Intel Alder Lake-U Review - The fine line between Efficiency and insufficient Performance

[Redaktion]

Intel's Alder Lake-U chips in the 15W segment are primarily designed for thin and light laptops. However, there can be massive performance differences depending on the implementation and it does not always make sense for the manufacturers to use U-series CPUs, either.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Alder-Lake-U-Review-The-fine-line-between-Efficiency-and-insufficient-Performance.682220.0.html

[LL]

Wonderful review/analysis. Thank you.

[RobertJasiek]

It would have been wonderful if there had also been tests of 1215U with deactivated E cores to actually attempt approaching the fine line between efficiency and insufficient performance. However, given that 1255U at 15W nominal TDP and 2.5W maintained surfing TDP is 2.5x faster in single thread than I need for office work, that fine line could be approached only by also underclocking and maybe undervolting.

[Ayoh]

Thanks for the analysis. However cinebench is not a good test for ARM CPUs. It disadvantages them compared to x86. Spec is the benchmark test suite. Even geek bench would be fairer. You can see some discussion on the anadtech forum. Search for "intel-raptor-lake-vs-amd-zen-4-vs-apple-m2". Sorry I am not allowed to post  link on this forum by the link filter

[NikoB]

Rediscovered America. It has long been obvious that Intel / AMD / Nvidia, due to the inability to produce processors in accordance with Moore's "Law", have become outright cheaters with raised levels of power consumption from the outlet, so monstrous that not a single battery is able to draw such a current load at "full" power.

Until these cunning guys are legally limited in laptops and other equipment by "green" limits, there will be no sense.

Laptops won't be quiet and last long on battery until consumption levels are in line with current battery technology and environmental regulations.

If you make all these three scammers (AMD the best among them) work hard, for example, with a TDP of 35W on the processor and video card for total power limit - it will be very funny to watch their attempts to sell new series on the market, when the performance differences are in their " tick-tack" no more. We will have to give the consumer other goodies, and it will become more difficult to circle fools around the finger ..)))

[LL]

We have another tyrant candidate...

[NikoB]

We have another tyrant candidate...

All these structures are based on brute force:
Antimonopoly Committee is a tyranny?
Is oversight of the aviation industry a tyranny?
Is drug oversight a tyranny?

[NikoB]

Is the inability to visit anywhere in the world without the permission of the state authorities of your country and the country of visit a tyranny?

The obligation to pay taxes, but not to have direct control over their spending - is it tyranny?

Is censorship on social media and forums a tyranny?

Is green technology and limiting the insane use of energy for profit a tyranny?

Is conscription a tyranny?

Judgment is tyranny? Are you against the courts?

The state is a tyrant? Are you against the state?

I'm afraid you won't have a sane answer... =)

[NikoB]

Is the obligation to have and present a p*ssport a tyranny?

[NikoB]

p*ssport is a forbidden word in NB? Is this tyranny? ;)

[NikoB]

Hammer everything into your head - any business is a priori immoral and inefficient in terms of the progress of the entire civilization, because it operates only on the basis of personal benefit, and not the general one. Freedom requires responsibility in making key decisions. But the majority, except for an extremely narrow stratum of people, as history has proven countless times, refuses to bear the burden of voluntary responsibility, preferring to demand only rights and not impose obligations, including universal ones. And in this case, this majority is no different from animals from the animal world. social animals. And the cost of their lives is automatically multiplied by zero. What we have once again observed since 2020 around the world.

[Abc]

It has been clear from the very beginning that Intel's efficiency core is all about space efficiency and not power efficiency. In the silicon space where they would previously fit 1 Sunnycove core with hyperthreading, they can fit 4 atom cores without hyperthreading. Hence a quad-core TigerLake becomes a 2 cores 4 threads TigerLake plus 8 core atom, known as AlderLake 10/12 a.k.a. AlderLake-U.

They are doing it for core stacking. Atom cores are good at integer workloads, matching big cores at 2:1 ratio (2 atom cores = 1 Skylake w/ HT). So compared to the quad-core TigerLake, they now perform like a hexa-core with AlderLake-U on the same silicon. A hexa TigerLake now performs likes an octa with AlderLake-P.

But atom cores are purpose built cores that only prioritize integer performance. It neglects all the other x86 extensions that are nice to have, like AVX-256, AVX-512, SHA, etc. The extra stuff take more silicon space and have more leakage, which is why big cores are so complex and inefficient. If you benchmark AlderLake on AVX-2, the performance advantage falls apart.

[Abc]

It's all about trade offs. Intel didn't come up with something magical that allow them to compete with AMD. They are doing alchemy with their old formulas to trade off power/extensions with MT integer performance.

The only reason why they haven't completely dumped the big cores in favor of atom is because they still need single threads performance benchmark, and they still need to support legacy AVX-2/AVX-512 code.

[NikoB]

support legacy AVX-2/AVX-512 code.

Since when did AVX512 become a deprecated extension, and not a deliberate forced limitation for consumer Intel processors? The entire Zen4 line supports AVX512 natively. Alder Lake and Raptor Lake are NOT support this Intel extension!

Who is the technology leader? Definitely AMD, not Intel.

And only the absence of factories makes it a hopeless competitor to Intel, which enjoys the patronage of the American government and governments of other countries in collusion and thus circumvents the laws of real competition while retaining market share. Without these government protections and assistance, Intel has been bankrupt since 2017. =)

[Abc]

support legacy AVX-2/AVX-512 code.

Since when did AVX512 become a deprecated extension, and not a deliberate forced limitation for consumer Intel processors? The entire Zen4 line supports AVX512 natively. Alder Lake and Raptor Lake are NOT support this Intel extension!

Technically the big cores in AlderLake can run AVX-512. I'm sure Intel can figure out how to run it on only the big cores while atom cores do something else. It is just not favorable because with only 2 big cores the results will look bad.

Linus Torvalds once claimed AVX-512 was created by Intel so Intel can create benchmarks to show favorable results compared to AMD. Now that AMD also supports this extension and even beat Intel at this game, AVX-512 is no longer serving its purpose. This may be why Intel wants to get rid of it entirely.

Who is the technology leader? Definitely AMD, not Intel.

I don't disagree. But..

Recall AMD was also doing core stacking with the entire Bulldozer generation. They built their modules focusing on multithreaded integer performance at the expense of power and floating point performance. Intel is just taking a page out of this with AlderLake.

I think you are judging Intel too harshly. AMD almost went bankrupt in 2015. I recall when their stock dipped below $2. It took them a few years to right the ship. Intel isn't doing well right now but they may come back one day to good guy Intel.

In the end, this market needs more competition not less. AMD is taking it easy right now just like Intel did in 2013. AlderLake and Rembrandt launched at the same time last year but Rembrandt isn't available until half a year later (still at much higher prices than AlderLake). You can imagine without Intel AMD will just resell their old technology at higher prices benefiting no one.