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SILICON SILIC CHIP www.siliconchip.com.au Publisher/Editor Nicholas Vinen Technical Editor John Clarke – B.E.(Elec.) Technical Staff Bao Smith – B.Sc. Tim Blythman – B.E., B.Sc. Advertising Enquiries (02) 9939 3295 adverts<at>siliconchip.com.au Regular Contributors Allan Linton-Smith Dave Thompson David Maddison – B.App.Sc. (Hons 1), PhD, Grad.Dip.Entr.Innov. Geoff Graham Associate Professor Graham Parslow Dr Hugo Holden – B.H.B, MB.ChB., FRANZCO Ian Batty – M.Ed. Phil Prosser – B.Sc., B.E.(Elec.) Cartoonist Louis Decrevel loueee.com Founding Editor (retired) Leo Simpson – B.Bus., FAICD Silicon Chip is published 12 times a year by Silicon Chip Publications Pty Ltd. ACN 626 922 870. ABN 20 880 526 923. All material is copyright ©. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the written consent of the publisher. Subscription rates (Australia only) 6 issues (6 months): $72.50 12 issues (1 year): $135 24 issues (2 years): $255 Online subscription (Worldwide) 6 issues (6 months): $52.50 12 issues (1 year): $100 24 issues (2 years): $190 For overseas rates, see our website or email silicon<at>siliconchip.com.au * recommended & maximum price only Postal address: PO Box 194, Matraville, NSW 2036. Phone: (02) 9939 3295. ISSN: 1030-2662 Printing and Distribution: 1 Huntingwood Dr, Huntingwood NSW 2148 54 Park St, Sydney NSW 2000 2 Silicon Chip Editorial Viewpoint Intel’s new mobile chips look good The concluding article in our series on Intel this month covers both their relatively new discrete graphics products (Intel Arc/Xe) and their tile technology. Since that article was written, Intel has released its Panther Lake laptop/notebook processors, derived from the Meteor Lake designs described in our article. Now that reviews are appearing, it’s good to see that these new chips from Intel are quite competitive and offer excellent integrated graphics. It seems Intel is putting the Xe architecture to good use in this case. Like Meteor Lake, Panther Lake uses tiles, allowing CPU and GPU dies to be manufactured separately and then combined into a single package using Intel’s Foveros packaging technology. This approach is a key part of what allows such high performance from a single chip while maintaining good power efficiency. The ‘flagship’ model Intel has released is the Core Ultra X9 388H. It has four performance cores, eight efficiency cores and four low-power efficiency cores for a total of 16 CPU cores. There’s 18MB of cache in total and the cores can run at up to 5.1GHz. The all-important integrated graphics is the Intel Arc B390, with 12 Xe3 cores, 12 ray-tracing units and 96 vector/XMX AI engines, all running at up to about 2.5GHz. That gives performance comparable to a discrete NVIDIA RTX 3050 GPU. So it appears Intel may be staging something of a comeback, at least in the laptop/notebook processor market. Comparing Intel’s new offering with those from its main competitor, AMD, is a little challenging. That’s partly because it’s difficult to decide whether it’s most appropriate to compare Panther Lake with AMD’s Strix Point (AI 340-375) or Strix Halo (AI Max+ 380-395) series of chips. Let’s look at Strix Point first. These are broadly similar in that both chips are designed for relatively thin and light portable computers. In this comparison, the Intel chips have roughly 10% better single-core performance, while the AMD chips are about 50% faster in heavy multi-core workloads. This is largely because all 16 cores in the AMD design are high-performance types, compared with just four of 16 in the Intel chip. However, Intel’s integrated graphics is roughly twice as fast as the integrated Radeon graphics in Strix Point processors. Intel’s chips also appear to offer somewhat better overall power efficiency. Things change a bit if Panther Lake is compared with AMD’s Strix Halo processors. In this case, CPU performance is broadly similar, but the Strix Halo ‘integrated’ graphics is much faster than Intel’s. The quotation marks are because it’s closer to having a discrete GPU integrated into the same package as the CPU. As a result, these chips tend to appear in larger and more powerful systems. That is partly because Strix Halo uses a much wider memory interface, giving the GPU far more bandwidth than a typical integrated graphics system. So Intel’s offering seems to sit in a useful middle ground: good CPU performance, strong graphics capability and excellent power efficiency in a relatively compact package. To round out the picture, Apple’s higher-end chips offer more graphics power than Intel’s Panther Lake processors, although they are not quite as powerful as AMD’s Strix Halo designs. Apple chips can also provide very strong CPU performance for certain workloads, although AMD and Intel processors still tend to perform better in heavy multi-core workloads and intense numerical computation. It’s great to see strong competition in the CPU market – it keeps everyone on their toes. by Nicholas Vinen Cover background: https://unsplash.com/photos/an-abstract-blue-background-with-wavy-lines-VhG_oPx5CEY Australia's electronics magazine siliconchip.com.au