Intel's Latest 8th-Gen Core Processors Focus on Improving Wi-Fi Speeds (theverge.com) 115
IFA 2018 is here, and to go along with the wealth of new laptops that will presumably be announced over the next few days, Intel is taking the wraps off its latest 8th-Gen processors. There are three new Whiskey Lake U-series chips (Intel's midrange line for laptops), and, for the first time, there are three 8th-Gen Amber Lake Y-series processors. From a report: While Intel is still using the same underlying architecture as its previous processors -- making these new chips ostensibly an "8.5-Gen" lineup, at least where the U-series models are concerned -- the big change that the company is highlighting is integrated gigabit Wi-Fi support. Intel promises that this should result in dramatically faster internet speeds, especially apparent on the cheaper, midrange laptops that may not have been able to offer those kinds of speeds before. Also being added to the new Y-series and U-series chips is built-in support for virtual assistants like Cortana and Alexa. So you should expect to see the digital assistants cropping up on more laptops in the near future. Further reading: Intel Launches Whiskey Lake-U and Amber Lake-Y: New MacBook CPUs?
Vulnerabilities. (Score:5, Interesting)
That's what I think of when I think Intel.
Weird priorities (Score:5, Insightful)
AMD: we will try to make upcoming Zen 2 architecture more spectre-proof [pcworld.com] (not that there that many of the various spectre vulnerabilities that affect us, but still)
Intel: with 8th Gen Core architecture, we will make your Wifi a tiny bit faster, and make the various "voice assistant" devices even more efficient at spying on you.
(Forget about the ~20 and still growing list of spectre vulnerabilities affecting our chips, look at the shiny trendy instead !)
huh... what ?
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huh... what ?
Easy explanation: You're running wifi on a laptop, therefore you're not providing datacentre services, timesharing VMs or permanent internet connections from systems with a stable memory map and a lucrative target worthy of a complicated attack. You should focus on Windows zero days, Acrobat bugs, and not executing malware from porn sites.
Or you could fear Spectre and Meltdown, in which case may I also recommend meteorite strike insurance? I mean let's face it, there's a risk you could be downed by a space
Re: Weird priorities (Score:1)
Browsers run things like Javascript, which is turing complete and can run emulators and VMs, which are downloaded from internet sites. Especially porn sites which need lots of js for ads and cons which need to be allowed for easy viewing of the content. But oh wait! Most sites use vulnerable third party JS frameworks for their stuff.
Maybe Google and Wordpress can pretty please promise to not be evil or get hacked by someone who wants easy ownage of all the (intel) internet machines
Geeks may know to use VMs
Re: Weird priorities (Score:2)
Autumn - winter desktop and HEDT processors will have hardware mitigations.
Just a dishonest/clueless fake post.
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Vulnerabilities and bullshit. Don't forget the bullshit.
Like faster internet speeds? WTF? Only this year did my internet get fast enough to exceed the capabilities of 802.11 b. I've got a decent connecting which can't quite saturate the upper end of g never mind n. So yeah unless Intel magically installs fiber all the way to my front door, I doubt I'll be getting substantially faster internet.
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FTFY.
Mmmmmm whiskey (Score:5, Insightful)
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There are a couple of dozen chip foundries in the U.S. at least. Intel has several in Oregon and Arizona as far as I know.
In other words, some people would rather buy a product that's known to be insecure, because some asshats have convinced them that other nations are the enemy and are out to get them. Meanwhile, legitimate bad actors will pwn your machine because you've got a bad CPU in it with some known, and potentially more unknown security issues. Remember, not too long ago, the Foreshadow issue was unknown too. Imagine what surprises Intel will have for us the years ahead.
Re: Mmmmmm whiskey (Score:1)
They are both insecure.
I just know less about how insecure AMD processors are and they may be less insecure.
Alignment [Re:Mmmmmm whiskey] (Score:1)
They're all built in China.
There are a couple of dozen chip foundries in the U.S. at least. Intel has several in Oregon and Arizona as far as I know.
In other words, some people would rather buy a product that's known to be insecure, because some asshats have convinced them that other nations are the enemy and are out to get them. Meanwhile, legitimate bad actors will pwn your machine because you've got a bad CPU in it with some known, and potentially more unknown security issues.
Yes, but the "legitimate bad actors" are chaotic neutral, while the Chinese are lawful evil.
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You Thought Intel’s ME Was Bad? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Some have been rooted for a long time.
I observed an ex-rental PC with spyware drivers below the bios (in the ME chip) and getting time and date updates and send GPS and pictures even before it booted. Yup drivers in the ME. No need to inspect PC's at the airports - they can now slurp and root about at will. And the device had a solid back - they dont want users disconnecting the WiFi or aerial - unlike the days when there was a hardwired switch, or adding foil so the case/battery can be a passive antenna.
Because the one thing I look for in a CPU (Score:5, Insightful)
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My work laptop is dog slow with a clean load of Windows. Maybe do something about that first please?
Seems to me the company who should be doing something about that is Microsoft. Unless this year's Intel CPUs are actually slower than last year's Intel CPUs (which I doubt), any new slowdowns must be due to changes in the software, not changes in the hardware.
Re: Because the one thing I look for in a CPU (Score:4, Insightful)
Funny you should say that. Thanks to all the mitigations, both this years and last years CPU is slower than last years CPU!
Re: Because the one thing I look for in a CPU (Score:1)
For most cpus and in most cases marginally.
My old Laptop was just fine (Score:2)
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It's just integration. Integrating the complex wifi function means less power use, smaller footprint, fewer components and less revenue for Broadcom et al. Never bet against integration.
Poor OS performance is Microsoft's fault. And maybe yours loading too much crap.
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It's just integration. Integrating the complex wifi function means less power use, smaller footprint, fewer components and less revenue for Broadcom et al. Never bet against integration.
I always bet against integration.
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I put all my money on disintegration.
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I know we're at the end of Moore's law and all
You don't. Sure, Intel hit a bump and lost its historical two year density advantage. TSMC and Samsung are still chugging along on that Moore's law track, albeit coming from a bit behind. With EUV now a real thing, Moore's law continues from current 7nm om down to 3nm without any particularly new or exotic technology. Will it stop there? I seriously doubt it.
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To my surprise, this shows that Moore's observation is still intact. https://www.karlrupp.net/2018/02/42-years-of-microprocessor-trend-data/ [karlrupp.net] Alas, the most recent advances in transistor count are achieved by making bigger chips, not denser chips, and single thread performance is becoming stagnant.
We're unlikely to see linear feature size halved in a production process in the next 5 years, so an honestly named 3 nm process isn't likely soon. We'll never see a 0.1 nm process, because 0.1 nm is smaller than an
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Right, the only thing that hit the wall so far is frequency scaling, as evidenced by your graph. Transistor count just keeps increasing.
Conventional lithography (which includes EUV) clearly ends somewhere, but don't forget to multiply the nominal process name by approximately 6 to get the actual half pitch, i.e., 12 to get the separation between traces. Beyond that there are a number of technologies to continue scaling transistor count, most obviously 3D lithography. Spintronics is plausible, i.e., subatomi
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My work laptop is dog slow with a clean load of Windows. Maybe do something about that first please?
Do something about it yourself, install Linux.
Re:Because the one thing I look for in a CPU (Score:4, Insightful)
On his work laptop.
If he's working in a Windows shop, that's not going to work the way you think it is.
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On his work laptop. If he's working in a Windows shop, that's not going to work the way you think it is.
Why not? I have done it myself, usually a bunch more people convert their old slow laptops after they see how well it works. See, 90% of business laptops don't get used for a whole lot more than emailing and browsing. Linux just does that better.
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My work laptop is dog slow with a clean load of Windows.
That's due to all the software your workplace loads on it to make it "faster". Personally my 4 year old work laptop runs like a champ on Windows and Linux.
Linux (Score:1)
>> My work laptop is dog slow with a clean load of Windows.
Yeah. Intel cannot do anything about this. You have only one option: Install Linux.
Re: Because the one thing I look for in a CPU (Score:2)
The wifi is in the chipset. It's just terrible writing.
Nah. (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, hell no.
"Virtual Assistant" hypetrain? What? (Score:2, Interesting)
Why in the name of all that is holy would anyone want "support for" something that far down the application pipeline added to a *CPU*?! Especially in light of the recently very public inability to secure even the most basic aspects of the core CPU.
It's worth noting that the AT article linked (yes, I read both of them first, for all that it breaks the /. ToS :P) makes no mention of this "support" at all, so I expect (and hope) it's just the non-technical Verge misunderstanding some piece of meaningless PR-sp
Re:"Virtual Assistant" hypetrain? What? (Score:5, Funny)
so I expect (and hope) it's just the non-technical Verge misunderstanding some piece of meaningless PR-speak.
No, Intel is adding new opcodes to support virtual assistants. This will make them much more efficient, since there will be no high-level language overhead involved in processing user requests.
One of the most significant new opcodes is the SCIFALXWV src instruction, or "Set Carry if 'Alexa' detected in WAV data". This scans the memory buffer pointed to by the source operand, and of length specified by RCX, using a language code specified in RDX, and then uses advanced pattern matching logic to determine whether or not it contains a recording of a human voice speaking the word "Alexa". If it does, it sets the carry flag, otherwise it resets the flag.
Extension (SIMD, GPU) ? (Score:2)
it's just the non-technical Verge misunderstanding some piece of meaningless PR-speak.
Probably Intel just advertising the capabilities of their current simd AVX-whatever-number-they-are-at-now and the GPGPU capabilites (opencl? vulkan used to computer shaders ?) are now so good that the various voice assistant can locally run even larger NN to handle the speech processing, before streaming it to the cloud.
Re:"Virtual Assistant" hypetrain? What? (Score:4, Interesting)
It is probably the addition of a very low power module to support real-time analysis of audio. Lattice Semiconductor sells such a module based on their iCE40 FPGA which claims to only require 5 mW - Link [latticesemi.com]. This allows you to respond to voice commands without having the CPU fully powered. Apple has developed their own hardware to do something similar in their computers and iPhones.
The real question is, what else can this Intel module be programmed to do.
Is this some last minute hand-wavy redirection? (Score:5, Informative)
Network Card (Score:5, Interesting)
Shouldn't the network card of my PC be handling that?
If I ever chose to put WiFi in my desktop, that is.
Not sure why I'd ever want slower internet, but sure, WiFi is an option.
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>Shouldn't the network card of my PC be handling that?
Not anymore! Now every secret in a chip will include fancy Wifi! Because who doesn't love faster Wifi?
You're a wonderful little WiFi feature aren't you, chippy? Yes you are. Yessss you are!
Re:Network Card (Score:4, Informative)
Multiple things are merged into a single chip now. Have you questioned why the memory controller is on the CPU instead of the north bridge nowadays? What about integrated GPU? Or PCIe? Or SATA? Or Ethernet? Or USB? Why is WiFi so perplexing with everything else is already integrated into a single die? (as a note, this is what several other Intel Atom chips do, I have a T5700 with integrated WiFi)
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"Why is WiFi so perplexing with everything else is already integrated into a single die?"
So now I need a Faraday cage within a Faraday cage?
Re:Network Card (Score:4, Insightful)
Shouldn't the network card of my PC be handling that?
Not if Intel wants to update your CPU microcode whenever you venture into a WiFi network under their control. This allows ad-hoc networking of Intel CPUs completely invisible to users, debuggers, and even hardware. You could infiltrate a complete corporate's hardware base by coming into WiFi range without needing to go through their rooters, firewalls, or cables. Including computers purposely quarantained from the network.
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And while radio is not invisible by any definition, it is a great idea from insecurity and horrifying complexity is good viewpoint, to bake in a unaccountable programmable radio transmitter inside a CPU.
I don't want to interrupt your Intel rant with any facts or anything, but CPU+Radio combos have been one of the most-produced consumer grade processor types for quite a long time. Every router you've ever owned has one.
/me wonders if this isn't testing the waters for taking a bite of Broadcom's business model.
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Shouldn't the network card of my PC be handling that?
Handing over every task to a saturated bus worked well when the bus was far larger than the data requests across it. Intel has quite a poor PCI-E implementation given the modern world where every device wants to put gigabits down the bus. I can understand why they want to bring stuff into the processor.
Re:Network Card (Score:5, Interesting)
Shouldn't the network card of my PC be handling that? If I ever chose to put WiFi in my desktop, that is. Not sure why I'd ever want slower internet, but sure, WiFi is an option.
You do realize that the chips announced yesterday were all Y and U models, right? They *could* go into a desktop but they are generally used for (U)ltra low power devices. That's what the U stands for. The U SKUs usually end up in laptops and the Y SKUs would be used in things like tablets. So there are some serious power savings with this particular change. I do not believe they plan on integrating the WiFi on other SKUs, though I could be wrong. I do not believe these chips have been modified for side-channel attacks, but I can't be certain of that at all at this point.
Way to much IO on the DMI bus! (Score:3)
Way to much IO on the DMI bus!
How about (Score:2)
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Or fixing the bugs?
Integrated ethernet, wow (Score:2)
Integrated ethernet, wow, why am I not getting excited? I mean, I do like intel network chips, I actually seek them out in a motherboard. But spinning this as the central feature of an entire processor generation? Right.
And I am confused... what is special about wi-fi, that needs special support on the processor?
Re: Integrated ethernet, wow (Score:2, Insightful)
Gotta exfiltrate that data somehow. It's like Intel have made it a design goal to have the least secure CPU ever.
Chip count (Score:2)
And I am confused... what is special about wi-fi, that needs special support on the processor?
Chip counts.
Nearly any low-power (ultrabooks, chromebooks, tablets, and everything else with an atom inside) device nowadays has Wifi.
You might as well put as many of the Wifi part as possible inside your main pacakage (basically, everything except the radio itself an the antenna).
Makes less parts, which enables cheaper low-power devices, and might even reduce consumption a bit.
(Though in this hardware class, the display makes the largest part of monetary and power budgets. So don't expect miracles either)
S
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In their 15W and lower Core processors, Intel integrates the chipset into the same package as the CPU. ... Intel also integrates a Wi-Fi MAC on the chipset
wifi and assistants? (Score:5, Interesting)
This has nothing to do with CPUs.
First, the wifi is generally provided by the motherboard or an addon comm board... not the processor... and I don't want the processor to have that feature even if it could.
Second, who the flying fuck cares about these assistants especially when you have a keyboard etc?
The assistants are superfluous bullshit. I can appreciate them in the car when interacting with your phone. There is some sense to a voice interface in that singular context. But outside of that? Complete garbage. And to suggest you're building in any way the CPU around these shit applications?
We really need solid alternatives to Intel. The desktop CPU market has been an Intel monopoly for too long.
Marketing (Score:2)
This has nothing to do with CPUs.
Not with the CPU code (not the x86 core itself), but the package.
First, the wifi is generally provided by the motherboard or an addon comm board... not the processor... and I don't want the processor to have that feature even if it could.
In that hardware class where Atoms and co are used (ultrabooks, chromebooks, tablets, etc.) you use SoC : package where you try to cram as many other cores as possible to reduce the number of chips and thus some impact on the price and power usage (the screen is still the largest consumer, so don't expect miracles either).
You already have GPU, PCIe, SATA, etc. in there.
As nearly all of these devices Atoms devices have Wifi, that is just yet an
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I get you... I just think it should be killed with fire. :)
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Smartphones have already been doing the same regarding cell modem for quite some time.
As well as the cheap SOHO wifi routers in everyone's home.
If you've got one of the higher end Quantenna 5ghz chips, you've actually got *2* CPU+Radio combo chips in your router. (Broadcom MIPS + 2.4Ghz, Quantenna ARC + 5Ghz)
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People don't have wireless keyboards in their living rooms because they're not used to it. They're used to the old school tv remotes.
But the old school tv remotes stop making sense once your tv turns into a monitor which is what many of our tvs already are at this point.
I have an Nvidia shield plugged into my tv which runs a version of android... and honestly... I hate the google voice recognition even alone. It works about 90 percent of the time. Which is often... I don't like it even when it does work. Fo
Wifi is not the bottleneck for many people (Score:2)
My Wifi network is already several times faster than my internet speed, and due to the lack of competition (only one broadband provider here, I can't even get a DSL line, I'm stuck with cable internet), I don't see that changing anytime soon.
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(only one broadband provider here, I can't even get a DSL line, I'm stuck with cable internet)
If you had the choice, you would still be on cable. I know VDSL2 is a thing, but few DSL providers are offering it or ever plan to. Cable is generally where you upgrade to to get away from slow ADSL. And DSL providers that are actually trying to upgrade and be competitive are doing so by rolling out fiber.
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If you had the choice, you would still be on cable. I know VDSL2 is a thing, but few DSL providers are offering it or ever plan to. Cable is generally where you upgrade to to get away from slow ADSL.
VDSL2 only works over short distances like under 1 km. I've only come across VDSL2 within buildings where you get fiber to the basement, and then they use the existing phone lines to get to the apartments.
Other than that, my experience has varied, and neither cable nor ADSL is the clear winner. Both are decent tech but have sometimes been ruined by bad service from the ISP. It's hard to do a proper comparison because you can only get cable from a single company. I imagine cable would win over long distan
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VDSL2 only works over short distances like under 1 km. I've only come across VDSL2 within buildings where you get fiber to the basement, and then they use the existing phone lines to get to the apartments.
That's exactly what we use them for. We prefer to wire for Ethernet where we can get the tenants to pay for it, but when we can't, we use VDSL2. It's not a competitor to ADSL.
Other than that, my experience has varied, and neither cable nor ADSL is the clear winner. Both are decent tech but have sometimes been ruined by bad service from the ISP. It's hard to do a proper comparison because you can only get cable from a single company. I imagine cable would win over long distances because it's actually been designed for high frequencies and bandwidths to begin with. OTOH, the usual complaint about cable is that capacity is shared between many subscribers, but that's not really the fault of the technology itself, as the capacity issue can come up at any stage within the ISP.
Everything you said in here is accurate.
However, as the senior network engineer at a company with about ~10,000 ADSL customers, ~6,000 fiber customers (FTTH/FTTP MDU)... I gotta say, I'm amazed anyone goes for ADSL if they have a choice between that and cable. Cable networks can, like any network, be operated by shitstain network ope
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VDSL2 is a thing
Kinda, but not as a replacement for ADSL.
We use VDSL2 in FTTP deployments where it's not reasonable to wire the entire premises for ethernet.
9th gen with integrated facebook (Score:3, Funny)
..is going to blow peoples minds. Amazingly faster, you've never seen Facebook run this fast.
More like faster Intranet speed (Score:1)
I mean, dramatically faster "Internet speed"? That's just crapola. Fastest Wifi so far is 450Mbps which is way faster than any Internet connection you may have upstream. The thing this can be useful for is local networks with shared drives and similar high data rate sources. And frankly, for a corporate network you'd rather want to rely on cabled networks primarily. Much less congestion and opportunity for eavesdropping.
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Wifi's a shared medium.
20 things in your house / neighbour's houses? That 450Mbps can drop to 22.5Mbps each. Which is a pittance.
Ethernet generally *isn't* shared so, at least not on the cable - a Gigabit cable is a Gigabit per computer. The cheapest of switches will handle multiple gigabits.
But if you're being swamped by neighbours etc. then Wifi is likely the bottleneck much more than the cable that comes into your house.
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Your anecdote has another explanation.
The usual first question for any "new features" (Score:4, Interesting)
It's sad, but this is actually the first question that comes to mind whenever any hard- or software announces new features:
"Can we turn it off?"
Re:The usual first question for any "new features" (Score:4, Insightful)
I blame it on the fucking tick-box-counting idiots. The kind of customer that has no idea what he wants or needs but looks at the cute little "informative" cards next to a product where you can see a bunch of tick boxes with some label, a label the idea of which they also don't grasp. But the tick box is ticked, so the product is "better" than the other product next to it where that tick box isn't ticked. What tick box? No idea. Do they need that feature? Need? They don't even know what the feature does! But it has the feature, so it's better.
When Homer said "you should have taken an existing product and add a clock to it", he was pretty much predicting what we're heading for. Appliances that get more and more useless gimmicks nobody wants, needs or even knows what it's good for.
14nm? (Score:2)
14nm.
Intel integrating Wi-Fi support into processors (Score:2)
Intel has missed the boat. (Score:2)
I see no mention in the article for blockchain. And whereas support for WiFi and USB 3.1 is probably going to benefit manufacturers (fewer components to make a PC) blockchain would have a much bigger impact on Intel's stock price.
What about Meltdown? (Score:3)
Ok hang on (Score:1)
Does anyone buy a laptop on "how well it runs Cortana?"
Actually, does anyone ACTUALLY USE the personal assistant?