Intel details 8th-generation Core i7, i5 processors suitable for MacBook, dual-core MacBoo...
Intel launched its 8th-generation processors on Monday, starting with the with the new 'U-series' chips for notebooks boasting a 40 percent performance boost compared to the previous generation, though while this series is suitable for use in MacBooks and the dual-core MacBook Pro, it won't help provide users with a 32GB memory option.
Previously teased in May, the four processors launched by Intel on Monday are all meant for use in notebooks and all-in-one desktop systems, due to being designed with a thermal design power (TDP) of 15 Watts, meaning the processors run at low temperatures. Intel claims the new Core i5 and Core i7 chips can lead to notebook and tablet designs with up to 10 hours of battery life, as well as the performance boost, which is said to provide double the processing power of processors released five years ago.
All of the revealed processors are quad-core chips with support for 8 threads, and updated UHD 620 graphics, making it more suitable for playing back 4K video, video editing, and gaming. The Core i7-8650U and i7-8550U have 1.9 gigahertz and 1.8 gigahertz base clock speeds respectively, up to 4.2 gigahertz and 4.0 gigahertz when boosted, with the two also including 8 megabytes of L3 cache.
The two Core i5 chips, the i5-8350U and i5-8250U, sport base clock speeds of 1.7 gigahertz and 1.6 gigahertz, with boost increasing to 3.6 gigahertz and 3.4 gigahertz respectively. The L3 cache for the i5 pair is slightly lower at 6 megabytes, and while the GPU's base clock speed is the same as the i7 chips at 300 megahertz, the 1.15 gigahertz boosted GPU clock speed of the i7 is reduced down to 1.1 gigahertz for the i5 processors.
While the four processors are being introduced as "8th generation" by Intel, it is noted that these are not using the "Cannon Lake" architecture, but are in fact a refresh of "Kaby Lake." Reusing the current architecture, Intel has doubled the number of cores and threads, while also updating its 14-nanometer manufacturing processes to further improve upon the design.
These new processors have the potential of being introduced to the MacBook and MacBook Pro lines, replacing the dual-core processors used in the notebooks with more powerful versions while remaining within Apple's desired thermal limits.
Even if Apple does use these in a future refresh, as is currently expected for the 7th generation "Kaby Lake" chips, it is still unlikely to add 32-gigabyte options for the relevant notebook lines despite the change in processor. Neither of these four "Kaby Lake" processors includes support for LPDDR4, which would allow for quantities of memory to be used without needing a new RAM controller, potentially limiting MacBooks and MacBook Pro notebooks equipped with them to 16 gigabytes of memory.
It is possible that MacBook Pro customers could get 32 gigabyte options in a future MacBook Pro if Apple uses "Cannon Lake," a 10-nanometer architecture two generations later than "Kaby Lake" that offers both processing and power consumption improvements. Intel is thought to be shipping the first "Cannon Lake" processors either at the end of this year or at the start of 2018.
Intel previously used the "generation" concept to refer to a major change in architecture, such as the use of a new fabrication process or an optimization of the previous architecture. This will not be the case for the 8th generation, as this time it will cover the four U-series "Kaby Lake" processors as well as "Coffee Lake" desktop-class processors, with current speculation suggesting this may also include some "Cannon Lake chips destined for use in tablets and mobile devices.
Previously teased in May, the four processors launched by Intel on Monday are all meant for use in notebooks and all-in-one desktop systems, due to being designed with a thermal design power (TDP) of 15 Watts, meaning the processors run at low temperatures. Intel claims the new Core i5 and Core i7 chips can lead to notebook and tablet designs with up to 10 hours of battery life, as well as the performance boost, which is said to provide double the processing power of processors released five years ago.
All of the revealed processors are quad-core chips with support for 8 threads, and updated UHD 620 graphics, making it more suitable for playing back 4K video, video editing, and gaming. The Core i7-8650U and i7-8550U have 1.9 gigahertz and 1.8 gigahertz base clock speeds respectively, up to 4.2 gigahertz and 4.0 gigahertz when boosted, with the two also including 8 megabytes of L3 cache.
The two Core i5 chips, the i5-8350U and i5-8250U, sport base clock speeds of 1.7 gigahertz and 1.6 gigahertz, with boost increasing to 3.6 gigahertz and 3.4 gigahertz respectively. The L3 cache for the i5 pair is slightly lower at 6 megabytes, and while the GPU's base clock speed is the same as the i7 chips at 300 megahertz, the 1.15 gigahertz boosted GPU clock speed of the i7 is reduced down to 1.1 gigahertz for the i5 processors.
While the four processors are being introduced as "8th generation" by Intel, it is noted that these are not using the "Cannon Lake" architecture, but are in fact a refresh of "Kaby Lake." Reusing the current architecture, Intel has doubled the number of cores and threads, while also updating its 14-nanometer manufacturing processes to further improve upon the design.
These new processors have the potential of being introduced to the MacBook and MacBook Pro lines, replacing the dual-core processors used in the notebooks with more powerful versions while remaining within Apple's desired thermal limits.
Even if Apple does use these in a future refresh, as is currently expected for the 7th generation "Kaby Lake" chips, it is still unlikely to add 32-gigabyte options for the relevant notebook lines despite the change in processor. Neither of these four "Kaby Lake" processors includes support for LPDDR4, which would allow for quantities of memory to be used without needing a new RAM controller, potentially limiting MacBooks and MacBook Pro notebooks equipped with them to 16 gigabytes of memory.
It is possible that MacBook Pro customers could get 32 gigabyte options in a future MacBook Pro if Apple uses "Cannon Lake," a 10-nanometer architecture two generations later than "Kaby Lake" that offers both processing and power consumption improvements. Intel is thought to be shipping the first "Cannon Lake" processors either at the end of this year or at the start of 2018.
Intel previously used the "generation" concept to refer to a major change in architecture, such as the use of a new fabrication process or an optimization of the previous architecture. This will not be the case for the 8th generation, as this time it will cover the four U-series "Kaby Lake" processors as well as "Coffee Lake" desktop-class processors, with current speculation suggesting this may also include some "Cannon Lake chips destined for use in tablets and mobile devices.
Comments
No LPDDR4 or 32Gb Ram support? This isn't 2012 you know.
I am beginning to wonder if Intel are fiddling while Rome burns all around them.
I wonder if this might make Apple go to AMD? Some people have got Hackintoshes running with AMD CPU's.
Now they create 8 core chips for laptops but forgot to give them memory support for more than 16 GB RAM. Duh. Stupid. Unbelievable.
Apple almost doubles their processor power every year.
These are 15W quad cores with UHD 620 graphics (same as HD 620, but with enhanced support for the playback and processing of 4K content).
The MacBook uses a 4.5W dual core with HD 615.
The 13" MacBook Pro uses 15W dual core with HD 640.
The 13" MacBook Pro with TouchBar uses a 15W dual core with HD 650.
And Intel call this an update with LPDDR3? PCIe 3.0? A performance comparison 5yrs ago? Disgusting. Will Apple sit with nothing? C'mon Apple
I couldn't explain this reckless behaviour in any other way.
Certainly, something like AMD VEGA graphics compute units paired with their super efficient ZEN-based cores (which is even more power efficient than Intels best offering) as AMD plans to release next year will make Intel feel a little insecure just like they feel in Server space where their marketing material gets more and more desperate. I mean they say something like AMD Naples (AMD Server offering) is something like 4 Desktop dies 'glued' togerhet? I mean seriously. What time is it to throw shit at the enemy? XD It's quite apparent that AMD has been developing their Zen architecture primarily for servers since they scale EXTREMELY well, considering that they have this magical infinity fabric with almost infinite bandwidth that is lightyears ahead of what intel sells. Just for explaination reasons, Infinity Fabric is an interconnect that AMD has developed so it can put together multiple Processor dies together to form a much larger logical processor with almost no performance loss (instead of building a large single processor die which has poor yields and doesn't perform as good as a multiple, smaller dies connected together using a high bandwidth fabric would).
It should be clear that this is the way to go when you consider that AMD performs much better at Mac workloads like Metal 2 and OpenCL where NVIDIA just can't pull off their market discriminating tactics (they use to make AMD look bad) since Apple controls what graphics stack developers will use. Combining this with something like eDRAM based on HBM2... this could be literally a very cool mobile chip!
Here is the magic:
Just put the lego blocks together... VEGA and ZEN use the same Infinity Fabric interconnect AMD makes their bread and butter with (Naples-type scalability using the AMD Zeppelin Die). This is very magnificent roadmap execution, Apple style.
I mean ECC is not hard even for consumer products. All AMD consumer offerings support ECC memory, and AMD is being very generous at letting everyone have their PCIe lanes everybody needs to connect their peripherals (thunderbolt) and the GPU game thingies to. Just look at Threadipper. Intel looks in comparison to that something like Moneyripper? :')
Baibai Intel kyahaha~ XD
Well well... sorry for the little rant x)
Second, they are 15W quad core parts and the 13" MBP uses 15W dual core parts so it's a big upgrade for the 13" MBP lineup that's a 40% increase in multi-core performance vs the existing dual core parts.
As I stated, the current 13" MacBook Pro uses GT3e graphics (HD 640 and HD 650). The chips announced today only have GT2 graphics (UHD 620). So not a suitable replacement as the graphics performance would decline by a reasonable margin.
The A10X launched June 2017 with 6 cores (big.LITTLE) and a 10 nm process.
The A10X has 30% more CPU performance than the A9X. I have no idea why you think Apple doubles their performance each year.
For one thing, if High Sierra supports eGPUs then a dock built with a higher end mobile GPU and SSD is possible...the reduced cooling requirements means the eGPU dock won't sound like a freaking tornado in comparison to the eGPUs chassis that take desktop cards and not require a 400W PSU but something around the 150W mark (85W for MBP + 65W for GPU).
As for his statement he did say Almost. In certain situation it is pretty close to double when the GPU can be considered. In any event that 30% is pretty real for mis users. On the other hand this article is very misleading as only one of those intel offerings hits 40%, most of those chips highlighted barely deliver 30%. Frankly Intle has been so misleading of late that I'd rather wait for a real implementation.
Still a synopsis? I thought it went through hypothesis and theory and is now a law!
Quad core + eGPU/TB3 are an interesting combo.
Intel with the naming though. It's not enough that they bundle both Braswell and Broadwell into Celeron, Core Ms carry Core i* names, now this, 8th gen cores are both 8th gen cores and...7th gen cores. They're obfuscating what a processor is even more away from the consumer without doing some more digging, and it's really annoying.
Ok, so more efficient node and doubling the cores place it well above the rest of Kaby Lake in the same wattage - well then call it something else, like U series quad.