Rumor: New Coffee Lake CPU - 6 core mainstream???

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Ultima99

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Possible new 14nm successor to Kaby Lake called Coffee Lake.

Potentially the first mainstream Intel cpu to move beyond 4 cores.

Intel 14nm Coffee Lake and 10nm Cannonlake To Coexist in 2018

It would be about time, and the 14nm process will be beyond mature at that point, so I can see why this wouldn't be on 10nm. Perhaps we'll see Ice Lake or Tiger lake have 6 cores on mainstream as the 10nm process matures?

Thoughts?
 
Interesting move. Seems like AMD has done a good job pushing their cheap 8-core CPUs, making it seem like an amazing deal to be able to get that many cores for so cheap, despite the fact that even with all 8 AMD cores combined it's still slower than most quad-core intel CPUs. It would seem odd though, for Intel to release a mainstream hex-core so soon after Broadwell-E. Seems to me that if mainstream is going hex-core, then most if not all Broadwell-E chips should have been 8+ cores.
 
This is about something happening in 2018. Which I think is late considering Zen's 8 core / 16 threaded CPU should be somewhat competitive (and priced to compete) with the bottom end 6 core / 12 threaded haswell-e. Although maybe Intel does not expect Zen to be competitive.
 
drescherjm said:
This is about something happening in 2018. Which I think is late considering Zen's 8 core / 16 threaded CPU should be somewhat competitive (and priced to compete) with the bottom end 6 core / 12 threaded haswell-e. Although maybe Intel does not expect Zen to be competitive.
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I doubt Zen will be competitive in mainstream market, tbh. It may have a chance in server market, but it depends on whether AMD managed to extra more performance from their MCM 2x8/4x8 config than Intel from it's double ring.
 
I think Zen will be competitive in the mainstream $200 to $400 price point. An 8 core, 16 thread CPU that performs within 25% of single threaded top end i7 would be popular. There are a lot of AMD fans waiting for an upgrade and wanting it to be close to Intel's offerings.
 
Well, I'd love to build another AMD system, but a 25% gap would be a wash for me. 10%, perhaps.
 
RaVeNatNM said:
I think Zen will be competitive in the mainstream $200 to $400 price point. An 8 core, 16 thread CPU that performs within 25% of single threaded top end i7 would be popular. There are a lot of AMD fans waiting for an upgrade and wanting it to be close to Intel's offerings.
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I can bet you that if Zen will be priced below $400 for 8 core, it will be a turd only competitive with 6700k in multi-threaded (!) workloads. Basically an improved FX-8350, not more.
 
Even if Intel does this, it's not in response to anything AMD is doing. This would be them trying to offer incentives to move to a newer platform.
 
Looking forward to a new rig in 2017 and the CPU pickup is what is keeping me from updating sooner. Looking forward to a chip with more ass in the $350-$400 range. If a Zen chip outperforms the recent Skylakes I'm game to go AMD. Need to see the benches 1st/ I'm having high hopes after reading a different article yesterday that the Zen chips should be on par with Intel chips.
 
jaxstraww said:
Looking forward to a new rig in 2017 and the CPU pickup is what is keeping me from updating sooner. Looking forward to a chip with more ass in the $350-$400 range. If a Zen chip outperforms the recent Skylakes I'm game to go AMD. Need to see the benches 1st/ I'm having high hopes after reading a different article yesterday that the Zen chips should be on par with Intel chips.
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Im sure they will be. The question is just which Intel chips? The Pentium 4, the Core 2 or the I7? :p

I really have no idea. From a competition perspective, I hope they truly will compete with Kaby Lake, but as seen on the GPU scene, most likely they will be 40% behind or worse.
 
jaxstraww said:
Looking forward to a new rig in 2017 and the CPU pickup is what is keeping me from updating sooner. Looking forward to a chip with more ass in the $350-$400 range. If a Zen chip outperforms the recent Skylakes I'm game to go AMD. Need to see the benches 1st/ I'm having high hopes after reading a different article yesterday that the Zen chips should be on par with Intel chips.
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Highly unlikely AMD will outperform Skylake in games since games aren't heavily multi threaded even in DX12 gaming benchmarks the difference between 5960X and 6700K is marginal. Maybe in multithreaded applications that use more than 4 cores but even still. In Cinebench single CPU score on my AMD rig was 1.1 and Skylake was 2.2 Double! Hard to see AMD catching Intel in that department but multithreaded score was much closer. My AMD scores 7.78 and my Skylake scores 10.6ish.
 
Having just made the jump to a Skylake platform, my only horse in this race is wondering what, if any, socket stability we might see from this on the desktop platform. The constantly changing sockets of each CPU generation was one of my historical gripes with Intel. They have the 2011 platform now which has been offering this stable platform as far as new generations of CPU being compatible. I'm hoping we see a little bit of love in this regard with 1151 if these rumors ever pan out.
 
Gman1979 said:
Having just made the jump to a Skylake platform, my only horse in this race is wondering what, if any, socket stability we might see from this on the desktop platform. The constantly changing sockets of each CPU generation was one of my historical gripes with Intel. They have the 2011 platform now which has been offering this stable platform as far as new generations of CPU being compatible. I'm hoping we see a little bit of love in this regard with 1151 if these rumors ever pan out.
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AMD changes socket just as much now. Also you had AMD boards with the right socket, but still incompatibility.

And we see people still buy new mobos instead of keeping the old, because they want the new features.

People forget that keeping the same socket for a long time is a problem, not a benefit. Since you have to shoehorn new CPUs into that, rather than making a CPU without these limitations to begin with.
 
Gman1979 said:
Having just made the jump to a Skylake platform, my only horse in this race is wondering what, if any, socket stability we might see from this on the desktop platform. The constantly changing sockets of each CPU generation was one of my historical gripes with Intel. They have the 2011 platform now which has been offering this stable platform as far as new generations of CPU being compatible. I'm hoping we see a little bit of love in this regard with 1151 if these rumors ever pan out.
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Umm... Nope. 2011 (SB-E, IB-E) is not equivalent to 2011-3 (Haswell-E, Broadwell-E). Skylake-X is rumored to be on 2066.
 
AzixTGO said:
I guess in a case where there is genuinely new and important technology. eg. DDR3 to DDR4 transition. But not quite for other reasons.
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The topology of the CPU is one. Forcing your CPU engineers to confine themselves into a set layout can't be good for innovation.
 
AzixTGO said:
I guess in a case where there is genuinely new and important technology. eg. DDR3 to DDR4 transition. But not quite for other reasons.
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The use of memory has very little to do with the chipset and mb outside of having the actual slot. There is a lot more about the chipset that consumers care about, and an area that Intel is WAY ahead in.
 
AzixTGO said:
I guess in a case where there is genuinely new and important technology. eg. DDR3 to DDR4 transition. But not quite for other reasons.
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Power delivery is the most restrictive parts of a CPU performance design.
 
I think what the poster is trying to say that on an older motherboard you are going to be more restrictive on power delivery than if you were on a newer one. It doesn't have anything to do with a "chipset feature" but more along the lines of something you get with newer motherboards, designed with the newer chipset.

If a new CPU came out using the same socket and chipset, then that CPU would be at the whim of the older standards.
 
Coffee Lake looks like a mobile CPU (H designation), according to the original Japanese source from 10 days ago. There will probably be a desktop version, but that one won't be called Coffee Lake.

GotNoRice said:
Interesting move. Seems like AMD has done a good job pushing their cheap 8-core CPUs,
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That has absolutely nothing to do with it. 1 Intel core > 2 AMD cores. The main reason AMD went with 2 CPU core modules is because each core had low IPC and AMD banked on a rise in multi-core software (which largely still hasn't happened and is why single-threaded performance is still so important). A 2 core module was supposed to be competitive with an Intel core with HT, which it somewhat is if you squint hard enough, throw 2 threads at it, ignore the clock speed and power differences, and compare new AMD CPUs to several generations ago old Intel CPUs. :p
 
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AzixTGO said:
a lot of these standards scale though. It would just mean the CPU would not perform to its best most likely.



I wonder about that. I think people are forgetting the actual chip is on a PCB which then connects with pins/contacts.
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Trace length and path is a concern even on something as small as a CPU. See frequency propagation issues. Also, see signal interference.

A real Intel tech for getting around CPU physical limitations is the ring bus. These are not just simply transistors on a PCB.
 
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AzixTGO said:
a lot of these standards scale though. It would just mean the CPU would not perform to its best most likely.



I wonder about that. I think people are forgetting the actual chip is on a PCB which then connects with pins/contacts.
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Which again if you are constantly fitting your new silicon to old standards you are going to get inferior products.
 
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