Intel Ice lake integrates thunderbolt onto the SOC

[JJB]

EGpu's have been around for a couple of years now, and different manufacturers have implemented their own interface for external graphics cards. For example, Dell has an external GPU enclosure for certain Alienware laptops. MSI has a dock that you can slot certain laptops into. However, most eGPU enclosures rely on thunderbolt  to communicate with the laptop. Up until now thunderbolt was not integrated on the CPU, resulting in severe performance penalties for the thunderbolt-based GPU enclosures. Linus showed this in the video below. The alienware enclosure has a proprietary connector delivering a 4x pci-e signal to the laptop. The razer core only has thunderbolt to the laptop.

Credit: Walden Kirsch/Intel Corporation

"It's the first platform where we integrated Thunderbolt 3 natively onto the SOC" -Gregory M. Bryant (Senior VP and general manager from Intel)

 

The performance pentaly may soon vanish as Intel has announced Ice Lake (Sunny Cove architecture) at CES 2019, these CPU's with the sunny cove microarchitecture will integrate thunderbolt on the SOC, for increased performance. With increasingly more powerful CPU's being built into laptops, egpu's may become a good option for someone who only wants one computer to do all his/her work on.

 

Ice Lake in combination with a GPU enclosure the performance may be on par with a desktop equivalent.

 

Source: https://vimeo.com/intelpr/review/310012544/08a67480c3 @ 13:27

Source 2: https://newsroom.intel.com/news/intel-advances-pc-experience-new-platforms-technologies-industry-collaboration/#gs.IuGfAvss

 

[Brooksie359]

I forget are ice lake cpus even higher power cpus? Or are they U variants? 

[JJB]

Just now, Brooksie359 said:

I forget are ice lake cpus even higher power cpus? Or are they U variants? 

Ice lake is intel's new generation of CPU's that use their new 10nm manufacturing process

[NelizMastr]

2 minutes ago, Brooksie359 said:

I forget are ice lake cpus even higher power cpus? Or are they U variants? 

Yep. It's the successor to Covfefe Lake

[Nocte]

1 minute ago, NelizMastr said:

Covfefe Lake

You mean Skylake+++++++++++++++++++?

[GoldenLag]

11 minutes ago, Brooksie359 said:

I forget are ice lake cpus even higher power cpus? Or are they U variants? 

first 10nm chips are apperantly mobile parts. take that how you want.

[Brooksie359]

Just now, GoldenLag said:

first 10nm chips are apperantly mobile parts. take that how you want.

If they are u variants instead of h variants then the ability to use eGPU is kinda worthless. 

[2SidedPolygon]

2 minutes ago, GoldenLag said:

first 10nm chips are apperantly mobile parts. take that how you want.

Intel is probably in full "DONTLETAMDGETTHELAPTOPSASWELL" mode.

[GoldenLag]

1 minute ago, Brooksie359 said:

If they are u variants instead of h variants then the ability to use eGPU is kinda worthless. 

id rather want it on U variants. but if one gets it at 10nm. the other one should too

[2SidedPolygon]

1 minute ago, Brooksie359 said:

If they are u variants instead of h variants then the ability to use eGPU is kinda worthless. 

What? That's exactly what gives it worth. Why would you need an eGPU with a desktop? A laptop is where that's useful.

[GoldenLag]

Just now, 2SidedPolygon said:

Intel is probably in full "DONTLETAMDGETTHELAPTOPSASWELL" mode.

i mean. Laptop market is where the real sales are at

[GoldenLag]

Just now, 2SidedPolygon said:

Why would you need an eGPU with a desktop?

H series isnt desktop. those are high power laptop chips

[2SidedPolygon]

Just now, GoldenLag said:

H series isnt desktop. those are high power laptop chips

Oh okay I'm an idiot. Still, U series because on a high-power laptop you can put a better GPU in anyway.

[GoldenLag]

Just now, 2SidedPolygon said:

Oh okay I'm an idiot. Still, U series because on a high-power laptop you can put a better GPU in anyway.

yea. but you cant, say, hook up super fast external storage or networking. or newer GPUs when they come out. 

 

there is more use to the thunderbolt than GPUs

[2SidedPolygon]

Just now, GoldenLag said:

yea. but you cant, say, hook up super fast external storage or networking. or newer GPUs when they come out. 

 

there is more use to the thunderbolt than GPUs

Of course, but in my mind, most people are going to be using Thunderbolt for eGPUs. Also, the ultrabooks you find U series chips in are going to be more aimed at productivity users who might need that fast external storage or networking, where as bigger, bulkier laptops will appear more to the gaming market, who won't be taking as much advantage of the features (Not none at all, but in my mind at least, less). There are exceptions to that, of course, but as a general rule it holds fairly true.

[Brooksie359]

18 minutes ago, 2SidedPolygon said:

Oh okay I'm an idiot. Still, U series because on a high-power laptop you can put a better GPU in anyway.

True but it makes them more bulky. 

[yian88]

Really i keep hearing about thunderbolt this thunderbolt that for a decade now but i have not seen it used in anything usefull on any hardware.

Im too lazy to even google it atm, is it usefull for anything high bandwidth data transfer or not? monitors/gpu/ethernet and such? shouldnt it replace garbage DP and maybe hdmi if its good?

[pas008]

7 minutes ago, yian88 said:

Really i keep hearing about thunderbolt this thunderbolt that for a decade now but i have not seen it used in anything usefull on any hardware.

Im too lazy to even google it atm, is it usefull for anything high bandwidth data transfer or not? monitors/gpu/ethernet and such? shouldnt it replace garbage DP and maybe hdmi if its good?

i think it was because of the licensing fees

[hobobobo]

what soc, wtf? Is ice lake integrating chipset on die or something

[Misanthrope]

Well most laptops are getting better on gpus and I'm not sure how much the thunderbolt limits by being 4x vs internal GPU for the higher end stuff (2060 and beyond).

 

However what I am curious about is whenever or not we'll see more Vulkan support, specifically to get more (or beyond a single game, any) support for multi-gpu since I'd like having the option to compromize between something like a 1050 for gaming on the go but then plugging in thunderbolt enclosure and use both simultaneously without worrying about SLI or Crossfire nonsense.

[thorhammerz]

1 hour ago, yian88 said:

Really i keep hearing about thunderbolt this thunderbolt that for a decade now but i have not seen it used in anything usefull on any hardware.

Im too lazy to even google it atm, is it usefull for anything high bandwidth data transfer or not? monitors/gpu/ethernet and such? shouldnt it replace garbage DP and maybe hdmi if its good?

Use cases are for as you've mentioned, hardware that requires high data-transfer speeds, which means the light/casual/office laptop user will be unlikely to experience significant benefits from it over cloud services or traditional USB 2/3 speeds.

 

Great for those that require productivity from a semi-mobile setup (in the sense that one will have non-mobile components sitting on their desk at home/the-office while the laptop itself moves around with them as needed), allowing near desktop-like utility from a mobile laptop when needed.

 

It also allows you have (up to) NVME speeds from external drives (imo a Godsend, considering the enormous markup laptop manufacturers charge for 1TB/2TB SSD internal storage).

[SansVarnic]

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[JJB]

1 hour ago, hobobobo said:

what soc, wtf? Is ice lake integrating chipset on die or something

Sorry, I should have clarified. It's the new Sunny Cove architecture

1 hour ago, Misanthrope said:

Well most laptops are getting better on gpus and I'm not sure how much the thunderbolt limits by being 4x vs internal GPU for the higher end stuff (2060 and beyond).

 

However what I am curious about is whenever or not we'll see more Vulkan support, specifically to get more (or beyond a single game, any) support for multi-gpu since I'd like having the option to compromize between something like a 1050 for gaming on the go but then plugging in thunderbolt enclosure and use both simultaneously without worrying about SLI or Crossfire nonsense.

I think Linus mentioned that multi GPU is possible for rendering etc., not for gaming. But you could totally have a laptop with thunderbolt and a GTX 1050 and plug an egpu into it and have a GTX 1080Ti for example.

[Taf the Ghost]

1 hour ago, Misanthrope said:

Well most laptops are getting better on gpus and I'm not sure how much the thunderbolt limits by being 4x vs internal GPU for the higher end stuff (2060 and beyond).

 

However what I am curious about is whenever or not we'll see more Vulkan support, specifically to get more (or beyond a single game, any) support for multi-gpu since I'd like having the option to compromize between something like a 1050 for gaming on the go but then plugging in thunderbolt enclosure and use both simultaneously without worrying about SLI or Crossfire nonsense.

AMD had their whole Fusion concept that sort of worked a few generations ago, but Intel, since they're coming into the dGPU space, would be well advised to get games into a position to offload work onto iGPUs. If an Intel Gaming dGPU could, at the driver level, split work to the iGPU on Intel systems, they'd have an automatic advantage over AMD & Intel in the space.

[PlayStation 2]

Exactly what does Thunderbolt get usage out of that isn't external GPUs? I've always wondered that since I only see them on Apple computers and various ultrabooks.