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Intel Kills a Top-of-the-Line Processor
Intel has cancelled one chip for undisclosed reasons.
Credit: Intel
Products are usually cancelled because the vendor struggles to make them work properly, but Intel has cancelled one chip for undisclosed reasons that may be more financial than performance-related.
A little background. Back in June, Intel announced a processor branded as Broadwell-C. It would be a Broadwell processor, which was a die shrink of the Haswell from 2013, but with Intel's best Iris Pro graphics and an on-package eDRAM cache.
eDRAM, or embedded DRAM, is used in microprocessors to provide DRAM-level performance on the die of the CPU or SoC. It offers wider buses and higher speeds than SRAM, which is typically used in CPUs for the caches. It's used in a wide variety of processors, from IBM's Power 7 processor to the AMD SoC in the Xbox One and PlayStation 4. It also costs a little more than SRAM but not a lot.
The Tech Report tested the processor alongside older high-end Intel processors and Skylake, and found that Broadwell-C, despite being based on a two-year-old CPU design, outperformed the best of Intel's newly-launched Skylake processor, the Core i7-6700, and creamed the older chips thanks in part to an insane 128MB L4 cache and its much larger GPU.
From IT World
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