How outrageous are the names of today's laptops and CPUs?

Recently, several friends who want to buy laptops have asked Guozi: Why is the CPU of the notebook now "incomprehensible"?

For the same price, some products still have 8 cores and 16 threads, while others have directly done 14 cores and 18 threads!

* Image source: JD.com's self-operated store

I looked, oh...... It turned out to be an Intel Ultra processor. So today, let's briefly talk about this "revolutionary" product launched by Intel on the mobile terminal.

Naming conventions

In mid-December 2023, Intel officially announced the long-awaited Core Ultra processor, built for the new Meteor Lake architecture.

The product range covers the Core Ultra 5 - Ultra 9 series, and the new Ultra series will replace the previous Core i5 - i9 series.

* Image source: Intel's official website

So, there will be no so-called "15th Gen Core" anymore. And the word "Ultra" makes us think of it: it's supposed to be a "premium product".

And that's exactly what happened, as they also launched a lower-positioned Core Digital series, built on the old Raptor Lake architecture.

* Image source: Intel's official website

Entry-level products such as the lower-end i3 and Celeron were replaced, and these old product lines were also eliminated. Intel is also engaged in a mix of old and new architectures.

Here, AMD probably wants to say: Heroes see the same thing!( Actually, it's a traditional art "squeezing toothpaste").

Since they are old architectures, they are basically rebranded versions of older models such as the Core i-series and Celeron series. But now that they're not on the market, let's not talk about it for now.

Going back to the Core Ultra series, its specific naming conventions are as follows:

The first is the "generational" reset, and we mentioned earlier that the 14th Gen Core will be the last generation of the i-series. Then the Core Ultra series and Core Digital series that will succeed it will be a new beginning.

In the case of the new Ultra series, the grade division is still the familiar combination of 5, 7, and 9, and the first number of the model number represents the algebra, which you can see that currently starts with "1".

Secondly, the suffix of the Ultra series has not changed, and it is still H (high voltage version) and U (low voltage version).

The former is mostly used in gaming laptops, with higher core count, power consumption, and three slows, while the latter is mostly used in thin and light laptops that focus on long battery life.

And that's not all, there's also a "performance version" for each of the H or U versions, such as the Ultr 5 125H and 135H, the latter of which has a turbo frequency 0.1GHz higher than the former, and then ...... Gone!

There is a lift, but only a little bit.

That's it for the Naming of the released Ultra series, and the Core Digital series is basically similar, but we'll analyze how to name it when it comes to launch.

* Image source: Intel's official website

At this point, some friends may have doubts, since the i series has been canceled, why do the new game laptops still have 14th generation Core CPUs?

That's because the new Core replaces the original 14th generation mobile, and the high-performance CPUs for gaming laptops are relatively late, like the aforementioned Ultra 9 series has not yet arrived.

* Image source: JD.com's self-operated store

This vacuum period can only be replaced by the same architecture of the 14th generation, which is a regular iteration of the supply chain, and it is impossible to "eat it in one bite".

Process

After talking about the naming rules, some friends should also have discovered: why is there no mention of the manufacturing process of the Ultra processor? This is an important parameter related to the actual power consumption.

Because Intel's process has also been renamed, mastering the "core technology" belongs to yes.

The specific changes are as follows:

Intel 7 工艺:自家 10nm 制程,对标友商 7nm ;

Intel 4 process: its own 7nm process, benchmarking the 4nm or 5nm process of competitors;

In the future, there will be Intel 3, 20A, 18A process, etc., and at present, Intel only has the Intel 4 process listed at the highest.

The new Ultra processor debuts with Intel 4 as standard on all models, which is essentially its own 7nm process, and is benchmarked against the performance of 4nm or 5nm from competitors.

Those who don't know may be curious: why does Intel have to change the name of the process like this?

Although this is nothing new, the fruit also takes this opportunity to talk about it briefly.

Intel announced as early as 2021 that it would change the name of the process in the future, and it all started from ten years ago.

Once Intel was a superpowerhouse that did everything from chip IP to product design to wafer packaging, it was a natural choice to set the rules of the semiconductor industry.

* Image source: Intel's official website

This is known as Moore's Law: doubling the number of transistors every two years at the same price doubles the performance.

In 2014, Intel released its own 14nm process, which was an almost epoch-making dividing point for the semiconductor industry.

Because the transistor gap is so small, it is not possible to use all the space with current technology.

In the years that followed, Intel continued to refine 14nm in order to double the number of transistors in line with Moore's Law. Up to the 10th-11th Gen Core, there were still some products that used the 14nm process.

* Image source: JD.com's self-operated store

With the development of the times, Intel has gradually realized the pain of AMD's selling wafer factories back then: the R&D and production cycle of the all-inclusive industry chain is too long and costly!

During this time, Samsung, TSMC and other manufacturers that are only responsible for wafer packaging manufacturing have been catching up, and they have no consideration of "doubling the number of transistors", and they are focused on the whole process.

So, they made some changes to Intel's definition of "xx nm": as long as the transistor gap narrowed a little bit, it would be a no-brainer to advance to the next node.

* Image source: JD.com's self-operated store

So what 12nm, 7nm, 4nm and even now 3nm have been successfully mass-produced. Transistor density? What's the matter with me? I don't sell chips;

Do you like it, anyway, Qualcomm, NVIDIA, AMD and other big manufacturers do not package chips, and in the end they don't ask me to produce them. As long as there are many customers, the cost is naturally low.

For this reason, Intel has also angrily denounced in public: some friends have reversed black and white, ignoring the impact of Moore's Law on the industry for the sake of marketing.

* Image source: JD.com's self-operated store

Despite its "hard mouth", Intel did not launch its own 10nm process until 2021, and officially: its performance is comparable to TSMC's 7nm process.

At this time, the AMD chip produced by TSMC 7nm has been on the market for two years, and Intel's 10nm is slightly embarrassed.

Under the pressure of physical rules, in an environment with the same performance, TSMC's 7nm power consumption is significantly lower than Intel's 10nm.

This does not change the fact that Intel is lagging behind in terms of processes. But when they are used to being "leaders", how can they compromise so easily?

* Image source: Intel's official website

Hey, I won't learn from you, I'll "create a system" for the process myself. To put it bluntly, it is a name change.

These are some of the "revolutionary" changes to the Naming and craftsmanship of the Ultra series. You think that's the end of it? It's also "revolutionary" in terms of core count and performance.

Ultra processor architecture overhaul

Back to the original question, why did Intel's core count suddenly skyrocket so much? Is this still the same era of performance as competitors such as 8 cores and 16 threads?

In fact, the skyrocketing number of Intel cores started with the 12th generation core, and Intel first introduced the concept of "large and small cores", taking the i5-12500H as an example, it is composed of 4 large cores + 8 small cores;

* Image source: JD.com's self-operated store

That is, we often call the 4P + 8E architecture, the big core still supports hyper-threading technology, so its number of threads is 4P * 2T + 8E * 1T = 16T. That's where it comes in with 12 cores and 16 threads.

Intel's original intention in designing large and small cores is: in heavy load scenarios, large cores exert force, and small cores rest, and in light load scenarios, large cores rest and small cores exert force. In this way, the "dream" of soaring battery life is realized.

This is the same development concept as the current mobile phone chip architecture.

* Image source: JD.com's self-operated store

However, the reality is very "skinny", the system and software development environment on the PC side are different from those of mobile phones, and after years of development, their all-large core + hyper-threading technology has reached an excellent level of performance and battery life.

Intel's large and small core architecture has achieved no surprises: heavy gaming, performance stretching, light daily life, battery life collapse.

But Intel didn't give up, and the 13th generation still used the big and small core design, and neither generation could realize its "dream".

* Image source: JD.com's self-operated store

Therefore, after the 12th generation Core, it is rare for fruit to recommend friends to buy thin and light laptops with long battery life. The battery life was dragged down by the system scheduling, and none of them were better than AMD in the same period.

In the new Ultra processors, Intel may think that the weak performance and battery life collapse are due to "too few small cores", so it is crazy to pile up small cores again in this generation.

The difference is that perhaps in order to prevent the battery life from crashing again, the Ultra series has added a "small core", referred to as the "LPE" core.

This wave is directly on par with the "three clusters" architecture of mobile phones!

Take the Ultra 7 165H as an example:

All Ultra models come standard with 8E + 2LPE small core modules, only the large P cores are different. 165H is 6P * 2T + 8E * 1T + 2LPE * 1T = 22T, so it is 16 cores and 22 threads.

Doesn't that feel a bit magical? The number of small cores in the Ultra series is far greater than the number of large cores. In particular, the U suffix of the low-voltage version has only 2 P-cores.

These two LPE ultra-low-power cores can only support scenarios with very small loads, such as local video playback.

* Image source: JD.com's self-operated store

Therefore, the official claim is that its battery life has been able to exceed 10h. What is the actual experience?It is recommended that the actual experience prevail.

So how do we choose the Ultra series? Here are a few suggestions:

If the number of threads is not twice the number of cores, it is recommended not to blindly believe in "xx cores xx threads", such as 165H is 16 cores and 22 threads, which is obviously unreasonable.

The easiest way to do this is to look at the number of P-cores to get a rough idea of which AMD platform it is benchmarking against.

For example, the 2P cores of the Ultra 5 125U are basically difficult to surpass the 6 large cores and 12 threads of AMD at the same price. AMD may even be able to buy 8 cores and 16 threads, which is even less likely to be surpassed.

Only a high-voltage platform with 4 P-cores, like the Ultra 5 125H, is likely to surpass AMD's 6 cores and 12 threads.

Don't look at the number of cores and threads of Intel to "crush" your friends, and think that you have bought the right product.

In the same way, the Ultra 7 and Ultra 9 have the potential to surpass AMD's R7 and R9 series with 6 P-cores. Because at present, AMD only has 16 cores and 32 threads at most.

In other words, AMD's advantage may be more obvious at a lower price point, after all, the starting point of the whole series is much higher with 6 cores and 12 threads.

Overall, though, neither the two current strongest, the R9 and Gen 14, have managed to pull a big gap.

As for the Ultra 9 series, the 14P of the 8th generation None of the cores are far behind the R9, so where is Ultra's 6P core?

However, in terms of productivity, AMD's 16-core high-end products were killed by Intel's large number of physical cores. The latter has huge advantages in video rendering, exporting, etc.

AMD's hyper-threading, after all, is emulated by a smaller number of physical cores, which is certainly inferior to Intel.

So in the end, it is recommended to buy the fruit according to your actual situation and budget.

summary

With the development of science and technology, "name change" has become the "core technology" of super manufacturers such as AMD and Intel.

AMD ushered in the "name change" tide at this time last year, and we also wrote an article on the specific naming method "There are so many pits in the original Ryzen notebook" to give you a brief answer.

This year, it was the turn of the famous Intel "name change" event, and Guozi also had to refresh the original knowledge.

Once upon a time, Intel was still mocking AMD's brainless cores as an "unwise choice";

And now, Intel is provoking a new "core war", starting with the propaganda of "12 and 14 cores", isn't it a kind of irony?

* Image source: JD.com's self-operated store

The seemingly "high-level" name change propaganda of the two super factories in the past two years has actually brought more and more "confusing information" to consumers.

Guozi has always believed that technology should be "simple and close to the people", which is the real benefit to all consumers.

Resources:

JD.com's self-operated store

Intel official website

Some pictures and screenshots come from the Internet

Edit: Unheard