Intel CPU archiect does AmA on Reddit

[Open Minded]

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/15iaet/iama_cpu_architect_and_designer_at_intel_ama/

For us as architects, we have a team dedicated to putting in overclocking features into the designs and tests in place to cherry pick those parts to box and sell as such. So you are getting parts on the good side of the normal when you buy K CPUs.

Well worth the read if you're interested in hardware.

[Teebor]

Yeah I found that part interesting too, so if you have a K series you have a cherry picked better than average CPU

Good to know

[n_K]

Outstanding! Thanks for posting that.

Surprised no-one asked about intel removing sockets :p

EDIT: Oh no wait someone did;

'This rumor is likely misinterpreting facts or based on really incomplete information. Many of the variants will be BGA packages for certain form factors but not all. In my mind, if you lose customers by offering less choice, we did not save anything. But I'm not in sales or marketing.'

[Jason S. Global Moderator]

very interesting stuff. thanks!

Outstanding! Thanks for posting that.

Surprised no-one asked about intel removing sockets :p

someone did at the bottom. the guy said that the rumors are untrue.

[+LogicalApex MVC]

Fantastic read for the geek in me. Thanks :)

[pto]

Good read he says AMD is 6 months behind them since losing their fabrication plants.

[yxz]

interesting

If there was any realistic thing you could change about your job, what would you change?

We need faster computers to build faster computers.

What is the hardest part of your job?

Making our ideas reality. You can have the greatest idea in the world, but the physical world does not like to cooperate.

:)

[xendrome]

Yeah I found that part interesting too, so if you have a K series you have a cherry picked better than average CPU

Good to know

Yes I'm sure the Intel engineers hand pick them and seal them in the box with a kiss like the Keebler Elves.. lol what a load of bull.

[Open Minded]

You guys are welcome! :)

Yes I'm sure the Intel engineers hand pick them and seal them in the box with a kiss like the Keebler Elves.. lol what a load of bull.

I believe him. Remember the Core 2 days, when you could buy a 45 watt quad core? Those were hand picked to handle the lower wattage at a lower clock speed.

[ShiZZa]

This isn't new. I7, I5, I3 are all the same CPU (xeon might be in there also). They go for the best and if it fails they see how much can be disabled from testing to make it a lower grade that meets X specs. If it can fit into one of the categories then it will become it. That's why I'll never buy a low end cpu. I don't want a defective cpu in some form (cache, cores, etc).

Same goes with Video Cards.

[+John Teacake MVC]

Very good Talk! Enjoyed reading it.

[n_K]

Yes I'm sure the Intel engineers hand pick them and seal them in the box with a kiss like the Keebler Elves.. lol what a load of bull.

Not hand picked like that no, go look at the intel confidential probe cards on ebay and various forums for testing CPU dies.

They test them, and those that work better will get the 'k' mark.

[Andre S. Veteran]

Good read he says AMD is 6 months behind them since losing their fabrication plants.

6 months is putting it mildly. I would say a year or two personally.

[SharpGreen]

This isn't new. I7, I5, I3 are all the same CPU (xeon might be in there also). They go for the best and if it fails they see how much can be disabled from testing to make it a lower grade that meets X specs. If it can fit into one of the categories then it will become it. That's why I'll never buy a low end cpu. I don't want a defective cpu in some form (cache, cores, etc).

Same goes with Video Cards.

That might have been true in days of the original celeron and pentium but I doubt that is true now.

[ahhell]

That might have been true in days of the original celeron and pentium but I doubt that is true now.

Why wouldn't it still be true? It's a fantastic business model to be able to use/sell stuff like that.

[+Majesticmerc MVC]

6 months is putting it mildly. I would say a year or two personally.

I don't think they're that far behind. Bulldozer/Piledriver CPUs aren't up there with the i7's, but on a price/performance scale they're punching their weight. The top end Bulldozer/Piledriver competes with an equivalent price high-end Core i5, and they're very quick in parallel tasks. They just suck at single-threaded tasks. Steamroller was supposed to be their saviour next year, with rumours like a 25% speed bump in single-thread performance, but that's been pushed back to 2014, which could be a fatal mistake.

AMD's problem is that they bet on high parallelism being a hot thing, and they bet wrong. That and the ATI purchase, and the Intel antitrust thing.

[yowanvista]

That might have been true in days of the original celeron and pentium but I doubt that is true now.

Every single chip will be tested for their capabilities. Those that pass every test at the highest clock speed are branded as a high end processors. Similarly, those that fail to reach the clock speed will be branded at as lower end products. If any of the cores don't work, then they are branded dual core i3/i5 processors or lower end quad core i5 processors. So while they may be "defective" from the standpoint of the perfect silicon chip, to the end user who expects everything as advertised, the resulting chip is perfect. For instance all Sandy Bridge-E processor dies have 8 cores but the number of cores to be 'enabled' will depend on the chips which make it through all the tests, the most robust ones (mainly those which are more thermal resistant) will have 6 cores enabled and will be branded in higher spec'd series (i.e Core i7-39xx) while some will have only 4 cores enabled (Core i7-38xx) but so far there are no i7 SB-E chips with 8 core enabled because of power/thermal issues. It's called product binning.

[n_K]

I7/I5/I3 are different, they're not just one bunch and they blow fuses to select which model it is.

I3's have those 'upgrade cards' you can buy for example, to produce even just a million CPUs with that in that didn't need it would cost a lot of money.

And in terms of AMD vs Intel; AMD go by clock speed... Clock speed isn't everything, it really isn't. E.g. intel has TXT and an embedded AES function on their newer chips along with a load of other functions that AMD CPUs don't have, so these functions can be used to greatly speed up things. (As the guy said in the questions, intel own the fabs so they can put extra things in that fabless companies can't do)

AMD might have better clock speeds but they certainly are not ahead of intel, and in terms of being 6 months behind, I'd put it more than that unfortunately.

[Growled Member]

Very interesting read. Thanks for that.

[Andre S. Veteran]

The top end Bulldozer/Piledriver competes with an equivalent price high-end Core i5, and they're very quick in parallel tasks. They just suck at single-threaded tasks.

Well single-threaded performance is still what matters in most use cases. Perhaps if the only thing I was doing with a PC was video encoding, or such inherently parallel task, I'd consider an AMD, but for a general-purpose machine, forget it.

[garwin]

What's AmA?

[Scorpus Veteran]

What's AmA?

Ask me Anything

[SharpGreen]

I7/I5/I3 are different, they're not just one bunch and they blow fuses to select which model it is.

I3's have those 'upgrade cards' you can buy for example, to produce even just a million CPUs with that in that didn't need it would cost a lot of money.

And in terms of AMD vs Intel; AMD go by clock speed... Clock speed isn't everything, it really isn't. E.g. intel has TXT and an embedded AES function on their newer chips along with a load of other functions that AMD CPUs don't have, so these functions can be used to greatly speed up things. (As the guy said in the questions, intel own the fabs so they can put extra things in that fabless companies can't do)

AMD might have better clock speeds but they certainly are not ahead of intel, and in terms of being 6 months behind, I'd put it more than that unfortunately.

Only two models of the i3 are "upgrade card" capable, and one is mobile chip.

Why wouldn't it still be true? It's a fantastic business model to be able to use/sell stuff like that.

I don't disagree. But if you look at any of the dual core chips Intel makes..does that mean they're chopping off 2 cores? I can't imagine they have such poor yields that they have enough wafers to mass produce the i3, the pentium and the celeron just solely on bad i7s.

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

...

I don't disagree. But if you look at any of the dual core chips Intel makes..does that mean they're chopping off 2 cores? I can't imagine they have such poor yields that they have enough wafers to mass produce the i3, the pentium and the celeron just solely on bad i7s.

Nah, the i3 and so would be separate designs, but they'd all share a common base, so that if a quad core chip has issues in 2 cores, they can just disable them and have a resulting CPU functionally identical to a plain dual core design.

It's similar to the K/non-k issue, they build the CPUs around a common aim, and the ones that don't perform as well fall into a lower bracket (I know my 2500K performs better than other 2500K CPUs I've seen, etc.)

[SharpGreen]

Nah, the i3 and so would be separate designs, but they'd all share a common base, so that if a quad core chip has issues in 2 cores, they can just disable them and have a resulting CPU functionally identical to a plain dual core design.

It's similar to the K/non-k issue, they build the CPUs around a common aim, and the ones that don't perform as well fall into a lower bracket (I know my 2500K performs better than other 2500K CPUs I've seen, etc.)

That's what I'm saying basically. The i3 and i5 are based on the reject quad core chips which to me given how well it (and the other dual cores) sell, they must have a lot of reject i7s.