Data on the new enthusiast series Intel processor architecture is out.
Their top end will be Skylake-X:
Dedicated 1MB L2 cache per core (Quadrupling the amount of dedicated cache since last gen's "E" series. My quick math seems to show only a 104% increase in total L2 cache from the current gen's 16 core specs to new specs, but the heavy emphasis on private cache over shared cache reduces latency. Daddy likes...)
I have a feeling the above will benefit single core applications heavily (i.e. a lot of games), while heavily multi-threaded applications will take a slight performance hit on shared operations (i.e. if one core needs info from another core) -- but this tradeoff should be overcome by heavily multi-threaded applications with the introduction of more cores. So, in essence, they found a way to slightly cut performance of multi-threaded applications to the great benefit of single threaded applications, while also greatly enhancing multi-threaded application performance with the introduction of more cores. And overall win.
New instruction set that doubles the size of vector-operations.
New new "i9" range of processors will come with 44 PCIe lanes and natively support 2666MHz, Quad-Channel, DDR4 memory. (Shame, I was hoping for 3333MHz native support, but it is an increase)
No word on clock speeds of the i9 series yet. So if the core speeds end up slower than last gen's "E" series, it may still be beneficial for single-threaded gamers to stick with the X99 platform.
Each i9 will also support up to three PCIe/NVMe drives. I hope motherboard manufacturers take advantage of this and build single socket boards with three M.2 slots, or heaving help us, a two-socket board with 6 NVMe M.2 slots. (But that would necessitate that the i9 comes with QPI; which I don't believe will happen. QPI will likely be reserved for the new Xeons.)
More reading:
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/05/intels-new-high-end-desktop-platform-up-to-18-cores-36-threads-2000/
Their top end will be Skylake-X:
Dedicated 1MB L2 cache per core (Quadrupling the amount of dedicated cache since last gen's "E" series. My quick math seems to show only a 104% increase in total L2 cache from the current gen's 16 core specs to new specs, but the heavy emphasis on private cache over shared cache reduces latency. Daddy likes...)
I have a feeling the above will benefit single core applications heavily (i.e. a lot of games), while heavily multi-threaded applications will take a slight performance hit on shared operations (i.e. if one core needs info from another core) -- but this tradeoff should be overcome by heavily multi-threaded applications with the introduction of more cores. So, in essence, they found a way to slightly cut performance of multi-threaded applications to the great benefit of single threaded applications, while also greatly enhancing multi-threaded application performance with the introduction of more cores. And overall win.
New instruction set that doubles the size of vector-operations.
New new "i9" range of processors will come with 44 PCIe lanes and natively support 2666MHz, Quad-Channel, DDR4 memory. (Shame, I was hoping for 3333MHz native support, but it is an increase)
No word on clock speeds of the i9 series yet. So if the core speeds end up slower than last gen's "E" series, it may still be beneficial for single-threaded gamers to stick with the X99 platform.
Each i9 will also support up to three PCIe/NVMe drives. I hope motherboard manufacturers take advantage of this and build single socket boards with three M.2 slots, or heaving help us, a two-socket board with 6 NVMe M.2 slots. (But that would necessitate that the i9 comes with QPI; which I don't believe will happen. QPI will likely be reserved for the new Xeons.)
More reading:
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/05/intels-new-high-end-desktop-platform-up-to-18-cores-36-threads-2000/