- This is a wafer of Intel's
11th Gen Intel Core processors
and each CPU here packs
a ton of new technology
that further pushes the
boundaries of performance.
Now, let's take a moment here
to talk about just a few of
the reasons why 11th Gen Core,
codenamed Tiger Lake, is so great!
Now, one measure of a processor's
performance characteristics is frequency,
which is measured in
clock cycles per second,
also known as hertz.
A hertz, or clock cycle,
is a single electrical
pulse of the processor,
think of it like turning
a light switch on and off,
where it performs some kind
of action or calculation.
Now, these days chips are
now running in gigahertz,
which is in the billions
of cycles per second.
So, a CPU that can run at one gigahertz
can perform a billion actions
or calculations per second.
Frequency has a profound effect
on a processor's performance.
Another measure of performance
is how much work a processor
can do for each clock cycle,
which is referred to
Instructions Per Cycle, or IPC.
Now, imagine if you had a pile of bricks
at the front of your house
that you wanted to move to the backyard
for a gardening project.
You could move just one
brick at a time by yourself,
but you'd probably soon look
for ways to increase your IPC
by recruiting your friends
and family to help,
or getting the right tools
such as a wheelbarrow,
and making a path clear
and wide enough for that wheelbarrow.
Now, these are all
analogies for improving IPC,
they all increase the number of bricks
you can move at a given moment.
Now, if you take that and
make everyone move faster,
that's like increasing the frequency.
When designing a processor,
chip engineers take into consideration
a lot of the same things,
how to get the most amount of work done
as efficiently as possible.
Tiger Lake's microarchitecture
is called Willow Cove,
which further improves upon the efficiency
of the previous
microarchitecture, Sunny Cove,
from the 10th Gen Intel
Core Ice Lake processors.
But frequency and efficiency
are the big drivers
behind 11th Gen Core's
huge performance leap,
a leap so big that it's the
largest performance gain yet
within a process technology
in Intel's history.
Intel engineers have refined
the process technology
called SuperFin, with new
high-performance transistors
that are able to switch faster,
and an improved metal stack
that delivers solid current faster,
making the entire CPU more responsive.
SuperFin enables Tiger Lake
to crank the frequencies up
nearly a gigahertz,
again, that's close to a
billion cycles per second
over last year's model, that's huge!
Now remember, higher frequency
means that it can get work done faster
and achieving higher frequencies
is a key aspect of performance
in general computing,
which includes most of what
people do on a regular basis,
from gaming to productivity,
to really common tasks like web browsing.
Now, there's also a hidden benefit
to the improved frequency
range in Tiger Lake.
While it can run at
significantly higher speeds
than the previous generation,
it can also run at much lower
voltages at a given frequency.
For those moments between
bursts of performance,
such as loading a webpage,
it can mean less heat
and energy consumption.
Here's an actual example of
Sunny Cove and Willow Cove
running WebXPRT 3 side-by-side,
simulating a web browsing workload
using HTML5 and Javascript.
On the bottom part of the screen,
you can see the real-time frequencies
between these two compared,
with Willow Cove on the right side,
that's the microarchitecture
in 11th Gen Core
achieving higher frequencies,
and thus better performance,
at the same voltage.
It's a win/win situation.
Ultimately, a good design
achieves a strong balance
of multiple technologies together.
Different parts of the processor
have to work together
and talk to each other,
and it takes thoughtful engineering
to eliminate any bottlenecks.
This is especially important
because 11th Gen Core
has an amazing new
integrated graphics engine,
Intel Iris Xe graphics.
Based on the Xe-LP graphics architecture,
and it is such a step up
that we'll have to dedicate
another video to that alone.
But in a nutshell, the
Iris Xe integrated graphics
in 11th Gen Core are
dramatically, dramatically faster
and more capable than in 10th Gen Core.
It truly redefines the level
of graphics you can get
from a thin and light laptop.
Now, to take advantage
of the greatly improved graphics and CPU,
Intel engineers had to
come up with a better way
to keep the processor constantly fed
with all the data that it can crunch.
Tiger Lake uses a ring design
to connect various components of the chip.
Going back to our earlier example,
think of a ring design
like that circular path
that connects your front and backyards.
You could move the
bricks through the house,
but you'd have to carefully
navigate your way through.
A better way, in this specific design,
would be to go around the path outside.
And that path is even
wider on 11th Gen Core.
Tiger Lake doubles the ring bandwidth
over the previous generation
by using a dual ring architecture.
Tiger Lake also has a 50%
larger last level cache
over Ice Lake, which means,
it can keep more working data on the chip
without having to fetch it
from outside memory or storage.
In our gardening analogy,
this is like being able to
keep a larger set of tools
out at the same time, instead
of having a smaller set
that you have to keep
going back to the toolshed
to swap out, or even worse,
making a dedicated trip
to the hardware store.
On top of all that, Tiger Lake
has dedicated accelerators
for artificial intelligence applications,
like removing the
distracting background noises
that might be happening around you
when you're on a video conference.
AI on 11th Gen is another topic so big
that we'll have to unpack
it in another video.
But the main takeaway here
is that Tiger Lake packs
a ton of new innovations
on the chip-level,
carefully balanced
between each new feature
with I/O, imaging, power
management, display,
that all have a meaningful,
real-world impact
on what's possible on a laptop.
Systems with 11th Gen Intel
Core and Iris Xe graphics
will be available starting this Fall 2020.
Thanks for watching, I'm Marcus Yam,
I'll see you in the next one.
(Intel bong)
