ntel’s Forgotten Future #Helpful Post

hey guys is Austin this little box might

not look like much but inside is one of

these strangest stories in Intel's

history so this is the Intel nook 8 I

three cym Intel have been selling these

little nuts for quite a while and some

of them pretty cool last year we took a

look at this skull canyon nook which had

a proper amount of gaining power and a

tiny package with a lowly core i3 inside

this does not look nearly as impressive

and that's because it's not at least on

paper

so traditionally intel has used what is

known as the tick tock model not to be

confused with tick tock the tick tock so

essentially there are two different ways

of building a new chip first of all you

just start with the big stuff the

architectures the things will actually

legitimately make it faster year-on-year

once you do that the next iteration we

just take that design and shrink it to a

smaller process node so if we get a

little bit of Michael's toys action let

me show what happened just a couple

years ago not is that really bad Square

even though I have a ruler anyway so say

that this is a previous generation this

would be 14 a mere which is pretty much

what all single Intel processors use

today this strategy works great until

they hit the ten nanometer node now this

is what the Canon like chip inside is

based on and unfortunately well they

have some road bumps so the evasion

going to a smaller process note is that

you can cram more more transistors into

a smaller and smaller area so if we have

a quad-core processor and this is very

simplified what you're getting here is

basically the same number of cores but

just in a smaller area which means that

not only is the chip either cheaper to

produce or you can actually fit more

cores so in theory if you had a 10

nanometer chip which is the same size as

the old one it could be a 6 core design

as opposed to a quad-core one so when I

say 40 nanometer and 10 nanometer what

I'm referring to is the process

technology used to actually build these

chips so think of it like this if I'm

trying to draw something really precise

it's the difference between using like a

sharpie and a pen it is a much finer

grained tool which it could be much more

precise with the small of the tip to be

more precise and the more stuff you can

cram

to these tiny tiny little lines this is

absolutely key to the reason why

computers have advanced so much over the

last 50 years every time you get a

smaller and smaller process node it

means you can more densely pack it with

transistors which can be spent on things

like the CPU the GPU really this is

absolutely the reason why things are a

hundred million times faster than they

were in 1972 now the downside here is

that these smaller and smaller you get

the more difficult it is to actually

pack all these transistors

I mean seriously at a certain point you

hit the atomic level where there's

things don't really get much smaller

from 2006 to 2014 every two years until

we're able to shrink the process over

and over and over again that is until

2014 where they hit a huge huge wall now

this force Intel to get very creative

with their updates without the advantage

of being able to constantly change their

process instead they did things like add

more CPU cores to pretty much their

entire lineup which brings us to the

cannon Lake CPU inside this nook now

originally it was supposed to ship as a

seventh generation part all the way back

in 2016 as you might imagine things

didn't quite go that smoothly so why

should anyone care about this little

knock because inside this is running

Intel's ten nanometers can and like

processor and up until this point is the

very first and only device that's

shipped with it so to compare I have

well maybe not a perfect apples to

apples comparison however this is an

aspire a five it does have a very

similar with respect to core i3 just a

14 nanometer version as opposed to the

10 nanometer inside the nook put these

two side-by-side and they're about as

close as it gets

they're both dual-core processors they

both have hyper threading they both have

a two point two gigahertz base really

the only difference is the laptop has a

slightly higher turbo and three point

four versus three point two besides that

it's gonna be about well this is about

as close as I can get a comparison so

first of all let's start out with key

bench no I'm not expecting any huge

performance differences but what's

interesting about this is that the

Kenlake chip inside is pretty much

entirely undocumented now yes on the ark

Intel site you can see that it does

confirm at least this 10 nanometer but

besides that this is an entirely new CPU

architecture which has basically never

been talked about before it's unusual

because usually when

until brings out a new series of chips

they're way more on top of talking about

the different specs and everything that

they've done to improve it but with this

it's like it was a weird half-step then

they're never actually really fully

acknowledged okay

so very very close the Nook is very

slightly quicker in single-core and a

little bit quicker in multi-core but

honestly that's close enough that I

would consider it to be basically a draw

next let's give sentiment a try in any

case it definitely does not look like

Kenlake is any kind of major improvement

as far as IPC goes it's very very close

so in this one the laptop wins by a

little bit 353 versus 331 I'm pretty

sure that's entirely just that slightly

higher turbo I want to give a huge shout

out to Ian from a non tech Vern le

helping me research for this video but

also doing a terrific write-up all about

the incredible saga that was Intel's 10

nanometer process the fact that this is

a product that is in my hand in 2019 is

kind of incredible because for all

intents and purposes Kenlake has been

completely shelved at this point so

where are things today

well Intel has pretty much given up on

the Canon Lake chips in favor of going

straight to ice lake which in theory

will be shipping later this year on a 10

animated process with improved

architecture essentially it's a take on

a talk rolled into one

meanwhile we have the nook is what is

arguably one of the only examples of an

Intel future that we never got to

experience although judging by the

performance wasn't all that exciting to

begin with