Examining Intel's Ice Lake Processors: Taking a Bite of the Sunny Cove Microarchitecture
by Dr. Ian Cutress on July 30, 2019 9:30 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
- Intel
- 10nm
- Microarchitecture
- Ice Lake
- Project Athena
- Sunny Cove
- Gen11
Two Versions, Two Different Power Targets
Intel has promised that Ice Lake-U will be seen in a variety of form factors, targeting anywhere from 9W to 28W. This sort of range is not new for a U-series processor – we typically see overlap from something lower down (the Y-series, ~5W) or higher up (H-series, ~45W), however Ice Lake hasn’t currently been listed for H series power budgets - only Y and U. Having such a wide window, from 5-28W, allows Intel to be very wide with binning the chips as they come of the production line, which is a very valid tactic for promoting as much yield as possible with minimal waste.
Technically there will be two different Ice Lake BGA mobile packages – one aimed at low power (7-12W) for the Y series, and another for higher power designs (15-28W) in the U series.
At this point Intel has not stated what core configurations will be in both packages, however it is likely that the lower power 7-12W ‘Type 4’ package will be for Y-series implementations only, especially given that the overall package size is only 490mm2 (26.5x18.5) compared to 1250 mm2 (50x25), making it 39% the size of the larger high power package. It stands to reason then that the smaller package is for lower performance and low power options, despite being exactly the same silicon.
This Type-4 option also uses the ‘recessed in board’ design we first saw with Broadwell-Y, which is required based on the integrated voltage regulators that Intel now uses on its low powered designs. This makes a very interesting point about Intel’s capabilities with low powered 10nm designs: one could postulate that as the recessed model is well above the traditional Y-series power line. If the 10nm process doesn’t go low down enough in power to that sub-5W range, it could either be because of power, or there isn't enough frequency for Intel to actually sell at volume. Alternatively Intel could end up increasing the base power of the Y-series. One could draw parallels with the first generation 10nm Cannon Lake Core i3-8121U at 15W, which was initially postulated to be dual-core Y-series silicon, rather than the 15W U-series designation it ended up with (our review showed that it did indeed consume more power for the same work compared to a 14nm equivalent design, which would imply a very high static power). With this in mind, it makes me wonder what percentage of Type 3 / Type 4 package designs Intel will end up shipping into the market.
Broadwell Motherboard Design for Recessed Power Implementation
Intel is keen to promote that one of the new features of Ice Lake is its Thin Magnetic Inductor Array, which helps the FIVR achieve better power conversion efficiencies and waste less power. The main issue with a FIVR is at low power consumption states that have a lot of inefficiency – some other processor designs have a linear LDO (Low-Dropout Regulator) implementation which is better for low power designs but less efficient in high power modes.
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repoman27 - Tuesday, July 30, 2019 - link
"It stands to reason then that the smaller package is for lower performance and low power options, despite being exactly the same silicon."I know the die floorplans are the same, but have Intel ever actually confirmed that U and Y (or H and S series for that matter) are the exact same silicon? Is it strictly binning and packaging that separates the platforms, or is there a slight tweak to the manufacturing process to target lower power / higher frequencies? Intel production roadmaps would seem to indicate this isn't just a binning situation, but I've never been entirely certain on that point.
And isn't Comet Lake-U 6+2 more likely to be 25 W, with Whiskey Lake-U 4+2 continuing to pull 15 W duty alongside Ice Lake-U 4+2?
CaedenV - Tuesday, July 30, 2019 - link
Those goals for Aethena are OK, but my old Dell XPS 12 with a carousel frame hit all of those except biometric, and wake from sleep in <1 sec... well, and the bezel... but that was due to the carousel design which I would LOVE to come back in a more modern form.Not saying these goals are bad... but if a 6 year old midrange laptop can hit almost all of them, then this isn't exactly aiming for something amazing.
AshlayW - Tuesday, July 30, 2019 - link
Quad core for 179 USD? What is this, 2015? No thanks.HStewart - Tuesday, July 30, 2019 - link
You do realize these are ultra-portable low power cpu's and not desktop chipsSamus - Tuesday, July 30, 2019 - link
Intel is a mess right now, the execution of this along with the naming scheme is ridiculous.shabby - Tuesday, July 30, 2019 - link
18% ipc gain and 20% clock lossPlace your bets how intel will spin this.
CHADBOGA - Tuesday, July 30, 2019 - link
I'm quite disappointed the issue of security mitigation in hardware was not addressed. o_OCityBlue - Saturday, August 3, 2019 - link
Disappointed, but not surprised.Security (and by inference the performance overhead required to implement proper security) is not important according to Anandtech/Ian Cutress. Which is obvious nonsense, so the only logical conclusion is that Anandtech are now a thoroughly biased outfit incapable of any critical reporting, which is quite sad particularly as it means all their articles (particularly when they relate to Intel) have to be read with a very heavy dose of cynicism.
eek2121 - Wednesday, July 31, 2019 - link
That picture of you biting a wafer is priceless.Santoval - Wednesday, July 31, 2019 - link
If Ice Lake-U has a ~3.5% higher single core performance (and, assuming the "multi-core overhead" is the same, multi-core performance as well) than Whiskey Lake-U despite having a 20% lower single core boost clock, then Sunny Cove must be an extremely impressive μarch. Or, er, that might not actually be the case : Ice Lake-U has a 18% higher IPC than the *original* Skylake of 2015, not Whiskey Lake. While Whiskey Lake is basically the same design it must have a somewhat higher IPC due to its much more mature process node and other optimizations.Let's be conservative and assume that Ice Lake-U (more specifically Sunny Cove) has a nice round 15% higher IPC than Whiskey Lake-U, with both at 15W. In that case, at a 20% lower boost clock Ice Lake-U should have a 5% lower performance than Whiskey Lake-U. Where is that +3.5% performance derived from then?
Even if we assumed that Ice Lake-U 18% IPC edge is over Whiskey Lake-U (highly unlikely, otherwise Intel would not have dug out the original Skylake from its computing grave) that would still translate to Ice Lake-U having a 1.5% lower single core performance than Whiskey Lake-U, rather than being 3.5% faster than it.
Maybe, just maybe, this is why Intel used just a single synthetic benchmark (surely compiled with aggressive flags and optimized for Intel CPUs) for that graph and avoided to disclose other synthetic benchmarks and real world use benchmarks? Is this also why they avoided to talk about CPU performance of Ice Lake in their Computex presentation, and instead focused on iGPU, Wifi and AI performance?
Based on the disclosed clocks and the "disclosed" (in obfuscated form) IPC of Ice Lake-U I just cannot see it being in any way faster than Whiskey Lake-U. It will probably also have worse power efficiency, since it has the same or higher TDP range at a much lower clock.