, Intel is immediately formally launching its 11th Generation Core household of desktop processors, often known as Rocket Lake, constructed on Intel’s most superior 14nm course of node expertise. This new product household will type the premise of Intel’s premium desktop portfolio for many of 2021, if not longer, and options processors with as much as eight cores. Highlights embody the brand new microarchitecture, Cypress Cove, and the Xe-LP graphics design, each of that are redesigns of Intel’s 10nm cell merchandise. These elements additionally embody Intel’s first PCIe 4.zero providing on the desktop, new AVX-512 for desktop, higher reminiscence assist, assist for resizable BAR, new overclocking options, and enhanced multimedia acceleration.
To The Moon With Rocket Lake
With Intel’s desktop processor launches, we sometimes observe that the brand new household is all pervasive, enabling merchandise from the highest Core i9 or i7 elements, all the best way right down to the Pentiums and the Celerons. Intel often achieves this by constructing one, two, or extra totally different sizes of silicon, usually differing in cores and graphics to attain the precise stability of price, yield, and efficiency.
For this era, Intel has determined to solely produce one measurement of silicon, and phase its providing, with the brand new household solely getting used for Core i5 and up.
This one-size silicon design options eight of Intel’s new Cypress Cove cores, with HyperThreading, and 32 execution models of ‘Gen 12’ graphics, derived from Intel’s latest Xe-LP graphics designs. Also bundled in that silicon is a DDR4-3200 reminiscence controller, a PCIe 4.zero root advanced providing 20 lanes for discrete graphics and storage, a double width DMI x8 hyperlink to the chipset, superior AVX-512 assist for Intel’s Deep Learning Boost applied sciences, up to date overclocking, and next-generation media and show acceleration.
In the previous, Intel’s Tick-Tock technique meant that in every product cycle, both the method node could be up to date (tick), or the microarchitecture could be up to date (tock). The new Rocket Lake processors, with the Cypress Cove core, falls very a lot beneath the ‘tock’ nomenclature, nonetheless this core isn’t a very new microarchitecture by the definition of the phrase ‘new’.
Backporting 10nm to 14nm
In order to allow Cypress Cove, Intel has taken its Sunny Cove core design constructed on 10nm, and re-architected it for 14nm. The technique of doing that is what Intel coined as a ‘backport’. The technique of backporting isn’t as straightforward as placing the core design on a photocopier and making it bigger – the impact of the physics of electrons going via wires signifies that there are some inherent design criticalities in that course of which deviate it a little bit. But on the entire, as our testing has already proven on our retail samples, regardless of the discussions about energy, Intel has managed to maintain 14nm Cypress Cove as near the unique 10nm Sunny Cove design as potential.
In an identical mantra, the brand new Xe-LP ‘Gen12’ graphics on Rocket Lake can be an identical backport. This time Intel has taken the graphics subsystem from its 10nm Tiger Lake pocket book processors and crafted it into 14nm. As a pocket book processor Tiger Lake focuses loads on built-in graphics, and consequently has 96 execution models – Rocket Lake by comparability has solely 32 models.
Backport vs Co-design
The way forward for how and when Intel will provoke extra backporting, even given advised roadmaps, is prone to be in flux primarily based on its means to supply excessive single-core frequency desktop processors. Cypress Cove, by most measures, is a reflex response to a widening hole in Intel’s desktop roadmap, and takes a core particularly designed for a unique course of. Intel is/has/has seemingly discovered loads…
