Intel Begins Shipment Of Seventh Generation Core: Kaby Lake
by Brett Howse on July 20, 2016 10:55 PM EST
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.
Kaby Lake was not even a product not that long ago, but with Intel coming up against the laws of physics with process shrinks, they made the announcement a year ago that they would be adding more architectures per process shrink. The delays in moving to 22 nm and then 14 nm meant that they were missing the anticipated product launches for their OEMs, which left the OEMs with quarters where they would have no new products to sell. In an attempt to smooth out the timelines to a more reasonable cadence, while at the same time coming to grips with the complexity of moving to smaller and smaller processes, Intel announced Kaby Lake as a successor to Skylake, which would build on Skylake and offer additional architectural improvements.
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.
Source: Intel Investor Call
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CloudWiz - Wednesday, July 20, 2016 - link
Hopefully it brings a larger IPC improvement than Skylake to Broadwell did.Also hoping for far better graphics in this chip.
VoraciousGorak - Thursday, July 21, 2016 - link
Yeah, my friend and I still have Sandy Bridge computers that are not only perfectly serviceable but still provide top-tier performance in all but a few programs that leverage the handful of new instructions introduced in subsequent chips. Sure, there are platform improvements (PCI-E 3.0, USB Type C, NVME and M.2 SSD ports) but nothing that have so far justified a complete platform upgrade. He took his 2500K that he bought day 1 of the Sandy Bridge release, dropped a fat SSD and a new video card in it, and is good to go.Mikuni - Thursday, July 21, 2016 - link
Yeah, still got my 5+y old SB i5-2500k @ 4.3ghz, faster than current gen's non-K i7, barely any reasons to upgrade.willis936 - Thursday, July 21, 2016 - link
I'm sorry but that just doesn't check out. That's a 16% OC and comparing benchmarks of the 6700 to the 2500k (non OC) the gap varies between 25% and 45% depending on the metric.ikjadoon - Thursday, July 21, 2016 - link
True. Clock for clock, Skylake is, at best, 25% faster than Sandy Bridge (where are you getting 45%?). So, a 4GHz Skylake is like a 5GHz Sandy Bridge.extide - Thursday, July 21, 2016 - link
He's not talking clock for clock. He is talking the perf of an oc'd 6700K vs that dudes 4.3Ghz SB i5willis936 - Saturday, July 23, 2016 - link
Nope. Check benches on cpuboss. Without normalizing frequency the stock 6700k is at worst 25% faster than a 4.3 GHz 2500k.Jimster480 - Sunday, July 24, 2016 - link
CPUBoss is a fake website that yields no real information.The only benchmark they ever actually cite is Passmark.
The rest of it is just magical marketing bars where they draw little lines to get you to buy CPU's where they get commissions if you click the links on the site.
That site is the #1 shill site on the net for CPU benchmarking.
Jimster480 - Sunday, July 24, 2016 - link
25%?Not even 10%.
Honestly the 25% is while using AVX2/AVX-512 vs using older SSE/AVX.
But this doesn't apply to 90+% of applications.
In Integer performance its ~3% faster than Sandy as Haswell isn't really faster than Sandy anyway.
Sandy -> Ivy was ~5% overall
Ivy -> Haswell was ~3% Overall.
Haswell -> Broadwell was ~5% overall.
Broadwell -> Skylake was 2% overall.
Not sure where that adds upto 25 or 45%.
Those benchmarks are cherry picked using the newest intel technologies while being simultaniously de-optimized for older technologies to provide the largest possible bump available.
Intel has been involved in many scandals with paying benchmark companies off to make their chips seem better than they are.
Why do you think that a 2600k vs a 6700k at the same clockspeed yield the same FPS in virtually EVERY GAME, and yield the same performance in virtually every non-synthetic intel optimized benchmark.
Intel has even gone as far as specifically de-optimizing calls when it detects certain "tiers" of CPU's such as Celeron/Pentium so that the performance is artificially lower in order to entice you to get a more expensive chip.
Just as the G3258 in benchmarks even with a heavy OC could barely match the speed of an i3 which cannot OC. When in reality in games that use only 1-2 threads there were no real differences in FPS.
evilpaul666 - Sunday, July 24, 2016 - link
Using those percentages Sandy -> Skylake should be a ~16% increase at the same clock speed.