The most powerful Intel processor. Intel Core i9 - next generation Intel core i9 18 core processor

Intel's HEDT platform update has been planned for a long time. A year ago, when the company released its Broadwell-E processors, it was known that they were coming only for a year and this summer they should be replaced by the newer Skylake-X. However, nothing particularly interesting was expected from this event. Notable in the planned announcement was perhaps only the fact that Intel was going to close the existing architectural gap between mass and high-performance chips and release within the new version of the HEDT platform not only CPUs based on the Skylake design (which was introduced back in the summer of 2015), but and chips with the most recent Kaby Lake architecture. However, multi-core processors for desktop systems were to be released only in the Skylake-X family, and the Kaby Lake-X family was to include only additional and secondary quad-core chips, which are essentially analogs of the mass Kaby Lake for the LGA1151 platform.

Thus, from the point of view of enthusiasts, the HEDT platform had to continue its systematic movement in its usual course: a little more cores, a little higher frequency, a slightly different socket, slightly increased prices, etc. And we have no doubt that everything would be so it would have been if Ryzen hadn't happened this spring. The new architecture presented by AMD turned out to be so successful, and the pricing policy of this company turned out to be so daring that Intel simply could not leave the inclinations of a competitor without any response. Moreover, AMD also announced the Threadripper project, in which the intention was to encroach on the holy of holies - the segment of high-performance platforms with multi-core processors, where Intel has long considered itself the only and unique player.

As a result, the new Skylake-X processors we are talking about today received two fundamentally important unexpected changes.

First: Intel decided not to restrain itself in increasing the number of processor cores, and within new platform desktop CPUs with 12, 14, 16 and 18 cores are expected. This means that for the first time Intel will offer enthusiasts not only adapted versions of Skylake-SP server processors based on the very simple version semiconductor crystal LCC (Low Core Count), but also processors on a chip of medium complexity HCC (High Core Count), which will make it possible to more confidently address the HEDT platform to an audience of professionals - video content creators, modelers and developers working with ultra-high resolutions and virtual reality.

The second change is even more striking and concerns the pricing policy. Skylake-X processors have become significantly cheaper than their predecessors. If in the Broadwell-E family a ten-core processor cost $ 1,723, then a Skylake-X similar in number of cores will cost only $ 999. Similar changes apply to other representatives. lineup... In general, if earlier prices for senior HEDT-class processors were formed according to the principle of "$ 170 per core", now for multi-core Skylake-X there will be a much more liberal rule "$ 100 per core".

Ultimately, the new incarnation of the HEDT platform becomes more accessible and closer to the end user. The number of scenarios where this platform can be used is increasing, and the entry threshold is decreasing. In other words, Skylake-X and Kaby Lake-X processors no longer seem so elite and status products. Obviously, the number of those who want to buy them, and not the flagship LGA1151 chips, will obviously be greater than before. And in this review we will take a closer look at the new HEDT platform and the ten-core processor Core i9-7900X - the older version of Skylake-X for the next couple of months, which will appear on store shelves in a week.

⇡ Skylake-X processors: general information

Codenamed Basin Falls, Intel's new HEDT platform is a much more comprehensive and scalable product than previous generations of high-performance platforms that used LGA2011 and LGA2011-3 processor sockets.

Previously, the lineup in each generation of the HEDT platform included only three or four CPUs, the number of cores of which differed by no more than one and a half to two times. Now there will be at least nine processors compatible with the Basin Falls platform, and the difference in the number of cores between the simplest and the most sophisticated chip will be more than four times. Against this background, it is not at all surprising that the new HEDT processors are divided into three groups, differing in design and architecture, but compatible with the same LGA2066 processor socket.

	Kernels / threads	Base frequency, GHz	Turbo mode, GHz	Turbo Boost Max 3.0, GHz	L3 cache, MB	PCI Express 3.0 Lines	Memory channels	Memory frequency	TDP, W	Price
Skylake-X (HCC)
Core i9-7980XE	18/36	?	?	?	?	44	?	?	?	$1999
Core i9-7960X	16/32	?	?	?	?	44	?	?	?	$1699
Core i9-7940X	14/28	?	?	?	?	44	?	?	?	$1399
Skylake-X (LCC)
Core i9-7920X	12/24	?	?	?	?	44	?	?	?	$1199
Core i9-7900X	10/20	3,3	4,3	4,5	13,75	44	4	DDR4-2666	140	$999
Core i7-7820X	8/16	3,6	4,3	4,5	11	28	4	DDR4-2666	140	$599
Core i7-7800X	6/12	3,5	4,0	No	8,25	28	4	DDR4-2400	140	$389
Kaby lake-x
Core i7-7740X	4/8	4,3	4,5	No	8	16	2	DDR4-2666	112	$339
Core i5-7640X	4/4	4,0	4,2	No	6	16	2	DDR4-2666	112	$242

A couple of the simpler chips, Core i7-7740X and Core i5-7640X, have four cores with or without Hyper-Threading technology and are classified as Kaby Lake-X. They are 100-200 MHz faster analogues of the Core i7-7700K and Core i5-7600K, ported to another socket. There is no difference in architecture and in specific performance here, however, due to a more liberal thermal package, tightly blocked graphics core and changes in the power scheme, perhaps some improvement will occur in overclocking potential.

We will take a closer look at the properties of representatives of the Kaby Lake-X series in one of the following reviews, since their sale should begin simultaneously with Skylake-X in the very near future. However, it should be borne in mind that due to the peculiarities of its origin, Kaby Lake-X seem to be frankly flawed proposals against the background of Skylake-X, not only because of the small number of cores. They also use a simplified dual-channel memory controller and a PCI Express controller that only supports sixteen lanes. This means that, although Kaby Lake-X is designed to operate as part of the Basin Falls platform, they will not provide a significant part of its key benefits.

Skylake-X processors are of much greater interest to high-performance enthusiasts: they allow using all the capabilities of the Basin Falls platform to the fullest and can be considered as full-fledged heirs of the previous generation of HEDT chips, Broadwell-E. However, in the Skylake-X generation, Intel's approach under the influence of active actions of a competitor has undergone some changes, and new products belonging to this class were divided into two groups: processors with a relatively small number of cores and processors - multi-core monsters.

The standard strategy that the microprocessor giant has always used when creating consumer chips for the upper market segment has been to adapt server processor variants with relatively few cores based on semiconductor LCCs for such needs. And this strategy has worked successfully over the past several years. So, server processors are traditionally subdivided into three classes, each of which has its own semiconductor crystal design: LCC (Low Core Count), HCC (High Core Count) and XCC (Extreme Core Count). In the Broadwell-EP generation, the first class included chips with up to ten cores, respectively, the older consumer LGA2011-3 CPUs are ten-cores. In the Skylake-SP generation, the LCC has already received twelve cores. And it is quite natural that the Skylake-X processors, which were originally planned for the Basin Falls platform, should have received from six to twelve cores.

Thus, all Skylake-X with the number of cores from six to twelve and support for Hyper-Threading technology are completely traditional high-performance chips for desktop computers. They are based on the same 14nm 12-core semiconductor LCC with the Skylake microarchitecture, in which up to six cores can be disabled to form certain CPU models. In addition, differentiation among such processors occurs in the number of PCI Express lanes supported by the controller built into the CPU. Older models with ten and twelve cores offer 44 PCI Express lanes, while for processors with six and eight cores, the PCI Express controller only supports 28 lanes.

Crystal LCC: 12 cores, area 325 mm 2

But all the LLC-based Skylake-X variants have relatively high clock speeds. The thermal package of such processors is set at 140 W typical for the HEDT platform, but their frequencies are noticeably increased compared to Broadwell-E. The ten-core Core i9-7900X has a base frequency of 3.3 GHz and can be turbocharged up to 4.3 GHz; the base frequency of the eight-core Core i7-7820X is set at 3.6 GHz with a similar turbo mode at 4.3 GHz, and the passport frequency of the six-core Core i7-7800X is 3.5 GHz with the ability to automatically overclock under low load up to 4.0 GHz. The full passport characteristics of the twelve-core Core i9-7920X have not yet been announced - this processor should be released only in a couple of months.

It is worth paying attention to one more interesting point. With the advent of the Basin Falls platform, processors named Core i9 appear in Intel's assortment. Thus, Intel decided to emphasize the elitism of individual Skylake-X models, which, most likely, will be directly opposed to AMD Threadripper. But for now, the principle of naming the Core i9 is purely formal. It is received by processors with more than 10 cores and 44 PCI Express lanes. And this means that before the 12-core processor, scheduled for August, there will be only one Core i9 in the Skylake-X line - the ten-core thousand-dollar Core i9-7900X.

But by the way, it's not a fact that with the release of the 12-core Core i9-7920X, the current Core i9-7900X sub-flagship will fade against its background. Intel's failure to release its twelve-core processor along with the rest of the Skylake-X on a LLC chip is due to the fact that the company cannot yet decide whether to make it more economical or faster. In theory, the LGA2066 platform supports processors with a typical heat dissipation of up to 165W, which allows you to set the Core i9-7920X frequencies to a high enough level, but Intel does not want to resort to this measure to avoid incompatibility problems. motherboards and cooling systems, which can certainly arise due to the fact that the company has not yet released such hot processors. Therefore, it was decided to take a pause, during which Intel engineers hope to understand how impressive AMD's HEDT platform will turn out.

In addition, Intel has another powerful tool that it can oppose to AMD's HEDT processors - Skylake-X chips based on the HCC crystal. This crystal has 18 cores in its composition and in the future will allow the release of three additional versions of the Core i9 with 14, 16 and 18 cores. The exact characteristics of these models, for obvious reasons, have not yet been determined, and their release is scheduled only for October. However, Intel already wants to secure the title of the manufacturer of HEDT processors with the largest number of cores, while leaving some room for maneuver with frequencies and heat dissipation.

HCC crystal: 18 cores, area 484 mm 2

Ultimately, the Basin Falls platform looks like a noticeable step forward. Skylake-X has received an impressive and versatile set of improvements over Broadwell-E. Starting with the fact that the new processors offer a significantly increased number of cores and noticeably increased operating frequencies, and they do this at an accompanying price reduction. And ending with the fact that Skylake-X implements a more powerful four-channel memory controller with official support for DDR4-2666, as well as a PCI Express 3.0 controller with an increased number of lines by four pieces. Along the way, do not forget about the new Skylake microarchitecture, which itself contains a number of optimizations that allow you to raise the specific performance at a constant frequency.

And here we need to emphasize one more important detail. The microarchitecture of the cores of the new Skylake-X processors does not just repeat the familiar Skylake microarchitecture of 2015. Additional improvements have been added to new HEDT products, which we will discuss in detail below. These include: support for 512-bit vector instructions AVX-512, change the cache memory subsystem, change the topology of inter-core connections, and a new version Turbo Boost Max 3.0 technology, which boosts the frequencies of a select pair of processor cores up to 4.5 GHz.

⇡ Set of system logic Intel X299 and LGA2066-motherboards

Along with the new Skylake-X and Kaby Lake-X processors, Intel is bringing to the market the counterpart of the Basin Falls platform - a new set system logic X299. However, we would not argue that this chipset is as innovative as the accompanying processors. In a nutshell, it should be said that the X299 brings to the HEDT platform only those features that have long become standard for LGA1151 systems. However, such a change should not be underestimated. Chipsets for LGA2011 and LGA2011-3 systems were much less functional. And if the X299 is compared with the X99, and not with the Z270, then the progress becomes obvious.

There are two main changes. First, the X299 has a standard HSIO topology (High-Speed ​​IO). This means that the new set of logic is like a PCIe switch: it has 30 high-speed ports that motherboard manufacturers can flexibly configure to suit their needs and ultimately get the required number of PCI Express 3.0 lanes, as well as USB 3.0- and SATA 3.0- ports. Secondly, the bus used by the chipset to communicate with the processor has changed. If the X99 used the DMI 2.0 bus for these purposes, then the X299 switched to a twice as fast DMI 3.0 bus, which is in many ways similar to PCI Express 3.0 x4.

The high-speed ports of the chipset allow you to get from it in various combinations up to 24 PCI Express 3.0 lanes, up to eight SATA 3.0 ports and up to ten USB 3.0 ports. This is almost equivalent to the capabilities of the Z270, and one would think that the X299 hub is a variation of the logic set from the LGA1151 platform, but the X299 still has a unique feature - it supports a couple more SATA ports. The rest of the characteristics are similar. Moreover, this also applies to the fact that both chipsets are manufactured according to the same 22-nm process technology, have the same heat dissipation at the level of 6 W, and even differ little from each other externally.

To be honest, from X299, which comes along with the Basin Falls platform for a relatively long time, I would like some additional opportunities, for example, support for USB 3.1 Gen 2 and WiFi, which should appear in the next generation of logic sets for the LGA1151 platform. But there is nothing of the kind in the X299, and all such functions are left to the mercy of motherboard manufacturers, who will again be forced to complete their flagship LGA2066 solutions with a scattering of additional controllers.

On the other hand, the X299 supports Intel Optane drives and all other functions implemented through the Intel RST 15 driver. This, in particular, means that PCIe drives connected to the chipset can be used to form RAID arrays of levels 0, 1, and 5. Moreover the number of participants in such arrays can be up to three.

However, given the rich set of PCI Express lanes available in the processor, motherboard manufacturers will most likely implement M.2 slots connected directly to the CPU. Especially for such cases, the Basin Falls platform has an additional unique function VROC (Virtual RAID On CPU). It allows you to combine any number of PCI Express drives connected directly to the processor into RAID arrays. True, this technology has some offensive software limitations. For example, to activate RAID modes other than RAID 0, the user will need a special key, which will need to be purchased separately.

Along with the new set of logic, the Skylake-X and Kaby Lake-X processors also require a new 2066-pin LGA2066 socket (Socket R4). The need to implement a new socket in this case was due to the transition to DMI 3.0 and the appearance of several additional PCI Express lines in the processor, so there is no and cannot be compatibility between the new HEDT processors and previous platforms with the LGA2011-3 socket.

Nevertheless, in appearance and dimensions, the LGA2066 is almost the same as the LGA 2011-3. Moreover, Intel has managed to maintain full compatibility with older cooling systems. The way of attaching the coolers to the socket remains the same as before, and the location of the mounting holes has not changed either. Accordingly, the old Haswell-E and Broadell-E coolers will fit the new Skalake-X and Kaby Lake-X processors without any restrictions.

Because the Kaby Lake-X and Skylake-X processors differ greatly in performance, including the number of PCI Express processor lanes and the number of memory channels, the LGA2066 platform has flexibility that has not yet been found. Intel's LGA2066 motherboard specification requires all motherboards to support the full line of LGA 2066 processors with no exceptions. This means that a typical LGA2066-board should allow building configurations with both dual-channel and four-channel memory subsystems, as well as with 16, 28 or 44 PCI Express lanes coming from the CPU.

And this is actually - far from simple task, the decision of which leads to the fact that buyers of inexpensive LGA2066-processors will have to pay extra for features that they will most likely never use. Although we do not exclude the possibility that motherboards optimized for younger LGA2066 processors and with a reduced number of DIMM and PCI Express slots may appear on sale, in most cases the situation will most likely be such that when installing Kaby Lake-X, some of the slots the motherboard will be rendered unavailable for use.

Something similar will happen when installing Kaby Lake-X and lower versions of Skalake-X not only with DIMM slots, but also with PCI Express processor slots. Some of them can be switched off, and the other part can switch to "weaker" speed modes.

⇡ New in Skylake-X

New architecture of cache memory

Skylake-X processors should not be seen as a simple transfer of the familiar Skylake microarchitecture to a multi-core design. Over the past two years since its inception, Intel engineers have done some work and made some changes to the original project. Therefore, Skylake-X processors can be considered carriers of an updated version of the basic microarchitecture, which ultimately endows them with slightly different specific performance (in terms of frequency). And the most important improvement concerns the alteration of the cache memory subsystem in order to increase its efficiency.

In HEDT processors of previous generations (as well as in Xeon), the cache memory architecture assumed the allocation of its own L1 and L2 caches for each core and the presence of a single L3 cache for all cores, which was inclusive and had an impressive size. This meant that all the data that was in the L2 cache was duplicated in L3, however, if data from the L2 cache was preempted, it was still available in L3. Such a scheme of work was quite profitable, and its efficiency was largely supported by a correctly selected ratio between the volumes of cache memory of different levels. While the L2 cache had a capacity of 256 KB, the L3 cache size was formed at the rate of 1.5 to 2.5 MB per core. As a result, despite the costly inclusive algorithm, L3 retained enough space for independent data manipulation.

However, in Skylake-X, it was decided to change the balance. Considering that L2 cache has much better latency rates, and its capacity has a stronger effect on performance, it was decided to increase its size in new processors to 1 MB, that is, four times. At the same time, in order not to go beyond the acceptable transistor budget, this was done simultaneously with a decrease in the L3 cache shared between the cores, the volume of which in Skylake-X is now determined at the rate of 1.375 MB per core.

Along the way, in order to preserve the efficiency of the L3 cache with a serious decrease in volume, the algorithm of its functioning was changed. Now this cache is not inclusive, and moreover, it is victimized. This means that the L3 cache is filled exclusively by pushing data out of L2, and the data prefetching mechanisms do not apply to it. Ultimately, this means that, while the effective total cache size for the Haswell-E and Broadwell-E processors was 2.5 MB per core, for Skylake-X it remained almost the same - 2.375 MB per core. However, the Skylake-X caching system should provide lower latencies on average, since a significant part of the cache memory is of the second level, which is characterized by low latency.

The Skylake-X cache memory structure is described in more detail in the table:

At the same time, the L3 cache of Skylake-X processors has clearly become worse in terms of the algorithm of operation, and in terms of associativity (that is, in terms of efficiency), and in terms of volume, and even in terms of operating frequency. However, all this, according to Intel engineers, should be compensated for by a more spacious L2 cache with twice as high associativity. According to the calculations presented by the developers, expanding the size of the L2 cache four times doubles the probability of finding the data necessary for the processor in it. This, in turn, reduces the downtime of the executive pipeline and, according to Intel engineers, increases the specific productivity by an additional 5-10 percent. Thus, thanks to changes in the cache memory subsystem, Skylake-X processors should outperform the usual Skylake-S and Kaby Lake-S even on a single-threaded load.

However, before taking such statements on faith, let's see how matters stand with the real latency of the cache memory subsystem in Broadwell-E and Skylake-X processors. To do this, using the test package SiSoft Sandra we measured the real latency when the processors access data blocks different sizes... Both processors participating in the test worked at the same 4GHz frequency and were equipped with a four-channel DDR4-3000 SDRAM with CAS Latency 15.

Frankly speaking, the situation with the real latency of the Skylake-X cache memory subsystem does not look very encouraging. Older Broadwell-E processors almost always provide lower access times to data, except for the case when they do not fit into the L2 cache, but fit into it in Skylake-X. Therefore, the correctness of Intel's claims can be questioned. It seems somewhat implausible that the demonstrated latency gain will be sufficient for Skylake-X to gain any performance advantage in real-world applications.

However, in fairness, it is worth noting a higher practical throughput Skylake-X cache memory subsystems, which can serve as some compensation in a situation with delays.

Particularly pleasing against the background of high latency is the throughput of the L3 cache. Along with the revision of its architecture, Intel engineers were able to achieve significant increases in bandwidth. Why this happened will become clear from the next section.

⇡ Changes in the topology of inter-core connections

Along with the change in the caching system, Intel has completely redesigned the scheme that is used to organize inter-core communication. Recall from the times Sandy bridge Intel processors used a bidirectional 256-bit ring bus based on the QPI protocol to connect the processor cores and communicate with the L3 cache and memory controller. And as long as the processors did not contain too many cores, this approach was very effective. A fairly simple circuit design really made it possible to achieve data transmission with minimal delays.

However, as the number of cores grew, the data paths began to lengthen, and this began to cause serious problems. To ensure well-coordinated work multi-core processors Intel even had to switch to a scheme with the division of cores into two clusters and the introduction of two ring buses interconnected by two buffering bridges. But such a combination of cores, memory controllers and I / O controllers inside the processor could no longer boast of its former efficiency. If there was a need to transfer data between points located in different clusters, latencies suffered greatly. And ultimately Intel came to a situation where the ring bus became an obstacle to increasing throughput and reducing latency in intra-processor data operations.

Therefore, in the server processors Skylake-SP (and related HEDT processors Skylake-X), where the number of cores can reach 28 pieces, Intel switched to a different scheme of inter-core connections - a mesh network, which is already well-tested in Intel Xeon Phi (Knights Landing ). The number of compounds in it is much greater, since all the cores on the chip are penetrated by through horizontal and vertical links. But due to this, the routes required for communication between cores and other functional nodes are noticeably simplified, reducing latencies and equalizing the delays that arise during various interactions within such a network. In addition, such a network provides a higher aggregate throughput.

This change allows the frequency of this network to be set below the frequency of the ring bus while maintaining high throughput rates. This means that the new mesh structure of the connection is not only good in balance and scalability, but also benefits in terms of resource consumption.

Naturally, all this is important primarily for server processors with a large number of cores, however, Skylake-X turned out to be hostages of the situation: in them, the mesh network also replaced the ring bus. And in relatively simple cases, when the number of nuclei is not so large, the latencies in internuclear interaction have worsened in comparison with Broadwell-E. To test, we measured the latencies that occur when transferring data from one core to another for the ten-core Broadwell-E and Skylake-X. For the purity of the experiment, both processors worked at the same 4.0 GHz frequency.

As you can see from the illustration, Skylake-X's latency during internuclear communication is about one and a half times higher. And this clearly indicates that the mesh network does not give any gain in the case of ten cores, but, on the contrary, only worsens the situation.

A noticeable result of the changes that have taken place is changes in the speed of the memory subsystem. Since the DDR4 controllers in Intel processors are connected to the cores via the same bus as the cores to each other, the speed of the memory subsystem is directly related to the efficiency of the inter-core connection.

Using the Cachemem test from the AIDA64 package, we measured the performance of a memory subsystem made up of four identical DDR4-3000 SDRAM modules for Broadwell-E and Skylake-X processors operating at the same 4.0 GHz frequency, and the diagnosis was confirmed. The latencies inside the new generation chips have indeed become higher.

True, in fairness, it is worth noting the fact that along with the latency, the practical throughput when reading from memory has grown, which can compensate for the increased latency during streaming operations with large amounts of data. However, this consolation is rather weak, since in real tasks the latency of the memory subsystem has a very serious impact on performance.

⇡ Support for AVX-512 instructions

Speaking about what changes in the Skylake microarchitecture are timed to coincide with the release of high-performance Skylake-X processors, we must mention that they have support for a new set of vector instructions AVX-512. It was first implemented in the latest generation of Xeon Phi (Knights Landing) computing accelerators, and now its support has reached traditional processors for servers, workstations and high-performance desktops.

In fact, the AVX-512 set is an extension of vector instructions for operations with 512-bit vectors. It has new 512-bit registers, new packed formats for integers and fractional numbers, as well as various operations on them. An important feature of the AVX-512 mode is the high speed of their execution: it is assumed that the processor can switch from ordinary 256-bit AVX instructions to 512-bit operations without slowing down the performance. And this fact allows Intel to present the promising 18-core processor as the first desktop processor with a performance level of 1 teraflops.

In other words, the introduction of AVX-512 allows you to double the performance, but we are talking here exclusively about vector operations. If optimized for new instructions, parallel algorithms can actually be executed on Skylake about twice as fast, but this, of course, does not apply to ordinary calculations. general purpose... Nevertheless, Skylake-X processors are quite capable of invading territory where previously only video cards were used in calculations.

It's worth noting that the addition of AVX-512 support in Skylake-X is not only a forward-looking enhancement. Some existing algorithms have the necessary optimizations now and are able to take advantage of the performance advantage. Among them, for example, is the popular x264 encoder, in which the community introduced support for new teams at the beginning of this year.

To estimate how much AVX-512 instructions are able to increase the performance of computational algorithms in a case close to ideal, you can use the Processor Multimedia synthetic test from the SiSoft Sandra package. This simple benchmark measures the speed of building a Mandelbrot set using a variety of instruction sets. With its help, we compared the performance of 10-core Broadwell-E and Skylake-X, operating at the same frequency of 4.0 GHz.

As you can see from the results, the use of 512-bit vector instructions alone can speed up calculations by an amount from 20 to 85 percent. And if we add to this the other architectural improvements incorporated in Skylake-X, it turns out that in terms of specific performance this CPU can exceed Broadwell-E by more than two times.

⇡ Enhanced Intel Turbo Boost Max Technology 3.0

With the release of the Broadwell-E processors, Intel introduced Turbo Boost Max 3.0 technology, which exploits the fact that the cores in a multi-core processor with a relatively large semiconductor crystal can vary significantly in their frequency potential. The idea was that among the processor cores there is probably one that can operate at a higher frequency and at a lower voltage, so it is logical to execute a low-flow load on it.

Intel implemented this principle through a dedicated driver that ported single-threaded applications to such a pre-selected core for this purpose during the production phase. The motherboard manufacturers had to use the BIOS to implement the possibility of increasing the operating frequency of this single core by an additional several hundred megahertz relative to the values ​​provided by the classic Turbo Boost 2.0 technology. As a result, Broadwell-E multi-core processors with relatively low nominal frequencies were able to solve single-threaded tasks with good efficiency.

In Skylake-X, this idea was further developed. Now, the processor chooses two special cores for low-threaded load at once, which makes it possible to get higher performance when running two single-threaded applications at once or when working in applications that can use two cores simultaneously.

True, it had to pay for this with an allowable increase in frequency within Turbo Boost Max 3.0. If Broadwell-E processors this technology could raise the frequency of the selected core by 200-500 MHz, then in Skylake-X the additional acceleration is limited to only 200 MHz.

However, this may also be due to the fact that in the new generation of HEDT processors the classic Turbo Boost 2.0 technology is also very aggressive, leaving not too much free space for Turbo Boost Max 3.0 to work.

⇡ Core i9-7900X Details

For testing, Intel provided us with a senior at this moment Skylake-X family processor, ten-core Core i9-7900X. Recall that its sales will begin in a week, and more powerful representatives of the series will appear only in August (12-core Skylake-X) or in October (14-, 16- and 18-core Skylake-X).

The appearance of the LGA2066 processor is slightly different from the usual outlines of LGA2013-3 processors, but the difference is not dramatic. The shape and dimensions remained approximately the same, in fact, only the differently designed edges of the heat dissipating cover stand out noticeably.

However, now this cover is not soldered to the semiconductor chip of the processor, but contacts it through thermal grease.

In the CPU-Z diagnostic utility, the new Core i9-7900X does not look entirely obvious.

Please note that the utility identifies this processor as Core i7-7900X, and this is not a bug in the program. This name is really hardcoded into the processor itself as an identification string. The fact is that Intel decided to use the Core i9 brand quite recently, and the engineering samples sent to reviewers contain a variant of the name originally planned.

Otherwise, all the characteristics of the sample Core i7-7900X are fully consistent with how the production Core i9-7900X processors will look like. This, in particular, is evidenced by the serial stepping of the core - H0.

The situation with the real operating frequencies of the Core i9-7900X is as follows:

• With a typical multi-threaded load on all cores, the frequency is most often at 4.0 GHz.
• If the multi-threaded load is especially resource-intensive, for example, it uses AVX instructions, the frequency can drop down to 3.3-3.6 GHz.
• Under a single threaded load, the frequency can be increased to the promised 4.5 GHz under the influence of Turbo Boost Max 3.0 technology. However, such automatic overclocking is not always observed, and in some situations the frequency under such conditions reaches only 4.1 GHz.

The thermal regime of the processor operating in the nominal does not cause any questions, despite the replacement of the solder under the processor cover with a polymer thermal interface. When testing the Core i9-7900X in LinX 0.7.2 (and this version already has support for the new AVX-512 instructions) using the Noctua NH-U14S single-tower cooler, the maximum temperatures on the internal processor sensor reached only 74 degrees, while the maximum allowable temperature for Skylake-X, 105 degrees are considered.

All this suggests that Intel's thermal paste in Skylake-X works more efficiently than in LGA1151 processors. Either its composition has changed, or the role is played by a noticeably large area of ​​the semiconductor crystal, which for LLC is about 325 mm 2 (versus 122 mm 2 for the quad-core Skylake-S).

Compared to its predecessor, the deca-core Broadwell-E, the new Core i9-7900X definitely wins in performance.

	Core i7-6950X	Core i9-7900X
Codename	Broadwell-e	Skylake-X
Production technology	14 nm, FinFET	14 nm, FinFET
Kernels / threads	10/20	10/20
Hyper-Threading Technology	There is	There is
Base frequency, GHz	3,0	3,3
Maximum frequency in turbo mode, GHz	3,5	4,3
The maximum frequency of Turbo Boost Max 3.0, GHz	4,0	4,5
Unlocked multiplier	There is	There is
TDP, W	140	140
L2 cache, KB	10 × 256	10 × 1024
L3 cache, MB	25	13,75
PCI Express 3.0 Lines	40	44
DDR4 SDRAM support	Four channels DDR4-2400	Four channels DDR4-2666
Instruction set extensions	SSE4.1 / 4.2, AVX 2.0	SSE4.1 / 4.2, AVX 2.0, AVX-512
Package	LGA 2013-3	LGA 2066
Price	$1 723	$999

With the transition to the new architecture, the operating frequencies increased by 10-30 percent (depending on the mode), at the official level, compatibility with DDR4-2666 SDRAM appeared, support for AVX-512 instructions was added, and the amount of L2 cache increased. Only the volume of the L3 cache turned out to be in the red, which almost halved. However, the most important change is indicated in the last line of the table: the ten-core is now 42 percent cheaper.

Intel Core-i9-7980XE

In this article I want to tell you about most powerful processor Intel today for home PCs - Intel Core i9-7980X E. If a little earlier the most powerful was Intel Core i7-6950X Extreme Edition, now this 10-core processor looks rather weak against the background of the new processor with 18 cores and 36 threads!).

The new high-performance Intel Skylake-X processor family is made using a 14-nanometer process technology, which is already an achievement in itself. After all, the current family of processors based on the Haswell-E architecture was made using a 22-nanometer process technology.

The release date of the new core i 9 line and in particular the Intel Core i9 7980 XE is spring-summer 2017. Now this 18-core is already on sale, in DNS (Samara) it costs 145,000 rubles. I have not looked in other stores, but I think somewhere else it can also be a little cheaper.

More advanced schemes for the production of processors on silicon crystals allow an increase in the number of transistors, which in turn affects the processing power.

So, characteristics of the most powerful processor Intel Core i9-7980X E :

1. Socket: LGA 2066;
2. Core: Skylake-X (2017);
3. Process technology: 14 nm;
4. Number of cores: 18 (36 threads);
5. Clock frequency: 2600 MHz (max. 4400 MHz-Turbo Boost);
6. L1 cache - 64 KB (per core), L2 cache - 1024 KB (per core), L3 cache - 25344 KB (total);
7. Instruction set: ABM, ADX, AES, AVX, AVX2, AVX-512, BMI1, BMI2, CLMUL, EMMX, EPT, F16C, FMA3, FPU, MMX, MPX, NX, SGX, SMM, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSE4 .1, SSE4.2, SSSE3, TSX;
8. Support for 64-bit instruction set - EM64T;
9. The maximum supported memory capacity is 128 GB (DDR4);
10. System bus - DMI 3.0;
11. Bus bandwidth - 8 GB / s;
12. Heat dissipation: 165 W;
13. The number of PCI Express lines - 44;
14. Energy saving technology - Enhanced SpeedStep;
15. The cost is about 130 thousand rubles.

Well then, Intel Core i9-7980X E became the first in the history of it an 18-core processor (probably soon there will be a 20-core one). But the question is, do you really need all 18 cores for a home computer?

Will all 18 processor cores be used? And even more so all 36 threads? According to the developers themselves, 18 cores will help you run faster in resource-intensive programs. For example, in programs for video editing, for processing media content.

But are these programs so widespread and how much work behind them? I think most ordinary users are interested in the issue of performance gains in games. Now there are a lot of gamers, people play GTA 5, Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Wildlands, Arma3, WOT, and for them this issue is quite relevant.

I want to assure you that this processor is NOT "sharpened" for games! Modern games can use a maximum of 4 cores. The rest of the cores will simply not be involved. You can read what kind of processors there are in general to navigate.

Considering the cost of this "crystal" (about 120 - 150 thousand rubles), it makes no sense to buy it for games. It will be more profitable and rational to buy the top 4 nuclear processor, for example Core i7 6700 (Skylake).

The most powerful PC processor ever!

Therefore the processor the most powerful processorIntel Core i9-7980X E designed for multithreading. That is, it is "sharpened" to work with programs that can use more than 4 cores.

Intel is a prestigious company with extensive experience in manufacturing electronic devices and computer components, which has its own clear development strategy. The development of the 18-core Intel Core i9-7980XE chip is not just an improvement in technology, but an important strategic step. We can safely assume that the i9 is not intended for home use, although most Intel processors are designed for desktop and gaming computers... But why would Intel release such a “monster”?

There can be only one answer: this is due to the announcement of new Threadripper processors with an impressive 16 cores from AMD.

Competition in processor design has become fiercer recently as AMD has begun rolling out the more affordable high-performance Ryzen family of chips, each with plenty of advantages. One of the best is the Ryzen 7 1800X, an eight-core processor with sixteen threads and 4MB L2 / 16MB L3 cache. It reaches almost half the price of Intel processor similar characteristics.

To stay competitive, Intel must work to improve its innovative chip architecture and do whatever it takes to attract professionals who want a good return on their investment. The fact that there is a demand for a 16-core chip from AMD gives Intel hope to capture its market share with an early release of a slightly more monstrous processor.

Why would you need 18 processor cores?

Honestly, for the most cool apps and games, eight-core processors provide more than sufficient performance and do an excellent job. Each additional core on the processor means less lag in resource-intensive applications. Eight cores can run eight active processes with very little thread interruption operating system generally.

However, for professional 3D modelers and architects, the story is slightly different. Some people need as many cores as possible to run programs that do a lot of computation in parallel. By jumping from eight to sixteen or eighteen cores, they will see huge performance gains. This makes them more productive at work.

Most of the programs we run in Everyday life do not reach this level of difficulty. Therefore, for the average user, buying a processor for several thousand dollars is a waste of money. For example, applications such as Skype will not use all the cores that the processor has. It will run in one thread, no parallelization. The same goes for many other programs. They won't multi-core. Home users don't need more than 8 cores right now, and it's hard to tell when you will need 16 or 18 cores. To the question “why does a computer have many cores” from an ordinary user, the most logical answer is “Not for anything”

Share in the comments if you use applications that require a lot of cores?

The secret became clear: Intel reacted to the emergence of new AMD Ryzen processors and not only introduced multi-core "monsters", which received up to 18 cores inclusive, but also reduced the "price per core" in the top segment.

Before the release of Ryzen, this processor manufacturer planned, according to data from the "road maps" that got into the network, to bring the new multi-core flagship Skylake X to the market in the summer with "only" 10 cores. After Ryzen's presentation, we were talking about 12 cores. When it became known about AMD Threadripper, everything became even more serious: now representatives of Intel at Computex told that the new Core i9 can have up to 18 cores. That's 80% more cores than currently found in high-end desktop processors.

Counterattack against AMD Threadripper

So now there are 18 cores: Intel responds to AMD Ryzen and Threadripper. Source: Intel

Intel's top model will be Core processor i9 7980XE with 18 cores and 36 threads. Clock speeds and an exact release date have yet to be announced. We believe that he will not appear until August. This is because the Core i9-7920X with 12 cores and 24 threads is also scheduled for August. Variants with up to 10 cores inclusive should start appearing in June. The reason for the postponement of the release date may be that versions with the number of cores from 12 to 18 were included by Intel in its "roadmap" only quite recently. The TDP level for Skylake X models should be between 140 and 165 W.

Core i9 up to 4.5GHz

The two cores can sometimes reach clock speeds up to 4.5 GHz. Illustration: Intel

The exact information is about which will receive 10 cores and a base clock frequency of 3.3 GHz, Turbo-boosting to 4.5 GHz. It should appear in June. Starting with the octa-core class, which will be represented by the Core i9-7820X, Intel is reducing the number of PCIe lanes from 44 to 28, which may limit the bandwidth of expansion cards.

Thus, for anyone who wants an ultra-fast system with several graphic cards and SSD drives with an M2 interface, you will need to take more expensive models... Intel currently offers 40 PCIe lanes in six-core models.

Intel Core i7 and i9 with 6-18 cores

	7980XE	7960X	7940X	7920X	7900X	7820X	7800X
Kernels / Threads	18 / 36	16 / 32	14 / 28	12 / 24	10 / 20	8 / 16	6 / 12
Base frequency	—	—	—	—	3.3 GHz	3.6 GHz	3.5 GHz
Turbo (2.0 / 3.0)	—	—	—	—	4.3 / 4.5 GHz	4.3 / 4.5 GHz	4.0 GHz
L3 cache	—	—	—	16.5 MB	13.75 Mb	11.0 MB	8.25 Mb
PCIe lanes	—	—	—	44	44	28	28
Thermal package (TDP)	—	—	—	140 watt	140 watt	140 watt	140 watt
approximate price	114 thousand rubles	97 thousand rubles	80 thousand rubles	68 thousand rubles	57 thousand rubles.	34 thousand rubles	22 thousand rubles
release date	—	—	—	August	June	June	June

Skylake X: performance and pricing improvements

New processors cannot be attributed to the last generation in terms of architecture, but nevertheless, compared to their predecessors, they received some architectural improvements that are probably borrowed from solutions for Xeon servers. In particular, each core now has access to 1MB of lightning-fast L2 cache (4 times more than current Kaby Lake processors). In addition, support for AVX512 is being discussed, which should provide a decent performance boost in applications that support it. And also promised support for DDR4 RAM at a clock frequency of 2666 MHz.

There was also information about prices. As usual, Intel strives to make a substantial mark-up, but in the "lower" segment there is strong price pressure from AMD, because this competitor always asks for a little less "for one core". Top Intel model with 18 cores costs about 114 thousand rubles. 10 cores can be obtained for only about 57 thousand rubles. (instead of the previous 95 thousand rubles). An octa-core will cost about 34 thousand rubles, that is, about 28 thousand rubles. cheaper than before. AMD currently sells the Ryzen 7 1700 with eight cores for about RUR18,000.

Recall that in the near future AMD plans to present its top-class processors for desktop computers, which will receive 16 cores in the top-end version. Most likely, these models will decently reshuffle our rating of extreme processors. Yes, a hot summer awaits PC fans.

Opinion Chip: It's finally happening again!

What a development of events! Until recently, the market for central processors seemed to be in a state of stagnation: AMD was in fact pushed into the background, and Intel every year introduced new quad-core processors to the market with a 5-10% increase in performance - monotonous, boring. Anyone who wanted more cores had to, as they say, stick their hand into the wallet much deeper.

And now AMD, with its eight-core CPUs, has not only shaken the market thoroughly, but is also threatening to take Intel's crown as the desktop processor market leader with the launch of its already announced 16-core "Threadripper" in June. This once again set Intel and, accordingly, the entire market in motion - a real feast for enthusiasts. However, ordinary consumers, for whom the price is far from the last role, will benefit from the upcoming multi-core competition of manufacturers in the coming months and years.

Competition revitalizes business - today this expression is more relevant than ever. Now it's up to the buyers who will choose the vector of further developments. After all, in the end, each of them will have to decide for themselves whether to continue to invest in the already familiar brand (Intel), or to support the catching up leader of the developer (AMD), which offers surprisingly much performance to those who purchase its processors.

At least for the time being, the best value for money, as shown by our desktop processor ranking, is with products bearing the AMD logo. On the other hand, in the summer, Intel may raise the performance benchmark one step higher.

A few hours ago, the official Intel event ended, at which the ninth generation processors were announced, as well as an updated line of devices from the Core-X lineup.

The ninth generation of "stones" (, Core i7-9700K and Core i5-9600K) will be compatible with existing motherboards (based on chipsets of the 300th series) and with a new set of system logic called Z390.

The mainstream Socket LGA 1151 compatible flagship is the Intel Core i9-9900K with 8 physical cores and 16 processing threads. The unlocked processor has 16 MB of cache and Intel UHD 620 graphics.

The nominal clock frequency of the Core i9-9900K is 3600 MHz, in the automatic acceleration mode the value "jumps" up to 5 GHz for one or two cores (4 cores operate at 4800 MHz, 6/8 - at 4.7 GHz). TDP solutions - 95 watts. The cost of the "stone" is $ 488.

Another curious product is Intel Core i7-9700K, 8 cores and the same number of threads are hidden under its cover. The cache size is 12 MB. Nominal clock frequency - 3600 MHz, TDP - 95 watts. This CPU will retail for $ 374.

For enthusiasts who do not want to shell out big money for a central chip, the Intel Core i5-9600K is prepared for $ 262. It is a six-core processor (6 threads) with 9 MB cache. CPU clock speed - 3700 MHz, TDP - 95 W.

	Core i9-9900K	Core i7-9700K	Core i5-9600K
Technical process	14 nm	14 nm	14 nm
Kernels / threads	8/16	8/8	6/6
Clock frequency	3600/5000 MHz	3600/4900 MHz	3700/4600 MHz
Cache	16 MB	12 MB	9 MB
TDP	95 watts	95 watts	95 watts
Price	488$	374$	262$

It is known that other modifications will appear in the line of the ninth generation of the CPU, for example, Core i5-9600, Core i5-9500, Core i5-9400 and Core i3-9100, but there is no information about the date of their appearance on the market and the cost yet.

Intel has also updated its Skylake-X line of multi-core processors for Socket LGA 2066. The flagship is the 18-core Intel Core i9-9980XE (36 threads), which is compatible with four-channel RAM and works with 68 PCIe lanes. Its cost is $ 1979.

The most affordable option from the Skylake-X Refresh CPU family is the Core i9-9800X with 8 physical cores (16 processing threads) and 16.5 MB of cache. It is priced at $ 589.

On sale "multicore" of the ninth generation will appear in November this year.

	Core i9-9980XE	Core i9-9960X	Core i9-9940X	Core i9-9920X	Core i9-9900X	Core i9-9820X	Core i9-9800X
Kernels / threads	18/36	16/32	14/28	12/24	10/20	10/20	8/16
Clock frequency	3000/4500 MHz	3100/4500 MHz	3300/4500 MHz	3500/4500 MHz	3500/4500 MHz	3300/4500 MHz	3800/4500 MHz
Cache	24.75 MB	22 MB	19.25 MB	19.25 MB	19.25 MB	16.5 MB	16.5 MB
Memory support	DDR4-2666	DDR4-2666	DDR4-2666	DDR4-2666	DDR4-2666	DDR4-2666	DDR4-2666
PCI-E Lines	68	68	68	68	68	68	68
TDP	165 watts	165 watts	165 watts	165 watts	165 watts	165 watts	165 watts
Price	1979$	1684$	1387$	1189$	989$	898$	589$

For the ultra-premium segment, Intel has prepared a special "dish" - Intel Xeon W-3175X (Skylake-X) with 28 physical cores and 56 computing threads. This processor is compatible with Socket LGA 3647, has 38.5 MB of cache, and the TDP level exceeds 250 W. It will go on sale in December.