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[Leonidas]

Intel has launched 10nm CPUs today. Intel 10nm is comparable to TSMC 7nm. Intel is the first to have a CPU of this level in the mobile space.

Previews:
Anandtech
HotHardware
PCWorld

On the graphics side of things, chips equipped with Intel's latest Iris Plus graphics hit up to twice the performance when compared to 8th Gen CPUs, Intel claims. Based on Intel's Gen11 graphics architecture, the integrated GPUs come with built-in support for VESA's Adaptive Sync standard — a first for Intel graphics. According to Intel, the increases in graphics performance with this generation of chips should allow for smooth 1080p gaming in games like Fortnite and Dirt Rally 2, along with more efficient 4K video editing and photo processing.

The final big addition with the 10th Gen is the inclusion of a dedicated instruction set, Deep Learning Boost, for accelerating neural networks and AI workloads. The company claims up to 1 teraflop of GPU engine compute performance for "sustained, high-throughput inference applications like video stylization, analytics and real-time video." The company has also included a dedicated engine for background AI tasks like voice processing and noise suppression.
Read more at https://www.windowscentral.com/intel-launches-first-10th-gen-ice-lake-cpus-laptops-11-chips-all

The IPC and single-thread performance enhancements Intel disclosed in regard to Sunny Cove (the microarchitecture at the heart of Ice Lake) are the real deal. Of course, they have been a long time coming with all that Intel has had to contend with getting a next-gen architecture based on its 10nm process out the door, but in the end the Core i7-1065G7 lead in all of the single-threaded testing. Versus the previous-gen Whisky Lake based Core i7-8565U, multi-threaded performance was better across the board as well.
Read more at https://hothardware.com/reviews/intel-10nm-ice-lake-performance-and-benchmarks

The IPC they are talking about is the 18% that Intel previously announced which gives this CPU the highest IPC ever on a similar process to TSMC 7nm. Impressive stuff.

I'm not going to steal all their benchmarks, check their site for more but here are a few.

-First Intel 10nm CPU (comparable to TSMC 7nm, which doesn't exist in a laptop today)
-Deep Learning
-Variable Rate Shading
-Adaptive Sync (Free-Sync)
-Thin and Light
-Highest Performance at 15w
-Fastest Intel integrated graphics on par with Vega mobile graphics

 

[Horsemama1956]

Intel would need to go back in time and undo all the shit they pulled over the last few decades for me to consider a new product from them ever again.

 

[Leonidas]

OP updated with additional info, more text previews and a few vids.

Checked some of it out and it all looks promising.

 

[SonGoku]

The IPC they are talking about is the 18% that Intel previously announced which gives this CPU the highest IPC ever on a similar process to TSMC 7nm. Impressive stuff.

With security patches applied?

 

[bhunachicken]

Hmm, doesn't sound like it's the huge jump many (including myself) would be looking for with the iGPUs.

Still, for low spec gaming it's a decent enough improvement.

 

[Leonidas]

Hmm, doesn't sound like it's the huge jump many (including myself) would be looking for with the iGPUs.

Still, for low spec gaming it's a decent enough improvement.

Yeah it's a decent improvement, Gen 9 was a slide show at times.
Gen 11 graphics opens up the possibility to play a lot more games with 1.5-2x higher performance.

Gen11 also supports variable rate shading, something which until today was only found in Nvidia Turing GPUs...

 

[JohnnyFootball]

Before anybody gets too excited, these are strictly laptop GPUs and are at the moment only have 4-cores and 8 threads.
If you are in the market for a laptop, it's hard to argue that Ice Lake isn't a decent option, assuming they are available at a reasonable price and quantity.

We’re going to reserve final judgement on Ice Lake and the 10th Gen Core i7-1065G7 until we get our hands on final, retail-ready products and see how it behaves when it reaches consumers, not only in terms of performance, but battery life and connectivity as well.
Read more at https://hothardware.com/reviews/int...nce-and-benchmarks?page=7#UHcHWc3I65VLqBG1.99

Battery life is something I am interested in as well. My current Intel 2-in-1 has absolutely pitiful battery life and that needs to be a priority.

However, if you're looking for a new 10nm desktop gaming CPU it's going to be a while before you get those. Possibly as late as 2021.

 

[Coulomb_Barrier]

The crux of it:

As for Ice Lake itself, our results lean towards Ice Lake outperforming Whiskey Lake, if only by a small margin.

...even Intel is only predicting an absolute gain of ~3.5% for Ice Lake over current generation systems.

The reason why the difference is so small is because of IPC and frequency. Intel is touting a median IPC advantage on the new Sunny Cove cores of +18% against Skylake. That isn’t something we were able to test in the short time we had with the system, but +18% should provide a healthy bump – we actually see a number of key microarchitectural improvements bubble up through in our SPEC testing.

But at the same time, the frequency has decreased – our Whiskey Lake Huawei Matebook system was +500 MHz on the base frequency (+38%), and +700 MHz on the turbo frequency (+18%).

+18% IPC is fine and dandy but they've lost a huge amount of frequency going from 14nm++ Whiskey Lake to IL. So IL is not very impressive at all from a perf POV.

5 years in development and billions in R&D and their 10nm arch delivers 3.5% gain over their ancient 14nm CPUs....

Now compare performance gains from Ryzen 2000 to 3000 for something truly impressive achieved 1 year after Ryzen 2000 launched.

 

[Leonidas]

I look forward to 2021 when we can finally get these in desktops.

I look forward to the same in 2020. Not that I need a new CPU or anything, but it will be interesting to see if Intel can finally dethrone 14nm Intel CPUs as the fastest gaming CPUs.

I do want a new laptop this year though, so it's nice to see Intel continuing pushing the boundaries there

 

[Leonidas]

5 years in development and billions in R&D and their 10nm arch delivers 3.5% gain over their ancient 14nm CPUs....

If you actually compare it to their "ancient" 5 year old 14nm Broadwell processor, it's a 47% gain...

Not bad

 

[JohnnyFootball]

If you actually compare it to their "ancient" 5 year old 14nm Broadwell processor, it's a 47% gain...

Not bad

Not bad indeed.

Too bad PC Gamers won't be able to take advantage of it any time soon.

 

[Leonidas]

Random guy on YouTube does a good job of explaining Ice Lake

Not bad indeed.

Too bad PC Gamers won't be able to take advantage of it any time soon.

Safe to say that PC Gamers who care about having the best performance are happy that Intel already produces the fastest gaming CPUs.
And some PC Gamers will take advantage of the Ice Lake's Iris Plus for light gaming on the go...

 

[Tesseract]

ice seems aight, still see no reason to up from a 4790k tho

guess i'm waiting a few more years

 

[alabtrosMyster]

What impresses me the most is how close the R7 3700u is to the top intel has to offer on laptops! I can't wait for AMD to ship a 7hm laptop CPU with updated Vega graphics.

Not sure what to do with the AI stuff, my feeling is that it's little more than a buzz word and it gets integrated everywhere these days, even in places where we couldn't care less about it.

 

[LOLCats]

Ice lake baby

Too late, too late

 

[Leonidas]

What impresses me the most is how close the R7 3700u is to the top intel has to offer on laptops! I can't wait for AMD to ship a 7hm laptop

AMD 7nm laptops aren't coming till 2020 (according to AMD). Kinda disappointing since I wanted to see how Ice Lake compares to Zen 2, but AMD is not ready yet.

What impresses me the most is that Intel has process and IPC leadership in mobile with Ice Lake. Zen 2 mobile might not match Intel in either area.

 

[PhoenixTank]

With security patches applied?

If we're talking about the Spectre family of vulnerabilities, there should be hardware level mitigations in place.
Not directly referenced on the main Intel page (strangely) but there's a table from Anandtech:

The Ice Lake Benchmark Preview: Inside Intel's 10nm

www.anandtech.com

 

[UltimaKilo]

Nice to see Icelake is a very good upgrade. It’s likely going to be included in this year’s 16 inch MacBook Pro that’s been rumored. LPDDR4?

 

[A.Romero]

Intel is untouchable in the laptop space.

I haven't had any other CPU brand since 2004.

In the deskop space, however, I have used different brands depending on what's the best option for my budget at building time.

I just got an 8th gen laptop though. I think I'll keep it for at least a year and a half more.

 

[DESTROYA]

Not bad, wouldn’t mind seeing these in new tablets like the surface lineup.
The U series in the surface pro models and Y series in the surface go models .

 

[MightySquirrel]

Wake me up when there's desktop Ice Lake that does 5GHz. Muppet parts doesn't interest me one bit.

 

[SonGoku]

If we're talking about the Spectre family of vulnerabilities

all of them, not just spectre

 

[LittleBusters]

Looks like I'm going to wait for Apple to update their iMacs with 10th generation Intel chips and I can finally replace my 4th generation Intel iMac.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

Because of clock speed regression, actual performance of Ice Lake CPU's is similar to Coffee Lake Refresh.

I mean sure, Intel reaching 10nm is a milestone. But performance is a wash because everyone who has transitioned to smaller process nodes have found that clock speeds simply can't ramp up as high. That's why these initial chips are targeted towards small (13" and below) notebooks and ultrabooks. Intel has not yet figured out how to make high clockspeed desktop CPU's using their 10nm process.

For desktops, it's hard to not recommend AMD Ryzen 3000 series right now. But for laptops, it's also hard to not recommend laptops which currently have Coffee Lake and even last-gen Kaby Lake CPU's instead because they are going on clearance for stupidly dirt cheap. Last year, I got an HP Omen 15" (2017) gaming laptop with a 7700HQ and 1050 Ti for $500. A few weeks ago, I got a Dell Inspiron 13" (7370, late 2017) ultrabook with an i5-8250U for $340. Both were Walmart clearance laptops.

So yeah, get out there and buy these new Ice Lake chip laptops for $1,500 with no actual performance improvements except you can now play games at low settings in 1080p instead of in 720p like before. Real gamers will still be getting laptops with Nvidia discrete GPU's and those aren't going to be Ice Lake anytime soon, they'll still be Kaby Lake and Coffee Lake. Similarly, desktop CPU's probably won't be 10nm until God Knows When. Meanwhile the smart money will be hunting these Walmart clearance laptops for peanuts which have the same real-world performance.

 

[Memorabilia]

Is this guy on intels payroll?

 

[thelastword]

What impresses me the most is how close the R7 3700u is to the top intel has to offer on laptops! I can't wait for AMD to ship a 7hm laptop CPU with updated Vega graphics.

Not sure what to do with the AI stuff, my feeling is that it's little more than a buzz word and it gets integrated everywhere these days, even in places where we couldn't care less about it.

You mean 7nm Ryzen 3000 + Navi graphics..... (instead of Vega).....? Well yes, that is coming and it should scream way past this Intel showing here..... I think we should get Rx570 graphics with 10 Navi CU's........

 

[Makariel]

Not planning on buying a new laptop until 2021 so not too relevant for me now, and I will wait for the desktop version before I start to sing praise to the Lord and saviour Intel.

But which drunk lunatic has been dreaming up that naming scheme? Intel did a great job introducing the i3/5/7 line to make it easy to identify what cpu should be the right one for you and AMD did a good job copying that idea, but with the last few generations the cpu designations get more and more convoluted and confusing. Two i7 1065G7 but then with two different wattages, so that laptop manufacturers have one more thing they can weasel around and you might accidentally get the lame low power version of the same chip?

 

[PhoenixTank]

all of them, not just spectre

Spectre family (i.e. Speculative execution class of vulnerabilities) is right there in my post and your quote too.

 

[JohnnyFootball]

Intel is untouchable in the laptop space.

I haven't had any other CPU brand since 2004.

In the deskop space, however, I have used different brands depending on what's the best option for my budget at building time.

I just got an 8th gen laptop though. I think I'll keep it for at least a year and a half more.

Contrary to popular belief, desktop CPUs are on the low end of the totem pole for Intel. Laptops and Servers are where it's at in terms of revenue.

 

[A.Romero]

Contrary to popular belief, desktop CPUs are on the low end of the totem pole for Intel. Laptops and Servers are where it's at in terms of revenue.

Yes, I can believe that.

 

[JohnnyFootball]

Because of clock speed regression, actual performance of Ice Lake CPU's is similar to Coffee Lake Refresh.

I mean sure, Intel reaching 10nm is a milestone. But performance is a wash because everyone who has transitioned to smaller process nodes have found that clock speeds simply can't ramp up as high. That's why these initial chips are targeted towards small (13" and below) notebooks and ultrabooks. Intel has not yet figured out how to make high clockspeed desktop CPU's using their 10nm process.

For desktops, it's hard to not recommend AMD Ryzen 3000 series right now. But for laptops, it's also hard to not recommend laptops which currently have Coffee Lake and even last-gen Kaby Lake CPU's instead because they are going on clearance for stupidly dirt cheap. Last year, I got an HP Omen 15" (2017) gaming laptop with a 7700HQ and 1050 Ti for $500. A few weeks ago, I got a Dell Inspiron 13" (7370, late 2017) ultrabook with an i5-8250U for $340. Both were Walmart clearance laptops.

So yeah, get out there and buy these new Ice Lake chip laptops for $1,500 with no actual performance improvements except you can now play games at low settings in 1080p instead of in 720p like before. Real gamers will still be getting laptops with Nvidia discrete GPU's and those aren't going to be Ice Lake anytime soon, they'll still be Kaby Lake and Coffee Lake. Similarly, desktop CPU's probably won't be 10nm until God Knows When. Meanwhile the smart money will be hunting these Walmart clearance laptops for peanuts which have the same real-world performance.

Im interested in an IceLake laptop since the integrated GPU should be light years better. I don't do much gaming on a 2-in-1 laptop, but I wouldn't mind a GPU that can handle it a little.

 

[LittleBusters]

Integrated Thunderbolt 3 is a huge advantage to any Ryzen chipset! That's 4 full TB3 ports that will come standard on any Windows desktop from now on.

 

[llien]

Anand nailed it.
Some bump in IPC together with similar anti-bump in frequency.

Th need to drop frequency going 14 to 10nm could be the reason why desktop CPU situation is so pathetic for Intel and Ryzen (3700 in particular) stomps all over it DIY market.

 

[JohnnyFootball]

Integrated Thunderbolt 3 is a huge advantage to any Ryzen chipset! That's 4 full TB3 ports that will come standard on any Windows desktop from now on.

Actually, a few Ryzen X570 motherboards I have TB3 ports. The upcoming ASROCK CREATOR board is one such.

 

[DESTROYA]

I think I’m more intrigued by the GPU performance of these new IceLake CPU’S more so than actual CPU performance.

 

[sendit]

Intel would need to go back in time and undo all the shit they pulled over the last few decades for me to consider a new product from them ever again.

Intel/AMD/Nvidia, I don’t care if they killed cats to hit a performance bar. When the time comes for me to build a new computer, I’ll assess who is currently at top.

 

[SonGoku]

Spectre family (i.e. Speculative execution class of vulnerabilities) is right there in my post and your quote too.

Not just Spectre family is what i meant

 

[SantaC]

Intel would need to go back in time and undo all the shit they pulled over the last few decades for me to consider a new product from them ever again.

first post gets it.

 

[PhoenixTank]

Not just Spectre family is what i meant

Okay I'm torn here. Either you didn't look at the table from that Anand link before replying the first time or you're talking about other generic Windows security patches as if they'd have some sort of impact solely on Intel's Ice Lake CPUs and not other x86 chips as well? For clarity: Anandtech is reporting that Spectre_v2, v3, v3a, v4, Foreshadow, Zombieload/RIDL & Fallout have been fixed in hardware for Ice Lake. A couple do require OS-side support to work properly.

The only situation that hurts Ice Lake's potential relative IPC is if the reference Sky Lake system was patched, while Ice Lake relies on the hardware fixes. Unpatched, the gap would be smaller. In the reverse situation of Sky Lake being unpatched and quoting 18%, then patching would increase the relative IPC of Ice Lake.

In absolute terms versus AMD: the security patches, whether they are correctly applied or not applied, should have no performance impact on Ice Lake.

 

[SonGoku]

Okay I'm torn here. Either you didn't look at the table from that Anand link before replying the first time or you're talking about other generic Windows security patches as if they'd have some sort of impact solely on Intel's Ice Lake CPUs and not other x86 chips as well? For clarity: Anandtech is reporting that Spectre_v2, v3, v3a, v4, Foreshadow, Zombieload/RIDL & Fallout have been fixed in hardware for Ice Lake. A couple do require OS-side support to work properly.

I looked now but im confused since you mentioned Spectre family, what about meltdown and co. or are those hw fixd? Im not disagreeing, im genugenuinely curious

The only situation that hurts Ice Lake's potential relative IPC is if the reference Sky Lake system was patched, while Ice Lake relies on the hardware fixes

Which was my original question: Once patched is it a 18% IPC increase or less? or we don't know yet?

In absolute terms versus AMD: the security patches, whether they are correctly applied or not applied, should have no performance impact on Ice Lake.

Not sure about that just yet:

Aside from Spectre V1, which has no suitable hardware solution, almost all of the rest have been solved through hardware/firmware (Intel won’t distinguish which, but to a certain extent it doesn’t matter for new hardware).

This is a step in the right direction, but of course it may have a knock-on effect, plus for anything that gets performance improvements being moved from firmware to hardware will be rolled into any advertised IPC increase.

 

[PhoenixTank]

I looked now but im confused since you mentioned Spectre family, what about meltdown and co. or are those hw fixd? Im not disagreeing, im genugenuinely curious

Okay then. To my knowledge, these are all speculative execution attacks (or require it to exploit further flaws), which is where Spectre gets the name. Spectre variant 3 is Meltdown, so yes it is fixed in hardware. Again, the others are in my post or that table.
Intel don't make it easy, but the info is at https://www.intel.com/content/www/u...ngineering-new-protections-into-hardware.html

In that table, "Intel64 Family 6 Model 158 Stepping 13" is the Coffee Lake series (the latest revision). So the more recently manufactured ix9xxx chips are mostly fixed, but not entirely. Of the rows in that table, this one has the best coverage on the consumer side.
Ice Lake (Family 6 Model 126) is not yet covered in this table, which is probably why Anandtech are a little skittish about confirming it. Ice Lake can't launch in a worse state than their older architectures in this respect.

Which was my original question: Once patched is it a 18% IPC increase or less? or we don't know yet?

You've got your wires crossed there or I am very very tired.
An unpatched Skylake vs Ice Lake is the worst case for showing off Intel's gains. Patching the SkyLake system cannot make the IPC gain smaller, it'll just slow down Skylake, giving Ice Lake improved gains. The disclaimer points out that it may not be patched. I don't know how to illustrate this better.

Not sure about that just yet:

Aside from Spectre V1, which has no suitable hardware solution, almost all of the rest have been solved through hardware/firmware (Intel won’t distinguish which, but to a certain extent it doesn’t matter for new hardware).
This is a step in the right direction, but of course it may have a knock-on effect, plus for anything that gets performance improvements being moved from firmware to hardware will be rolled into any advertised IPC increase

Spectre variant 1 goes without saying, tbh and I did omit it from my post. It is a problem on anything newer than the Intel Core 2 series (I think?) and affects AMD CPUs too. There isn't a hardware fix for any vendor except returning to sloooow designs. Has to be mitigated in software and will be haunting us for quite a while.
Again, they have distinguished between firmware and hardware fixes before but not at this point in the pre-release for Ice Lake. As for moving from firmware to hardware fixes, previous generations largely had to deal with MCU/firmware fixes. I believe this is what they are referring to. Implementing in hardware doesn't have the penalty that comes with the MCU/firmware updates and again, I'd be appalled to see anything less than the coverage that the latest Coffee Lake gets. Frankly Ice Lake should be better.

 

[LordOfChaos]

Highest IPC huh. x86 IPC, for sure.

 

[thelastword]

Such low base clocks on ICE LAKE laptop parts......It's barely pushing 1Ghz and one of the chips has a base clock of 0.7Ghz.....another 0.8HGhz..

The naming convention is all types of convoluted and this thing will only start to make it's way to laptops in mid November, barring a delay of course......By that time, I'm pretty sure AMD will show their 7nm NAVI/Zen 3 APU's and blow this out of the water.....If AMD does not launch it's new APU's by CES next year, they will definitely demo it's power ahead of Intel's ICE lake launch......That's for sure...

 

[Leonidas]

Dell is shipping the world's first 10nm laptop

Dell Ships First Laptop With Intel's 10nm Chip

The refreshed laptop convertible from Dell will start at $999 and offers up to 17 hours in battery life. Configure it with Core i3, i5 or i7 variants of Intel's 10th-generation Core chips.

www.pcmag.com

 

[JohnnyFootball]

Dell is shipping the world's first 10nm laptop

Dell Ships First Laptop With Intel's 10nm Chip

The refreshed laptop convertible from Dell will start at $999 and offers up to 17 hours in battery life. Configure it with Core i3, i5 or i7 variants of Intel's 10th-generation Core chips.

www.pcmag.com

I’m calling bullshit on the 17 hours claim.

Big time bullshit.