Rumor: Intel prepping next-gen Skylake chips for August debut, may curtail Broadwell sales

Posted:
in Future Apple Hardware edited May 2015
Chip giant Intel is reportedly targeting August of this year for the initial rollout of its next-generation Skylake microarchitecture, a timeline that likely means Apple's high-end Macs will skip the oft-delayed Broadwell line.




The rollout would begin with Skylake-S --?which includes the desktop flagship Core i7 6700K --?according to a purported Intel document published by Chinese blog BenchLife. Skylake-U, -Y, and -H would follow in September, with specific versions trickling out until January 2016.

Broadwell's desktop components are expected to be largely stepped over. The Broadwell-based Core i7-5775C and Core i5-5675C could bow this summer, but would be replaced with Skylake parts shortly thereafter.

Apple has moved to the Broadwell-Y Core M line for its new 12-inch MacBook, while the MacBook Air and 13-inch MacBook Pro were refreshed with Broadwell-U CPUs. The 15-inch MacBook Pro family continues to use Haswell chips, however, as mobile quad-core Broadwell components have yet to see the light of day.

Given that Apple refreshed the 15-inch MacBook Pro with faster Haswell parts earlier this week, it seems likely that the most powerful Mac laptops will skip Broadwell entirely and instead go directly to Skylake. The same is likely true for the Mac Pro, though there is not yet any word on the next-generation Xeon E5.

Skylake, the 14-nanometer "tock" in Intel's tick-tock architectural strategy, is expected to bring improvements in efficiency and performance alongside some new features.

Chief among those is adoption of the WiGig standard, which enables wireless gigabit-speed communications. Combined with the Rezence wireless charging standard --?of which Intel is a major backer --?this is expected to enable more useful wireless experiences for peripherals such as keyboards, mice, and monitors.
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 39
    thewhitefalconthewhitefalcon Posts: 4,453member
    Really makes the most sense. Broadwell was a major boondoggle but they did get the 14nm process working finally.

    I would expect new Macs in October again. The Mac Pro will likely get bumped to Haswell-EP when they can. The issue there is that to ship a 4-5K Thunderbolt Display Apple needs TB3, and I believe that's Skylake only.
  • Reply 2 of 39
    schlackschlack Posts: 719member
    This article is wrong. the 13" MBP is already using Broadwell. Since the April refresh.
  • Reply 3 of 39
    winterwinter Posts: 1,238member
    schlack wrote: »
    This article is wrong. the 13" MBP is already using Broadwell. Since the April refresh.

    I believe the article is referring to quad-core Broadwell.
  • Reply 4 of 39
    tmaytmay Posts: 6,312member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by TheWhiteFalcon View Post



    Really makes the most sense. Broadwell was a major boondoggle but they did get the 14nm process working finally.



    I would expect new Macs in October again. The Mac Pro will likely get bumped to Haswell-EP when they can. The issue there is that to ship a 4-5K Thunderbolt Display Apple needs TB3, and I believe that's Skylake only.

    Best guess on when we get Skylake Xeon and TB3?

  • Reply 5 of 39
    adrayvenadrayven Posts: 460member
    WiGig is also supposed to bring us Wireless Displays up to 4K. I'm very interested in seeing how this technology plays out and if Apple implements the standard or its own version of it..

    I could see WiGig and Rezence wireless charging being a MAJOR part of the new Retina Macbook strategy with only 1 USB C port.
  • Reply 6 of 39
    A 5k Retina iMac with Skylake, faster ram, much faster PCIe (those speeds on the new Macbook Pro are insane...) and a 980 Nividia type GPU or the new mega fast memory GPU cards from AMD?

    All adds up to a rock solid and great potential update for the iMac.

    Lemon Bon Bon.
  • Reply 7 of 39
    cmfcmf Posts: 65member
    Quote:



    Originally Posted by schlack View Post



    This article is wrong. the 13" MBP is already using Broadwell. Since the April refresh.



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Winter View Post





    I believe the article is referring to quad-core Broadwell.

     

    In other words, the real Broadwell chips. It's beyond me why Apple is still selling machines with dual-core chips. At the very least, the MacBook Pro line should be all quad-core. If things go as I think they will, the MacBook Air will eventually be discontinued, simplifying the lineup. For iMacs and Mac minis, I would hope they do whatever engineering work is necessary to make this happen.

     

    There's certainly a business case to be made for the dual core chips - I would imagine they are cheaper - but time marches onward. Apple should do likewise.

  • Reply 8 of 39
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,310moderator
    I would expect new Macs in October again. The Mac Pro will likely get bumped to Haswell-EP when they can.

    I reckon they'll skip Haswell there too as it's been out for a while. Broadwell-EP might be early 2016 but better than Haswell-EP at this stage. The chip at the top MP price point is 14-core but 18-core with Broadwell:

    http://ark.intel.com/products/family/78583/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E5-v3-Family#@All

    1000

    18-core would be a more worthwhile upgrade from a current 12-core.
    The issue there is that to ship a 4-5K Thunderbolt Display Apple needs TB3, and I believe that's Skylake only.

    The current 15" MBP with the AMD GPU is listed as having 5K output over TB2 although not the full 5K resolution. TB2 has 20Gbps bandwidth, 5K at 60Hz needs 5120x2880 x 24 x 60 = 21.2Gbps. The MBP is listed as supporting up to 5120x2160 x 24 x 60 = 15.9Gbps. This is 5K width x 4K height. It's close to the 21:9 aspect used in some movies and ultra-wide monitors:

    1000

    If they made a 5K monitor, it wouldn't have to be the same 16:9 5120x2880 as the iMac. Those wide displays are like having dual displays so you wouldn't likely buy two with a Mac Pro, you'd buy a single wide one. With 5K, they can afford to scale it up to 29" like that LG or even a bit higher.
    schlack wrote:
    This article is wrong. the 13" MBP is already using Broadwell. Since the April refresh.

    They did say "high-end Macs" and "most powerful Mac laptops", the 13" is just a dual-core ULT processor and they mentioned the 13" MBP was updated to Broadwell.

    Apple hasn't refreshed hardware sooner than 7.5 months before. October is a bit soon to issue updates for the Macs again but given that the last one was a small update, it wouldn't be too bad.

    I think it will be September for iPhone/iPad, October for 12" MB and 13" MBP, November/December for 15" MBP. The Mac Pro Broadwell chips might be ready for October so an update can happen then but if the chips aren't available until early 2016 then it'll get pushed back.

    The Skylake Iris Pro graphics will hopefully be much improved - up to 80% in the same TDP. That would bring the entry MBP up to the level of the AMD GPU and they can all support 5K output.
  • Reply 9 of 39
    schlackschlack Posts: 719member
    cmf wrote: »

    In other words, the real Broadwell chips. It's beyond me why Apple is still selling machines with dual-core chips. At the very least, the MacBook Pro line should be all quad-core. If things go as I think they will, the MacBook Air will eventually be discontinued, simplifying the lineup. For iMacs and Mac minis, I would hope they do whatever engineering work is necessary to make this happen.

    There's certainly a business case to be made for the dual core chips - I would imagine they are cheaper - but time marches onward. Apple should do likewise.

    Dropping a quad core in the 13 inch would be awesome, but not if it kills the battery life.
  • Reply 10 of 39
    19831983 Posts: 1,225member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Marvin View Post





    I reckon they'll skip Haswell there too as it's been out for a while. Broadwell-EP might be early 2016 but better than Haswell-EP at this stage. The chip at the top MP price point is 14-core but 18-core with Broadwell:



    http://ark.intel.com/products/family/78583/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E5-v3-Family#@All







    18-core would be a more worthwhile upgrade from a current 12-core.

    The current 15" MBP with the AMD GPU is listed as having 5K output over TB2 although not the full 5K resolution. TB2 has 20Gbps bandwidth, 5K at 60Hz needs 5120x2880 x 24 x 60 = 21.2Gbps. The MBP is listed as supporting up to 5120x2160 x 24 x 60 = 15.9Gbps. This is 5K width x 4K height. It's close to the 21:9 aspect used in some movies and ultra-wide monitors:







    If they made a 5K monitor, it wouldn't have to be the same 16:9 5120x2880 as the iMac. Those wide displays are like having dual displays so you wouldn't likely buy two with a Mac Pro, you'd buy a single wide one. With 5K, they can afford to scale it up to 29" like that LG or even a bit higher.

    They did say "high-end Macs" and "most powerful Mac laptops", the 13" is just a dual-core ULT processor and they mentioned the 13" MBP was updated to Broadwell.



    Apple hasn't refreshed hardware sooner than 7.5 months before. October is a bit soon to issue updates for the Macs again but given that the last one was a small update, it wouldn't be too bad.



    I think it will be September for iPhone/iPad, October for 12" MB and 13" MBP, November/December for 15" MBP. The Mac Pro Broadwell chips might be ready for October so an update can happen then but if the chips aren't available until early 2016 then it'll get pushed back.



    The Skylake Iris Pro graphics will hopefully be much improved - up to 80% in the same TDP. That would bring the entry MBP up to the level of the AMD GPU and they can all support 5K output.

    5120x2880 x 24 x 60? What does the 24 stand for - FPS?

  • Reply 11 of 39
    shompashompa Posts: 343member

    Intel did put Apple in a strange situation.



    Broadwell for desktop have recently been announced = Apple could use it. 

    The problem is that the fastest Broadwell for desktop includes Crystalwell. Crystalwell = generates heat + cost 100-300 dollar more than non-crystalwell chips.

     

    This lead to the fastest Broadwell being slower than todays chipping Devil Canyon Intels even when Broadwell is 5-7% faster per mhz. 

     

    BTW. 

    People don't understand how evil Intel are with their crippling. 

    On laptops = graphic signal have to go thru the Intel CPU. This is the real reason why older macs don't have 4K/60hz support. 

    This is also the reason why Thunderbolt graphics don't work as good as it could. You can't use the internal intel graphics to render the picture = on laptops you have to use work arounds for TB graphics. But even here Intel have crippled TB to PCIexpress2 speeds.

     

    The reson for this is that Intel want to force customers to pay for their crappy graphics. Look at 2012 --> 2013 Retina Macbook Pro. The 2013 are slower both CPU and graphics thanks to Crystawell. Sure, customers can pay 300 dollars extra for a dGPU. But Intel have already got their 300 extra for Crystalwell that I don't want to use. 

     

    Intels longterm plans are to cut away PCIexpress lanes = forcing customers who needs fast grafik buy Xeon chips.

     

    Imagine if Intel respected its customers. Instead of using 80% of the die area today to crappy graphics: Put on more cores / PCI lanes. It cost Intel zero extra. But intel don't want that. They want to bleed customers selling 7500 dollars Xeons that cost less to manufacture than todays highness graphic cards. (so please stop complain that highness graphic cost 850-1000 dollar. These chips are 4 time the size of Intel desktop chips. It cost huge amount of money manufacturing 8 billion transistors/600mm2+ GPUs)

     

    To bad that Apple and all computer companies like money. Otherwise we would use ARM today. Its not slower even if most seems to believe that. Especially since X64 is not real 64bit, just extensions. 

    Sad economics. All companies make money by margins. Its more fun to have 10% margin on a motherboardCPU that cost 500 dollar than a ARM SoC that cost 25-50 dollars. Especially since customer are so uneducated that they like to pay overprice for Intel. 

     

    Intel is a disgrace. 9 years and 50% speed increase on desktop. All because they don't have any competition. (and its sad how Intel killed RISC server market by selling Xeons for 300 dollars in 2006 and the same day SPARC, HPUX and so on was out of market = Intel raised xeons to 2000-7500 dollars. Even more expensive than the faster RISC CPUs back in the day.)

     

     

    We customers: We need a fast ARM chip to force Intel lower prices or stop bundling crappy graphics and use that die area for 2-6 more cores. Again: it const Intel zero extra, but they can't force customers to pay for stuff they don't want. 

  • Reply 12 of 39
    rmusikantowrmusikantow Posts: 104member
    This is a bit off topic, but I wonder how long Intel can continue reducing the size of chips. They must be getting close to the practical limit at 14 nanometers. Are we closing in on a time where, barring any out-of-the-box innovation, chips have reached their limit in terms of speed and transistor density?
  • Reply 13 of 39
    dnd0psdnd0ps Posts: 253member
    August in Intel time probs means some time next year
  • Reply 14 of 39
    mdriftmeyermdriftmeyer Posts: 7,503member
    tmay wrote: »
    Best guess on when we get Skylake Xeon and TB3?

    Q1 2016, at the earliest.
  • Reply 15 of 39
    bugsnwbugsnw Posts: 717member



    Seems like if Intel had that many delays with Broadwell, they should have pulled the plug on that and concentrated engineering resources on Skylake. If 'new and better' is known to be right around the corner, why would I not put off pulling the trigger on a new Mac for a little while?

     

    RE: Shompa

     

    I don't know much about the technicals of CPUs, but I do understand competition. We haven't had a major speed bump in quite a while. Maybe with Apple pushing ARM forward aggressively will get Intel's attention. As aggressive as Apple is, who's to say they won't have a breakthrough that allows them to go all ARM for their entire product line.

  • Reply 16 of 39
    lemon bon bon.lemon bon bon. Posts: 2,173member
    Quote:

     The Skylake Iris Pro graphics will hopefully be much improved - up to 80% in the same TDP.


     

    :)

     

    Quote:

     

    "Intel is a disgrace. 9 years and 50% speed increase on desktop. All because they don't have any competition. (and its sad how Intel killed RISC server market by selling Xeons for 300 dollars in 2006 and the same day SPARC, HPUX and so on was out of market = Intel raised xeons to 2000-7500 dollars. Even more expensive than the faster RISC CPUs back in the day.)

     

     

    We customers: We need a fast ARM chip to force Intel lower prices or stop bundling crappy graphics and use that die area for 2-6 more cores. Again: it const Intel zero extra, but they can't force customers to pay for stuff they don't want. "

     

    A compelling post.  Maybe Wizard may also agree with you on this.  I know I do.  I'd like to see AMD get back in the 'race' with 'Zen' and do for cpus what their gpus do.  ie.  Perform competitively.

     

    I thought we'd be seeing 6-8 cores on desktop at .14.  And clock speeds somewhat higher.  9 years, huh?  The i7 has been around for some time now.  Feels like we have had 'tread water' updates in the last few years.  

     

    But still, if Skylake only offers 20% efficiency on performance on 4gig.  That will make a 4 gig processor perform better than a 4 gig Haswell?

     

    Add in DDR4.  Die shrinks to gpus next year..?  Hyper memory?  PCIe with read and write speeds like that found on the 15 inch macbook pro?  There's some decent overall speed improvements to be worth waiting for.  It will help push that 5k iMac display a bit more convincingly..?

     

    But I take your point.  

     

    Lemon Bon Bon.




     





     




  • Reply 17 of 39
    jameskatt2jameskatt2 Posts: 720member
    Intel has had a lot of vaporware lately.

    What's up Intel?

    I thought you were the best.

    Has Samsung's process skills surpassed yours?
  • Reply 18 of 39
    lemon bon bon.lemon bon bon. Posts: 2,173member
    Quote:
     The Skylake Iris Pro graphics will hopefully be much improved - up to 80% in the same TDP.

     

    :)

     
     

    "Intel is a disgrace. 9 years and 50% speed increase on desktop. All because they don't have any competition. (and its sad how Intel killed RISC server market by selling Xeons for 300 dollars in 2006 and the same day SPARC, HPUX and so on was out of market = Intel raised xeons to 2000-7500 dollars. Even more expensive than the faster RISC CPUs back in the day.)

     

     

    We customers: We need a fast ARM chip to force Intel lower prices or stop bundling crappy graphics and use that die area for 2-6 more cores. Again: it const Intel zero extra, but they can't force customers to pay for stuff they don't want. "

     



     

    A compelling post.  Maybe Wizard may also agree with you on this.  I know I do.  I'd like to see AMD get back in the 'race' with 'Zen' and do for cpus what their gpus do.  ie.  Perform competitively.

     

    I thought we'd be seeing 6-8 cores on desktop at .14.  And clock speeds somewhat higher.  9 years, huh?  The i7 has been around for some time now.  Feels like we have had 'tread water' updates in the last few years.  

     

    But still, if Skylake only offers 20% efficiency on performance on 4gig.  That will make a 4 gig processor perform better than a 4 gig Haswell?

     

    Add in DDR4.  Die shrinks to gpus next year..?  Hyper memory?  PCIe with read and write speeds like that found on the 15 inch macbook pro?  There's some decent overall speed improvements to be worth waiting for.  It will help push that 5k iMac display a bit more convincingly..?

     

    But I take your point.  

     

    Lemon Bon Bon.

  • Reply 19 of 39
    rmusikantowrmusikantow Posts: 104member



    Maybe the future will be a return to IBM. Check this out. http://www.cnet.com/news/ibm-spends-3-billion-to-push-the-far-future-of-computer-chips/

  • Reply 20 of 39
    sdw2001sdw2001 Posts: 18,015member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Marvin View Post





    ....Apple hasn't refreshed hardware sooner than 7.5 months before. October is a bit soon to issue updates for the Macs again but given that the last one was a small update, it wouldn't be too bad.



    I think it will be September for iPhone/iPad, October for 12" MB and 13" MBP, November/December for 15" MBP. The Mac Pro Broadwell chips might be ready for October so an update can happen then but if the chips aren't available until early 2016 then it'll get pushed back.



    The Skylake Iris Pro graphics will hopefully be much improved - up to 80% in the same TDP. That would bring the entry MBP up to the level of the AMD GPU and they can all support 5K output.

     

    That is technically incorrect.  They have in some situations.  One happened when they released the iMac G5.  They moved everything to Intel 3 months later.  Special situation, but this may be as well.  It's clear that this latest upgrade is placeholder for Skylake.  As someone who is looking to buy this summer, I don't know what to do.  

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