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  • DanNeely - Wednesday, December 11, 2019 - link

    What's the mediatek chip image for?
  • vladx - Wednesday, December 11, 2019 - link

    It's the first 5G Mediatek SoC from which the 5G tech will be used in future Intel products.
  • NICOXIS - Wednesday, December 11, 2019 - link

    They sold their modem business to Apple so they need buy chips from somebody else now, in this case, Mediatek.
  • yeeeeman - Wednesday, December 11, 2019 - link

    The money spent on new silicon can't be amortized by the small number of chips they will sell. Hence the decision.
  • drunkenmaster - Thursday, December 12, 2019 - link

    They bought the Apple iphone deal on 4g modems by selling both at stupidly low prices and with a promise of increased competitiveness. As the increase in competitiveness failed completely Apple were forced to ignore the low low pricing from Intel trying to buy their way in and went back to Qualcomm.

    If Intel could make a even semi competitive chip they could have provided every single Apple modem for years to come as well as modems for a lot of laptops from all their partners.

    Volume for their modem sales were never an issue... the 5g modems just used so much power they couldn't even use them in all the laptops they were supposed to be supplying for launch this year.
  • Gondalf - Tuesday, December 17, 2019 - link

    Are you sure Qualcomm modems are not power hungry ?? Some say no.
    Intel 10nm process have proved to be very cool on Mobile Ice Lake, at least up to 4Ghz. The gain over 14nm generation is impressive at the same computational power.

    In fact Intel will continue to produce 5G modems but not for phones, surely for Laptops and servers infrastructures. In fact we well see the integration of a modem on Golden Cove core derivative chip (for Laptops).
  • name99 - Wednesday, December 11, 2019 - link

    Ah, 10nm and FakeYield...
    Chips tomorrow, chips the day after tomorrow — but never chips today.
  • Dragonstongue - Wednesday, December 11, 2019 - link

    Touche
  • Drumsticks - Wednesday, December 11, 2019 - link

    You can buy 10nm Icelake parts in the market right now. I know 10nm was like four years late, but it's just wrong to pretend that they don't have any available now.

    Plus, the tiny Lakefield being available in 2020 doesn't mean anything about yields by itself. Icelake is bigger and shipping now.
  • yeeeeman - Wednesday, December 11, 2019 - link

    I am sick of these stupid haters that are stuck in the past saying Intel doesn't have 10nm. It does, it is reasonable and that is what happens when you mess up things on the fab. it goes really wrong really fast with a very long recovery time.
  • Korguz - Wednesday, December 11, 2019 - link

    apparently.. only being able to ship only quad core parts, that are slower then the ones they replace, while in a market that is kind of small.. doesnt count has shiping product.. specially when its not in volume like it would be for mainstream parts
  • trivik12 - Thursday, December 12, 2019 - link

    why do you say slower. Anandtech review shows good performance increase for XPS 13. I have a icelake laptop and its more efficient than previous gen.
  • Fataliity - Thursday, December 12, 2019 - link

    Because it is slower. the 4 core Ice Lake is slower than the 6 Core it's replacing. The single thread is slightly faster, but only because Intel increased the boost time on the Ice Lake for maximum benchmark efficiency. When running longer tests that actually test the chip (like gaming), it actually loses.

    Graphics failed too. They compared a LPDDR4x 4233mhz to a DDR3-1866mhz (Not even DDR4) to get their "2x graphics performance" number, when everyone knows bandwidth is a big factor in onboard graphics. And the fastest Ice Lake I actually saw was 3733mhz Razer laptop.

    Actual performance in real world? 30% increase. Still beaten by Ryzen 3700.
    Temperatures? 90-100C. VERY bad.

    Only winning tests? Single-thread within time frame of boost clock setting in bios. And AVX.
    Complete Failure. Buy a 6core 14nm chip and get a discrete card. Even the 1060 Max-Q is over 2x better.
  • Fataliity - Thursday, December 12, 2019 - link

    Gaming = rendering, or anything that takes longer than 1min 30seconds basically.
  • Fataliity - Thursday, December 12, 2019 - link

    One other thing. All the benchmarks you seen at "release" were Intel slides and not actual benchmarks. They weren't actually tested. Go on youtube and actually look at videos comparing the old systems to the new systems versus 14nm systems with max-q graphics (which you can buy for the same price). You will see, the new systems are not good.
  • HStewart - Thursday, December 12, 2019 - link

    A couple of misleading statements here.

    1. The 4 cores in the Lakefield were never designed to replace 14nm cores - these are basically lower power Atom cores along with single power IceLake core.

    2. The quad core Ice Lake was not decided to replace 6 core 14nm cpu, the ice lakes are lower power cpu designed to be more efficient. I would be curious and would not doubt that a refresh of Ice Lake includes higher watt versions including 6 or 8 cores designed for better performance.
  • Korguz - Thursday, December 12, 2019 - link

    ok there Hstewart.. sure...
  • levizx - Friday, December 13, 2019 - link

    Are you high on something? Ice Lake has only 9/15/28W parts, so show me a 8th/9th Gen 6-core sub-30W part, please?
  • trivik12 - Sunday, December 15, 2019 - link

    Intel did release comet lake-u with 6 core. But so far reviews have favored icelake over comet lake.
  • Korguz - Sunday, December 15, 2019 - link

    " Intel did release comet lake-u with 6 core" oh ?? where ??
  • trivik12 - Sunday, December 15, 2019 - link

    you should see the Microsoft surface laptop review comparing custom AMD chip with icelake. It was complete ass whippage from intel.
  • Korguz - Sunday, December 15, 2019 - link

    as was said in the article comments for this.. it may have been but a few are questioning the results.
    i guess intel has to do that some where, its getting its own butt handed to it every where else.
  • Santoval - Thursday, December 12, 2019 - link

    There is a reason that HVM (high volume manufacturing) is generally considered the only true release, while everything else is considered little more than sampling. There is nothing suggesting that Intel is releasing Ice Lake-U/Y at high volume. If anything, the dual release with Comet Lake-U/Y along with the fact that they have not yet ramped up 10nm manufacturing (I believe they have only two 10nm fabs) suggests that Ice Lake machines will be far fewer than Comet Lake ones. I wonder, out of each 5 laptops and ultra-portables that hit the market will 1 of them (Project Athena certified) have an Ice Lake-U/Y or am I being a bit generous?
  • Drumsticks - Thursday, December 12, 2019 - link

    I don't see why ice lake really needs to be in high volume, though. It's a premium part for sure, and it's bound for ultrabooks. Every icelake configuration of the Dell XPS 13 2in1 looks to be in stock on Dell.com. Same for the Surface Pro 7 on Microsoft Store and best buy. I think Lenovo has some icelake laptops too, although I don't know about HP.

    What exactly qualifies as high volume? Sure, 10nm doesn't currently cover every segment of the market, but it legitimately covers the premium segment that it needs to without apparent supply shortages. Intel might have 14nm covering the budget markets, but that's not surprising, because they're budget markets.
  • Fataliity - Thursday, December 12, 2019 - link

    It's in stock because it is worse in all ways. If your going premium, you better off with a 6 core 14nm part with a discrete nvidia gpu. That's premium. Their Ice Lakes are overpriced and just bad. see above comment.
  • tecknohow - Thursday, December 12, 2019 - link

    I'm finding these relative discussions about what "high volume" actually means to be very amusing. AMD's overall sales volume is literally 1/10th of Intel's and the number of CPU shipments is bound to be similar. I wouldn't be surprised if Intel actually sells close to as many or even more Ice Lake-U/Y chips than AMD does their entire Ryzen stack. That has nothing to do with who is making better chips, it's just an economic reality. Just because it's not going to be as high volume as some of Intel's other lines doesn't at all mean it's not high volume production.

    Oh and for the record stock on the XPS 13 2-in-1 and some other Ice Lake laptops has been very tight with sometimes multi-week lead times. I know because I've been ordering a bunch of them for various customers.
  • Korguz - Thursday, December 12, 2019 - link

    tecknohow you are comparing a low volume part, to ALL of AMDs products ?? might want to rethink that... and high volume, means mainstream products, which the 10nm parts are not mainstream. " and some other Ice Lake laptops has been very tight with sometimes multi-week lead times " probably because the 10nm process still has low yields, and intel can't make very many of them as of yet.
  • ksec - Thursday, December 12, 2019 - link

    > but it legitimately covers the premium segment that it needs to *without apparent supply shortages*.

    That is because

    1. Intel has been stock piling these chip for holiday release, so those vendor gets the chip.
    2. The major player in premium market ( That defined as $1000+ ) is still not getting Icelake. And that is Apple.

    Is it on the street, yes. Are they in high volume? I have serious doubt.
  • Farfolomew - Monday, December 16, 2019 - link

    IceLake processors are in a lot of devices now being sold. There's several models of cheap laptops ($350 low end) that have Core i3-10xxG1 parts, and several more in the $400-$500 range that have i5 IceLake parts.

    These are not going into just Ultrabooks and premium laptops, they're already in budge laptops and I imagine are beginning to fill out the market.
  • Santoval - Thursday, December 12, 2019 - link

    Realistically you can't (not "right now" anyway), due to the very low volume of machines with Ice Lake-U/Y compared to the ones with Comet Lake-U/Y, which are going to be the major bulk of this dual release. Low volume, assuming there is demand, means long waiting when pre-ordering, and pre-ordering *far* in advance will probably be the only way to get anything with Ice Lake.

    Furthermore, the dual release combined with the low availability of machines with Ice Lake-U/Y will artificially inflate their price. They will not equip any non Project Athena machines, and these ones are going to cost an arm and a leg. That despite the capping of CPU cores to 4, the roughly equal (in some tests lower in some other higher) CPU performance to Whiskey/Amber Lake, the slightly *slower* CPU performance than the equivalent (4-core) Comet Lake CPUs (the IPC is up to 18% higher but the clocks ate all of the IPC gains because, you guessed it, they are ~18% lower) and the *much* lower performance than the 6-core ones.

    On the other hand the Gen11 iGPU will be quite faster (the 48+ core ones anyway), there is quite faster DRAM support and an embedded Thunderbolt controller. Since the power efficiency is arguably the same or worse (worse for the -Y parts), despite the switch to 10nm, Intel will ask much more money just for these last few bits. Are they really worth it? Oh, let's not forget : for the .... newer AI engine and the Wi-Fi 6 support as well!
  • boeush - Wednesday, December 11, 2019 - link

    They should've called it "Feaveros" - given the obvious implications for heat buildup and associated cooling challenges...
  • boeush - Wednesday, December 11, 2019 - link

    Sorry, bad spelling - should've been "Feveros" :-P
  • kc77 - Wednesday, December 11, 2019 - link

    I thought Lakefield was actually supposed to launch this year? How can you have a second generation of something when the first generation hasn't even launched?
  • IntelUser2000 - Wednesday, December 11, 2019 - link

    The comment by the engineer suggests that devices using Lakefield are more like a Smartphone in that it has a longer development time to optimize for its mobile form factor.

    With desktop chips, you can make the system the day the chip is announced. With laptops it takes some time as you need more work to optimize thermals and battery life. Smartphones take the most customization.
  • extide - Wednesday, December 11, 2019 - link

    So nobody else caught this:
    "..8 compute dies per slice (sp), and Ponte Vecchio will have two slices per GPU"

    That's 16 compute dies in a Ponte Vecchio GPU. Interesting.
  • edzieba - Thursday, December 12, 2019 - link

    Has Intel confirmed the orientation of the Foveros dies? They've been calling it 'face to face' which implies that if the upper die is a normal flip-chip then the lower die has its metal layers facing up (i.e. non-flip), but that would mean it's backside solder balls mounting to the substrate are on the transistor side. There's been rumblings that instead If the lower die has it's metal layers facing down (flip chip) then the upper die would be transistor-down and the two would be bonded with transistor layers facing and interfacing. THAT would be a truly interesting orientation.
  • HStewart - Thursday, December 12, 2019 - link

    Surface Pro Neo with Lakefield with dual 9 in screens sound like a cool addition. But I thought Lakefield was going ready this Christmas instead of next summer. But then again the other technology in Neo maybe delaying it with dual screens in PC laptop. We already seen what that has done with Galaxy Fold.

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