Anandtech(Arch day coverage): Intel’s 11th Gen Core Tiger Lake SoC Detailed: SuperFin, Willow Cove and Xe-LP

[Snowdog]

Today is NDA day for Tiger Lake and there are some interesting tidbits. 10nm+ is 10nm Superfin, and it looks like a significant improvement over previous 10nm. Allowing much higher clocks. CPU core sounds like a lot nice little tweaks as well. I look forward to reviews, though what I really want to see is Rocket Lake, but from leaks it's looking less advanced than this and still on 14nm...

Edit: here is link to the Intel page coverage, and Anandtech story about Xe-HPG - Gaming GPU:
https://newsroom.intel.com/press-kits/architecture-day-2020/
https://www.anandtech.com/show/1597...r-enthusiast-gamers-built-at-a-thirdparty-fab

Here is the Anandtech coverage:

https://www.anandtech.com/show/1597...ke-soc-detailed-superfin-willow-cove-and-xelp

No Longer on 10+, new 10nm SuperFin Technology
Tiger Lake uses Intel’s 10nm ‘SuperFin’ manufacturing process technology. As part of this launch, Intel has replaced the 10+ nomenclature and instead renamed it to 10nm SuperFin, or 10SF. This is in part due to some of the updates Intel has made to its 10nm process in order to enable some of the features in Tiger Lake.

The SuperFin technology includes a new high performance transistor methodology for the critical paths of Intel’s design, and an improved metal stack which uses novel materials in the latest update to Intel’s FinFET process technology. This includes evolutionary changes to achieve the required performance characteristics that perhaps should have been part of Intel’s 10nm process from the beginning.

and deeper dive on the IGP, where the biggest change other than more execution units is the updated media support:

https://www.anandtech.com/show/1597...tecture-deep-dive-building-up-from-the-bottom

Xe-LP Media & Display Controllers
Our final stop on our deep dive through the Xe-LP architecture are the non-rendering aspects of the GPU: its media and display controllers. Changes here aren’t quite as eye-catching as changes to the core architecture, but the improvements made in these blocks help to keep the overall GPU current by supporting new media formats as well as new display connectivity protocols.

First off, let’s talk about the media engine. There are no crazy overhauls to speak of here, but for Xe-LP Intel has made some sensible additions to the engine. The marquee feature here is easily support for AV1 decode acceleration, making Intel the first vendor out of the Big 3 to add hardware decode support for the new codec.

 

[erek]

Intel says new transistor technology could boost chip performance 20%