Intel’s Tiger Lake 11th Gen Core i7-1185G7

The big notebook launch for Intel this year is Tiger Lake. Tiger Lake’s upcoming 10nm platform designed to pair a new graphics architecture with a nice high frequency for the performance that customers in this space require. A high powered system overbuilt for thermals and strong fans. Tiger Lake’s Core 11th Gen processor, the Core i7-1185G7, is a quad core processor with hyper-threading, offering eight threads total.

This processor also has the full sized new Xe-LP graphics, with 96 execution units running up to 1450 MHz. At 12 W, Intel lists a base frequency of 1.2 GHz, while at 28 W, the company lists a base frequency of 3.0 GHz. In both 12 W and 28 W scenarios, the processor can turbo up to 4.8 GHz on one core / two threads. This system was built for thermals or power to not be an issue, so the CPU can boost to 4.8 GHz in both modes.

Not only that, but the power consumption while in the turbo modes is limited to 55 W, for any thermal design power setting. The turbo budget for the system increases with the thermal design point of the processor, and so when in 28 W mode, it will also turbo for longer. Large keypad, chiclet style keys, and a 1080p display. For ports, this design only has two Type-C, both of which can be used for power or DisplayPort-over-Type C.

The design uses the opening of the display to act as a stand for the main body of the machine.

On the back is a big vent for the airflow in. For the full system build, it was equipped with Intel’s AX201 Wi-Fi 6 module, as well as a PCIe 3.0 x4 Samsung SSD. The first devices to market with the Core i7-1185G7 will have either LPDDR4X-4266 at 32 GB or DDR4-3200 at 64 GB. Intel advertised these chips also supporting LPDDR5-5400, however it is still in the process to be validated.

Coupled with the high cost of LPDDR5, Intel expects LP5 systems a bit later in the product cycle life-time, probably in Q1 2021. Tiger Lake technically supports PCIe 4.0 x4 from the processor. This can be used for a GPU or SSD, but Intel sees it mostly for fast storage. Given the prevalence of PCIe 4.0 SSDs on the market already, Intel was curious to see the reference designs without a corresponding PCIe 4.0 drive.

The reason why this system does not have a PCIe 4.0 x4 drive is because the E16 drives are too power hungry. The E16 is based on Phison’s E12 PCIe 3.0 removed and PCIe 4.0 added without much adjustment to the compute side of the controller or the efficiency point of the silicon. As a result, the E16-based drives can score up to 8 W for a peak throughput of 5 GB/s.

A properly designed from-the-ground-up PCIe 4.0 x4 drive should be able to reach 8 GB/s at theoretical peak, preferably in that 2-4 W window.

Adding an 8 W PCIe 4.0 SSD to a notebook is a bad idea. Most laptops do not have the cooling requirements for such a power hungry SSD, causing hot spots and thermal overrun. Also, the effect on battery life would be easily noticeable. Beyond all this, by the time Tiger Lake notebooks come to market, new drives built on Phison’s E18 and Samsung’s Elpis PCIe 4.0 controllers are likely to be available.

Whether these will be available for notebook deployment would be an interesting question, and so we are likely to see a mix of PCIe 3.0 and PCIe 4.0 enabled NVMe SSDs. Normal operation on a notebook is for the processor to be offered at a specific thermal design point. And any changes to the power plan in the operating system will affect how long the system uses its turbo mode, or requirements to enter higher power states.

This is because most notebooks are built to be optimized around that single thermal design point. The power slider while in the ‘Balanced’ power mode allowed us to choose between a 15 W power mode and a 25 W power mode, adjusting the base frequency of the processor. The chassis was built for the higher power modes, and it allowed anyone using the development system to see the effect of the performance between the two thermal design points.

The power slider can choose either 15 W mode or 28 W mode, and a third option 28 W with Intel’s Dynamic Tuning enabled, also known as Adaptix.

Intel’s Dynamic Tuning/Adaptix is a way for the system to more carefully manage turbo power and power limits based on the workload at hand. With Adaptix enabled, the power can be more intelligently managed, giving a longer turbo profile, as well as a better all-core extended turbo where the chassis is capable. Technically Adaptix could be enabled at any thermal design point, even at 12 W, but in all cases it should offer better performance in line with what the chassis can provide.

The new platform has new features, and Intel has promoted its performance against the competition and previous generation. Intel compares to its own previous generation at 15 W, then moving onto the difference between a 15 W Tiger Lake and a 28 W Tiger Lake. In Intel’s own announcement for Tiger Lake, the company pitted the 28 W version of Tiger Lake against the best power and thermal setting on an AMD 15 W processor.

Intel made big claims about its new Xe-LP graphics architecture against AMD. Intel has officially announced its first 11th Gen Tiger Lake processors for laptops. The Tiger Lake will feature Intel’s new integrated Xe graphics, Thunderbolt 4 support, Wi-Fi 6, and a big leap in performance and battery life over the previous Ice Lake chips. The new 11th Gen lineup offers the best processor for thin and light laptops.

Intel is launching nine new 11th Gen designs for both its U-series (UP3) and Y-series class chips (UP4), led by the Core i7-1185G7, which offer base speeds of 3.0GHz.

A maximum single core turbo boost of up to 4.8GHz, and a maximum all-core boost of up to 4.3GHz. The new 11th Gen lineup also features the most powerful version of Intel’s Iris Xe integrated graphics, with 96 CUs and a maximum graphics speed of 1.35GHz. Intel had already previewed the new chips at its Architecture Day 2020 event earlier this year. The new 11th Gen lineup is still built on the 10nm node, similar to the current 10th Gen Ice Lake models.

But the new 11th Gen upgrades to the Willow Core architecture with a new 10nm SuperFin design that will offer better speeds at lower power consumption. Intel is not being specific on what those increases will be, but it promises that the new chips will offer a 20 percent faster speeds for day-to-day office productivity tasks. Along with a similar 20 percent increase in system-level power which results in more than an extra hour of battery life for things like video streaming.

Intel is betting big on its new integrated Xe graphics, which it promises will offer up to twice the graphics performance. The new integrated Xe graphics will offer more substantial benefits than just raw core count increases. A demo shown during Intel’s announcement showed an 11th Gen chip offering better graphics performance than a 10th Gen chip working simultaneously with an NVIDIA MX350 GPU.

You will need Intel’s new i5 or i7 chips to get Xe graphics, the Core i3 models for both the U- and Y-series lineups will only offer UHD Graphics.

Also new is support for 8K HDR displays, along with the option to use up to four 4K HDR displays at once. There are also improvements to the built-in AI engine, which will offer specific improvements for video calls like background blurring, tasks which ARM-based computers like the Surface Pro X have previously excelled at. Alongside the new chips, the company is debuting a new iteration of its Project Athena certification standard, called “Intel Evo”.

Evo will have higher requirements, including over nine hours of real world use on a single charge, fast charging, Wi-Fi 6, Thunderbolt 4, and system wake in less than a second. The idea is that users should be able to expect a high-quality machine whenever they see the Evo logo, guaranteed. More than 20 Evo-verified designs should be available later this year.

Expect to see the new chips on a wide variety of systems with over 150 designs from companies like Acer, ASUS, Dell, Dynabook, HP, Lenovo, LG, MSI, Razer, and Samsung. The first of these products, Samsung’s Galaxy Book Flex 5G, Acer’s refreshed Swift 5 and Swift 3, and ASUS’ newest ZenBooks, have already been announced. Among the many announcements in August 2020’s Intel Architecture Day, the company is also offering a major update to their GPU roadmap over the next 24 months.

The Xe family, already jam-packed with Xe-LP, Xe-HP, and Xe-HPC parts, is now getting a fourth planned variant: Xe-HPG.

Aimed at the gamer market, this Xe variant will be Intel’s most gaming-focused part, and the biggest step in the company’s plans to be more diversified in its foundry sources. At a high level, Xe-HPG is meant to be the missing piece of the puzzle in Intel’s product stack, offering a high-performance gaming and graphics-focused chip. This is as opposed to Xe-HP, which is specializing in datacenter features like FP64 and multi-tile scalability, and Xe-HPC which is even more esoteric.

Xe-HPG can be thought of as everything in the Xe family, distilled down into a single design to push FLOPs, rays, pixels, and everything else a powerful video card might need. Like with the rest of Intel’s forward-looking Xe announcements, the company is not offering performance projections, features, or the like. First and foremost, beyond going after the enthusiast performance space, Intel has confirmed that this part will support ray tracing.

A marquee feature of high-end video cards, ray tracing will take on greater importance over the coming years as the next-generation consoles head out the door with the feature. Ray tracing is a critical component of Microsoft’s DirectX 12 Ultimate standard, it would be shocking if Intel did not support in full. The chip will be built on the foundation that is Xe-LP, however it will also pull in technologies that Intel is pioneering for Xe-HP and Xe-HPC.

Not the least of which is raw scalability, which is being able to take the Xe-LP foundation and scale it up to hundreds, if not thousands, of GPU execution units.

But Intel is also pulling what they are calling “compute frequency enhancements” from Xe-HPC, which presumably will allow them to maximize the chip’s overall clockspeeds. All told, it will not be too surprising if Xe-HPG looks a lot like Xe-HP in general, except with server-driven features like fast FP64 support and multi-tiling stripped out. But Xe-HPG will also bring something new to the table for the entire Xe family: GDDR6 support.

Intel is confirming that the microarchitecture the chip will be based on, will be designed to work with GDRR6. This is as opposed to Xe-HP(C), which as high-end server parts use HBM, and Xe-LP, which is designed for use with more conventional memory types. GDDR6 compatibility is a unique need that reflects this is a gaming focused part. GDDR6 provides the memory bandwidth needed for high-performance graphics, but without the costs of HBM memory, a problem that has impacted some other high-end GPUs.

In a further twist, Intel apparently licensed the GDDR controller IP from outside the company, rather than developing it in-house. So Xe-HPG will have a very notable bit of external IP in it. But perhaps most interesting of all for graphics insiders and investors alike is where Xe-HPG will be built: not at Intel. As part of their Architecture Day roadmap, Intel has confirmed that the part will be made at an external fab.

In fact it is the only Xe part where the GPU, or at least the compute element, is being made entirely at a third-party fab.

Intel of course will not reveal which fab this is, but it means we are going to see a complete GPU built at another fab. If nothing else, this is going to make comparing Xe-HPG to its AMD and NVIDIA rivals a lot easier, since Intel will be using the same fab resources. Looking at the same roadmap, it is worth pointing out that Intel will not be using any of their advanced packaging technologies for the part.

Since they are not using HBM and they are not doing multi-tiling, there is no need for things like EMIB, never mind Foveros. There is still a lot of unknowns with the cost aspects of Intel’s advanced packaging technologies. So keeping it out of Xe-HPG will presumably help keep costs in check in a very competitive marketplace. The latest and most gaming-focused member of Xe GPU product stack is set to launch in 2021 as Intel looks to break into the wider GPU market.

This will not be the last we will hear of it between then and now.