Intel ships Nova Lake CPUs to partners for testing — samples intended for validation and research

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We may soon encounter Engineering Samples in the wild.

Rocket Lake CPU (stock photo)
(Image credit: Shuitterstock)
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Hassam Nasir
Hassam Nasir
Contributing Writer

Hassam Nasir is a die-hard hardware enthusiast with years of experience as a tech editor and writer, focusing on detailed CPU comparisons and general hardware news. When he’s not working, you’ll find him bending tubes for his ever-evolving custom water-loop gaming rig or benchmarking the latest CPUs and GPUs just for fun.

25 Comments Comment from the forums
  • JRStern
    That's a lot of lakes.
    Reply
  • jheithaus
    Why would they move the memory controller off tile? They still are planning no vcache equivalent. Less cache than AMD with continued slower access. I understand cache costs money, but if you keep making vastly inferior products, you will be out of business because no one will buy your products. CRAZY.
    Reply
  • TheSecondPower
    jheithaus said:
    Why would they move the memory controller off tile? They still are planning no vcache equivalent. Less cache than AMD with continued slower access. I understand cache costs money, but if you keep making vastly inferior products, you will be out of business because no one will buy your products. CRAZY.
    AMD's multi-chiplet CPUs have the memory controller off of the CPU chiplet, and Intel's tile architecture should be lower latency thanks to the base tile. On desktop Intel's solution is superior (evidently held back by other architectural details), but it's inferior to the monolithic chip AMD uses for mobile use. So why do it on mobile? For the same reason as before; better yields, lower cost, and earlier time to market, which helps to make up for Intel Foundry being behind.
    Reply
  • JamesJones44
    jheithaus said:
    Why would they move the memory controller off tile? They still are planning no vcache equivalent. Less cache than AMD with continued slower access. I understand cache costs money, but if you keep making vastly inferior products, you will be out of business because no one will buy your products. CRAZY.
    The reason AMD doesn't put V-Cache on all CPUs isn't due to cost. Large caches can increase latency due to cache searches depending on the application. V-Cache works great for specific use cases where there is a high probability the content is in cache. However, for applications where cache misses are more prevalent it can be a hinderance if the miss occurs frequently. There are some other factors as well, such as cooling overhead, but cost isn't really the driver since we are only taking 10s of dollars.

    Why Intel doesn't have their own "gaming" equivalent with a large cache is a question only Intel can answer. Does seem odd they would continue to seed gaming wins to AMD without some kind of an answer.
    Reply
  • thestryker
    JamesJones44 said:
    There are some other factors as well, such as cooling overhead, but cost isn't really the driver since we are only taking 10s of dollars.
    Cost is absolutely the driver as the advanced packaging costs a lot more money and is another failure point. AMD has come out and stated that the reason they don't do cache on both CCDs for the two CCD parts is the cost vs benefit.
    JamesJones44 said:
    Why Intel doesn't have their own "gaming" equivalent with a large cache is a question only Intel can answer. Does seem odd they would continue to seed gaming wins to AMD without some kind of an answer.
    It's actually super simple and straightforward: cost.

    Intel's designs until MTL were monolithic which means to add cache would require spinning up a separate die. Even now with tiles it wouldn't necessarily make financial sense as they would still have a separate die though the cost wouldn't be as bad as prior designs. CWF is using a design with cache in the base tile which might be viable to cross over to desktop, but this is the first Intel design hinting at anything cost effective for adding cache.

    A lot of people also overestimate the retail market and X3D sales. I'd be surprised if if Intel didn't sell more desktop CPUs to Dell per year than AMD sells period. I'm absolutely certain the engineers at Intel would love to put together something faster, and marketing would love an easy win. That doesn't necessarily equate to it making financial sense to do so.
    Reply
  • Pierce2623
    thestryker said:
    I'd be surprised if if Intel didn't sell more desktop CPUs to Dell per year than AMD sells period. I'm absolutely certain the engineers at Intel would love to put together something faster, and marketing would love an easy win. That doesn't necessarily equate to it making financial sense to do so.
    Somebody missed every article about market share in client systems over the last 3 years. Intel is no longer even selling more server chips than AMD.
    Reply
  • JamesJones44
    thestryker said:
    AMD has come out and stated that the reason they don't do cache on both CCDs for the two CCD parts is the cost vs benefit.
    That is for the due CCD, not CPUs as a whole. This is conflating two different things. Putting VCache on two CCDs probably doesn't provide much of a boost, thus cost to performance benefit isn't' worth it. However, as I mentioned, the price difference is small (10s of dollars), if it made a difference for every workload you better believe AMD would only make x3d series chips.
    Reply
  • DS426
    JamesJones44 said:
    The reason AMD doesn't put V-Cache on all CPUs isn't due to cost. Large caches can increase latency due to cache searches depending on the application. V-Cache works great for specific use cases where there is a high probability the content is in cache. However, for applications where cache misses are more prevalent it can be a hinderance if the miss occurs frequently. There are some other factors as well, such as cooling overhead, but cost isn't really the driver since we are only taking 10s of dollars.

    Why Intel doesn't have their own "gaming" equivalent with a large cache is a question only Intel can answer. Does seem odd they would continue to seed gaming wins to AMD without some kind of an answer.
    Cost isn't a significant difference but it does take more time to fully package V-Cache CPU's as well, something AMD acknowledged with their supply vs. demand constraints for the 9800X3D.

    I don't know how Intel could just ignore the success of the 9800X3D at this point and more generally this technology; with AMD having X3D chips that start not much over $200, even with not all games being able to take advantage of them, X3D is just a superior gaming CPU technology today when everything is considered, i.e. also bringing in the perf/watt conversation. I can understand Intel waiting a generation on for their Local Cache to come to desktop, but is that really something that can't be confirmed today? IMO, they've stripped the business back TOO much, being overly hyperfocused on safe CPU bets.
    Reply
  • TerryLaze
    DS426 said:
    I don't know how Intel could just ignore the success of the 9800X3D at this point and more generally this technology
    AMDs main line (non cache) CPU have taken a huge hit in sales because everybody want's the cache ones, which are more expensive to make and have lower margins.
    Why would intel want that?!

    Also the extreme PC buyer is a super small percentage, the average joe sees every CPU, including the entry level ones, hitting 100FPS+ in most games and so they don't care which has better FPS at over 9000 they buy whatever is cheap and readily available.
    Reply
  • thestryker
    Pierce2623 said:
    Somebody missed every article about market share in client systems over the last 3 years. Intel is no longer even selling more server chips than AMD.
    You're absolutely right I missed the articles that don't exist!

    https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/amds-desktop-pc-market-share-skyrockets-amid-intels-raptor-lake-crashing-scandal-amd-makes-biggest-leap-in-recent-historyWhich of the numbers here is anywhere near 50% exactly?
    Reply