Intel Begins Shipping Kaby Lake Processors

[Curufinwe_wins]

http://www.anandtech.com/show/10503/intel-begins-shipment-of-seventh-generation-core-kaby-lake

 

Quote

Intel had their Q2 earnings today, and while we’ll get to that shortly, some news came out of the earnings call that was interesting. Intel CEO Brian Krzanich stated on their earnings call that Intel is now shipping their 7th Generation Core processor, code named Kaby Lake.

 

This was big news at the time mostly because Intel’s previous Tick Tock strategy was so successful. To abandon it was certainly an important step for the company, but with Kaby Lake seemingly on-time for a fall launch this year, just a year after Skylake launched, points to the investment being the correct one.

 

When Intel says they are shipping, they of course mean they are shipping to their device manufacturer partners, so we should start seeing Kaby Lake based computers this fall.

 

Another interesting point brought up during the call was on yields. Intel has found itself in a situation where it’s inventory levels are higher than they would like them to be, and the answer to this was yields. Intel’s yields improved in Q1, and to quote Stacy J. Smith, Intel’s CFO and EVP, “Frankly, they got a lot better in Q2 as well” which is likely another reason why Kaby Lake is being delivered on-time.

 

We should learn more about Kaby Lake at Intel’s IDF which is coming up in mid-August.

 

Cool. Looks like Kaby Lake is proceeding as expected, with a Zen v Kaby Lake/BW-E fight imminent in Q4 2016 or Q1 2017. 

[2FA]

Just now, Curufinwe_wins said:

Intel has found itself in a situation where it’s inventory levels are higher than they would like them to be

Can anyone say monopoly?

[Cracklingice]

Kabylake!  Hype!

 

Love seeing this as someone that wants to see lower prices so I can build new computer faster, but at the same time as a share holder I don't know if that's actually good for my stock value or not.  Probably is because that means they can probably get more profit per chip.  OOOHHHH  Also probably means we're likely to see better binned lower grade chips.  WTB BCLK OC back.  I mean seriously - we should be able to OC every single chip via base clock at least to 105mhz.  I mean sure save the 105+ and unlocked multipliers for K skus but man why gotta rain on the little guy so bad?

 

Quote

Another interesting point brought up during the call was on yields. Intel has found itself in a situation where it’s inventory levels are higher than they would like them to be, and the answer to this was yields. Intel’s yields improved in Q1, and to quote Stacy J. Smith, Intel’s CFO and EVP, “Frankly, they got a lot better in Q2 as well” which is likely another reason why Kaby Lake is being delivered on-time.

 

[Curufinwe_wins]

Just now, DeadEyePsycho said:

Can anyone say monopoly?

I was going to say... "80% market share anyone?"

 

But lol.

[awesomeness10120]

I want to see IPC improvements. IIRC Kaby Lake is not a new architecture, but rather an improvement over Skylake, like Devil's Canyon.

[intelCore]

I want prices and I want to know if they really can't run Windows 7 no more.

[Moress]

Just now, awesomeness10120 said:

I want to see IPC improvements. IIRC Kaby Lake is not a new architecture, but rather an improvement over Skylake, like Devil's Canyon.

From the rumors floating around Kaby Lake won't have any IPC improvement and will focus on reducing power consumption. Some say at a cost of performance actually.

[Curufinwe_wins]

4 minutes ago, awesomeness10120 said:

I want to see IPC improvements. IIRC Kaby Lake is not a new architecture, but rather an improvement over Skylake, like Devil's Canyon.

Very true, but it should be noted that the effect seen with Haswell-E where newer-made CPU's of the EXACT SAME DIE were dramatically out-performing near-launch samples in voltage required to hit overclocks (and thus max OC's and temperature) is likely to be a factor.

 

This is because the yields get harder and harder to keep up as we move to smaller nodes and thus Intel ends up releasing processors (at launch) with MUCH more headroom as yields inevitably improve.

 

The only other two options are to bite the bullet of both pre-stocking more chips and for longer times (time to market is always better shorter from a business financial perspective), or delay new nodes all together and thus risk reducing your new product revenue streams (something Intel has already started doing)

 

Quite simply, one of the single largest reasons Kaby Lake might launch at higher clock speeds and lower voltages than Skylake is the yields on the 14nm process improving (this concept likely affects Pascal/Polaris and all future GPU's as well.).

[Curufinwe_wins]

1 minute ago, Moress said:

From the rumors floating around Kaby Lake won't have any IPC improvement and will focus on reducing power consumption. Some say at a cost of performance actually.

Unlikely at performance cost given the initial low yield of 14nm finfet. See my previous quote.

 

Plus as suggested separately, Intel is releasing 112W 4C Kaby Lake parts sometime in the future so that is clearly not a lower performance cost.

 

But yea IPC improvements will likely be minimal.

[arnavvr]

Just now, Curufinwe_wins said:

Unlikely at performance cost given the initial low yield of 14nm finfet. See my previous quote.

 

Plus as suggested separately, Intel is releasing 112W 4C Kaby Lake parts sometime in the future so that is clearly not a lower performance cost.

 

But yea IPC improvements will likely be minimal.

Oh, good. Was planning on buying a Skylake Laptop, but was holding out till KabyLake. Won't be oc'ing it, so no improvements over Skylake.

[Curufinwe_wins]

Just now, arnavvr said:

Oh, good. Was planning on buying a Skylake Laptop, but was holding out till KabyLake. Won't be oc'ing it, so no improvements over Skylake.

Well for mobile parts, power consumption should be a nice bit lower (less excess voltage) which could dramatically improve battery life (moving from a Haswell-U to a Broadwell-U, as an extreme example, can net up to 90min of battery on the same laptop).

[vanished]

inb4 everyone thinks they have to upgrade because their 6700K is bottlenecking  

[Curufinwe_wins]

Just now, Ryan_Vickers said:

inb4 everyone thinks they have to upgrade because their 6700K is bottlenecking  

lol

[Beeeyeee]

everyone hype the zen! we need AMD to push out some competition!

 

[Cracklingice]

Just now, Beeeyeee said:

everyone hype the zen! we need AMD to push out some competition!

 

+1

They still aren't saying they're shipping now though.  

[2FA]

5 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

inb4 everyone thinks they have to upgrade because their 6700K is bottlenecking  

The sad part is that your statement is somewhat true, people thinking that. 

[SurvivorNVL]

I'm interested in Z270, given the 3DXpoint support.  Hope to see that and Optane out soon, so we can see what it truly entails.  Z370 with Cannonlake will probably be my next upgrade, though.  

[patrickjp93]

31 minutes ago, awesomeness10120 said:

I want to see IPC improvements. IIRC Kaby Lake is not a new architecture, but rather an improvement over Skylake, like Devil's Canyon.

Kaby Lake is an architecture tweak. Devil's Canyon was not.

 

If you want to see IPC increases, get the software developers to get off their asses. The age of SISD is over. Intel was at perfect instruction latencies back with Nehalem. All it can do for old software is tweak cache, tweak the pipeline, and increase clock speeds. It can't make instructions go any faster than 1 cycle, and some will forever be forced to take more than that because of how the bitwise algorithms scale.

[Cracklingice]

@SurvivorNVL ehh.  Unless I absolutely need to go Z270, I personally would go X290 (what I figure is likely to be the KBL-X-PCH).  Though I guess that would mean skipping X190.  I'm not sure they'd do that.  Perhaps kbl-x will be 190.  Oh well we'll find out later.  Basically if the enthusiast is out when i finally build my next machine, I'll go with it (unless the E5 Skylake based Xeon can't be used in it like the E3 cannot be used in the z170).

[SurvivorNVL]

Just now, Cracklingice said:

@SurvivorNVL ehh.  Unless I absolutely need to go Z270, I personally would go X290 (what I figure is likely to be the KBL-X-PCH).  Though I guess that would mean skipping X190.  I'm not sure they'd do that.  Perhaps kbl-x will be 190.  Oh well we'll find out later.  Basically if the enthusiast is out when i finally build my next machine, I'll go with it (unless the E5 Skylake based Xeon can't be used in it like the E3 cannot be used in the z170).

All I want is to get a 4 - 6 core or even 8 - core, stock 4ghz, locked, binned, and with a beefy iGPU, XPoint, and the best workstation board that is available at the time.  I still sort of lean mainstream, because I feel the boards are often more well done, and better bang for your buck.  

[Briggsy]

42 minutes ago, DeadEyePsycho said:

Can anyone say monopoly?

Definitely can, until AMD release Zen and stop sucking.

[patrickjp93]

57 minutes ago, intelCore said:

I want prices and I want to know if they really can't run Windows 7 no more.

Of course they can run Windows 7. What made you think they can't?! Intel would literally have to start removing instructions from its chips, and that would blow up compatibility with software all over the world. The end of support for Windows 7 means Windows 7 no longer receives performance tweaks for Kaby Lake and onwards. It's exactly what happened with XP and Ivy Bridge.

 

21 minutes ago, SurvivorNVL said:

All I want is to get a 4 - 6 core or even 8 - core, stock 4ghz, locked, binned, and with a beefy iGPU, XPoint, and the best workstation board that is available at the time.  I still sort of lean mainstream, because I feel the boards are often more well done, and better bang for your buck.  

You're going to be waiting a good long time then.

[intelCore]

Just now, patrickjp93 said:

Of course they can run Windows 7. What made you think they can't?! Intel would literally have to start removing instructions from its chips, and that would blow up compatibility with software all over the world. The end of support for Windows 7 means Windows 7 no longer receives performance tweaks for Kaby Lake and onwards. It's exactly what happened with XP and Ivy Bridge.

 

You're going to be waiting a good long time then.

Okay I worded this wrong. I heard that Microsoft is only going to have Windows 10 supporting Kaby Lake chips. I can't even remember the source so this might be utter bullsh*t (which I hope for) but could something like this be true and if it is does that mean Windows 7 wouldn't work on it at all anymore?

[Eroda]

1 hour ago, intelCore said:

I want prices and I want to know if they really can't run Windows 7 no more.

it will work as its not a major departure from skylake but if there is issues and needs to be patched Microsofts patch is Windows 10

[Cracklingice]

Skylake was supposed to be the cutoff for 7 and 8 support.  I'm not entirely sure Kaby will be the new cut off.  I think it would be a bit difficult to do that if Kaby can run on the h110, b150, z170 line of chipsets.  I imagine the 2 series of chipset will be the actual cutoff.  Although, I still don't see how they could do that short of releasing a windows update to specifically cripple the system.  I would think if the manufacturer made drivers then it would work, but I could be missing something.