SFF.Network [SFF Network] Intel’s Next HEDT Platform, Basin Falls, is Being Readied

It seems that the LGA2011 family is nearing the end of it’s life, Intel is readying a replacement – LGA2066. The extra 55 pins will be there to support the X-Series “Basin Falls” platform, consisting of Skylake-X and Kaby Lake-X, and new chipset based on Intel’s 200 series. As is typical for Intel’s HEDT platform (High End Desktop), the processors will be devoid of integrated graphics, but will include cores in their multiples (4,6,8 and 10 to be exact), more PCI-E lanes and higher memory bandwidth.

Read more here.

 

[Phuncz]

This is interesting but there is a huge eye-twitcher in there:

Apparently, Intel is going to release a 112W CPU with 4 cores and 16 PCIe lanes on this platform, which would to me mean it is going to be the overclocking chip of that generation. So the successor of Kaby Lake is not going to have a socket 1151 (if still used) i7-8700K but instead move this to the HEDT platform ? I'm not really looking forward to those TDPs. Is this Intel maximizing profits while being nearly competitionless ?

 

[confusis]

Maybe that's Intel telling us that they don't think Zen will be a big competitor :/

In saying that, bigger upsets have happened this year *cough*brexit*cough*trump*cough*

 

[Phuncz]

Even if Zen is knock-out-of-the-park home run on all fronts and this for generations, it will still take years for even coming close to 50/50 market share on the consumer PC/laptop market. I've seen this happen with the Athlon XP vs disappointing Pentium II, I've seen this with the Pentium 4 toaster ovens vs Athlon 64 X2. It's the same with Nvidia and AMD GPUs. Intel has a very solid brand loyalty and partly it's deserved, but it also blinds the most people to reality.

And this brings me to my point: Intel can just continue putting out the incremental updates for 3 years in a row, the most awesome Zen CPUs won't hurt their Core i- sales meaningfully in that period. Still, I'm rooting for Zen like there's no tomorrow.

 

[EdZ]

Maybe that's Intel telling us that they don't think Zen will be a big competitor :/

Possibly the opposite: HEDT, server and HPC CPU generations (the -X , -EP and -EX versions) lag around a year (or sometimes more for -EX) behind regular desktop generations. For Kaby Lake to get a single desktop-like core - I'd be outright shocked if this is the same core that eventually ends up in a wider Kaby Lake -X release, but I'm pretty confident given the 2-channel; and 16-lane restrictions - pushed forwards a generation and packaged for HEDT is unheard of, and may indicate Intel wants at least something that they are certain will range-top anything AMD can put out.

 

[BirdofPrey]

Even if Zen is knock-out-of-the-park home run on all fronts and this for generations, it will still take years for even coming close to 50/50 market share on the consumer PC/laptop market. I've seen this happen with the Athlon XP vs disappointing Pentium II, I've seen this with the Pentium 4 toaster ovens vs Athlon 64 X2. It's the same with Nvidia and AMD GPUs. Intel has a very solid brand loyalty and partly it's deserved, but it also blinds the most people to reality.

And this brings me to my point: Intel can just continue putting out the incremental updates for 3 years in a row, the most awesome Zen CPUs won't hurt their Core i- sales meaningfully in that period. Still, I'm rooting for Zen like there's no tomorrow.

One of the most important things to remember there is that the consumer market share is actually not all THAT significant.

Mass purchases are where they make their money, so the key is system integrators such as Dell, and the server market. During the Pentium 4/NetBurst debacle, Intel was engaged in some anti-consumer practices by effectively bribing/extorting a number of big companies to not carry AMD's products which is part of the reason AMD didn't gain much market share when they did have the better product. Even without, that, though, Intel has, historically, been better about marketing their products and working with systems integrators, and, as you mentioned, has a much better brand presence.

In the end, it doesn't matter as much if Zen is better or not as id does whether or not they can convince consumers that it's better to NOT have an Intel Inside logo on their laptop or tablet. I'd also add that with the desktop market shrinking and even the laptop market on the decline due to the growing prevalence of tablets, power efficiency (ie. battery life) is the top concern (and said tablet market is why both companies have been pursuing ARM variants since that's what Android runs on).

Of course, having better performance in managing many smaller workloads would help regain server marketshare, which is important.

 

[Phuncz]

I agree for the most part, although I'd like to add a few points from my opinion:

The server market is almost completely seperate from the consumer market. Even if it was Intel and AMD's market share on consumer devices were flipped, it wouldn't mean it would happen on the server market because of this. Enterprise is much more focused on end-goal like the performance in a specific application or certain workload, reliability, total cost of ownership and driver support.

The OEM consumer business is of significant importance for volume and turn-over, reputation will dictate what consumers want to buy. While many don't or won't care (people who have been working in retail will support this), Intel has a very strong reputation and brand loyalty. This also means that people who aren't tech-savvy will most likely hear "don't buy AMD" before they hear "an SSD is much more relevant to general use than a faster CPU".

This has translated over the course that AMD is mostly put in value products at the bottom of the PC and laptop world, because people buying those generally don't care about these things. Even if HP's deal with AMD is supposed to feature AMD CPUs in every price segment, this doesn't automatically mean people will just buy these. The console deal was a big win for AMD as it allowed them to severely increase their turn-over and to bring AMD technology in a lot more homes. But it didn't really increase their desktop reputation. Even when that reputation was solid amongst tech-savvy people, like in the day of the AMD Athlon XP and Athlon 64 X2, it was still a far cry from Intel's slab of concrete that is their brand loyalty, to most consumers.