News Intel talks Meteor Lake AI and efficiency: Head of performance marketing lab is 'most excited' about battery life improvements

[Admin]

Intel's Dan Rogers sat down with Tom's Hardware to talk about Meteor Lake, new form factors, benchmarking AI PCs, and the new Core Ultra lineup nomenclature.

Intel talks Meteor Lake AI and efficiency: Head of performance marketing lab is 'most excited' about battery life improvements : Read more

 

[kjfatl]

It looks like all of these parts come from the same mask set. During testing the parts that test good for low power are given the low power SKU. The parts remaining parts are given a high power SKU. At the end of the testing process fuses are blown to configure the part appropriately.

 

[JamesJones44]

we're actually benchmarking the code paths

That's what all benchmarking is. Whether it's benchmarking general compute, SMID instructions, FPS, etc. those are "code paths" and benchmarking a specific piece of software against various different hardware configurations. I'm not sure why Intel believes the NPU is any different. Running a ResNet or YOLO model on various NPUs to judge relative performance from one NPU to the next is no different than running a compression test on two different CPUs.

 

[ThomasKinsley]

The last laptop I got is a decade old and the best battery life was maybe 4 hours? Now it's down to 2, and that's with a fuzzy 1366x768 screen. I might end up checking one of these out if the battery is good.

 

[endocine]

thermals looked insane on those meteor lake laptop previews, is 106C really OK?

 

[peachpuff]

Battery life and 115w turbo boost go hand in hand 👌

 

[syadnom]

It's all even more confusing to the end user. Intel Core Ultra 9 185H? that's a mouthful and what does it mean? And the mix of P and E cores and how that isn't really reflected in the part number is a concern as well. Turbo at 115W? or even 65W?

I feel like they are sort of trying to copy Apple with a big push into P & E core mixes, but they are still handing us >100W *laptop* CPUs.

How exactly does this compete with Apple hardware first of all, and then we have upcoming arm64 windows machines that are maybe not quite as fast as Apple's M2 and M3, but they are actually respectable performance and in a fraction of the power envelope. ie, that base 28W is actually max and idle is under 10W.

Not making this a 'mac' argument, just that Apple showed everyone what is possible and Qualcomm is fighting very very hard to make windows machines that do the same. Intel needs to do a lot better than 28W/65W/115W in a mobile chip or the only things you'll find intel logos on are high end gaming laptops.


Is intel going to be relegated to high powered desktop and barely portable gaming laptops? These chips simply don't look like 2024's laptop parts to me.

 

[TerryLaze]

Battery life and 115w turbo boost go hand in hand 👌

Being able to finish a job in less time does help with battery life, especially if the efficiency peak point is higher up the power curve, so if the cpu can use a good amount of power and that helps it to finish a job in far less time it will do so with less total power.

Also why would you want to be artificially limited to a low power draw on a 8p core system with a decently big iGPU? I understand it for when you are on battery, but why would you want to be forced to use little power when you are on mains?

 

[Colif]

Some interesting points raised in

seems to be a soft launch since nothing out there to test yet.

 

[bluvg]

Some interesting points raised in

seems to be a soft launch since nothing out there to test yet.

MLID is a great source and he would likely deny AMD bias, but I think he's let his MTL and general Intel disappointment cause him to lose perspective. For example, at 8:33 in that video, he says MTL is has "gone backwards in efficiency," while simultaneously showing a screenshot of a MTL benchmark from Dave2D showing it's far more efficient than Raptor Lake, almost double the battery life in one case.

Availability is going to take a bit of time (keep an eye on CES), though a few are available now. He also only occasionally points out that AMD Phoenix and Hawk Point are not that widespread in laptops, either (sadly).

 

[bluvg]

a handful of devices from MSI, Lenovo, Dell, HP, Asus, Acer, Samsung, Gigabyte, and more launched this week

Where? I didn't see anything from HP.

 

[aberkae]

Some are calling it Intel's Bulldozer moment. Is there any truth to that?

 

[peachpuff]

especially if the efficiency peak point is higher up the power curve

Since when is the efficiency peak point ever higher up in the power curve?

 

[TerryLaze]

Since when is the efficiency peak point ever higher up in the power curve?

Since for ever, and it's not but it CAN be, see here, at very low power this CPU needs more total power to finish the job, the curve goes downward.
And there is a second spot at just before 4Ghz where more power gives better efficiency.
https://chipsandcheese.com/2022/01/28/alder-lakes-power-efficiency-a-complicated-picture/

 

[truerock]

I'm not excited at about battery life... actually, I could care less.

I use a desktop PC 90% of the time.

When I use my notebook PC, 90% of the time it is plugged into an electrical outlet.

I really have no use case for using the battery on a notebook PC. Perhaps when I'm flying... except I think its been at least 2 or 3 years since the last time I used a notebook PC on an airplane. I flew on an Airbus A380 on its inaugural US to Germany flight and it had electrical outlets.

I am very interested in battery efficiency in regard to my iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch.

 

[peachpuff]

Since for ever, and it's not but it CAN be, see here, at very low power this CPU needs more total power to finish the job, the curve goes downward.
And there is a second spot at just before 4Ghz where more power gives better efficiency.
https://chipsandcheese.com/2022/01/28/alder-lakes-power-efficiency-a-complicated-picture/

I see your point but for this efficiency curve to play out in intel's favor they would need to test every app at certain frequencies and see where it gets the best efficiency(4ghz in 7zip) and setup an efficient profile and hope the user wants to use it or go balls out with the 115w peak usage.
To me 115w doesn't indicate that they're at the sweet spot in that efficiency curve, they're at the far right edge of it, efficiency be damned.

 

[TerryLaze]

I see your point but for this efficiency curve to play out in intel's favor they would need to test every app at certain frequencies and see where it gets the best efficiency(4ghz in 7zip) and setup an efficient profile and hope the user wants to use it or go balls out with the 115w peak usage.
To me 115w doesn't indicate that they're at the sweet spot in that efficiency curve, they're at the far right edge of it, efficiency be damned.

Hey, I'm just saying that having options is better than not having options.
If 115W is the max then you do have the option to use less but if say 30W is the max then you are stuck at not being able to use more.

 

[bluvg]

I'm not excited at about battery life... actually, I could care less.

I use a desktop PC 90% of the time.

When I use my notebook PC, 90% of the time it is plugged into an electrical outlet.

I really have no use case for using the battery on a notebook PC. Perhaps when I'm flying... except I think its been at least 2 or 3 years since the last time I used a notebook PC on an airplane. I flew on an Airbus A380 on its inaugural US to Germany flight and it had electrical outlets.

My guess is you likely care about thermals, though? Besides just unwanted fan noise, there have been lots of thermal problems with recent-gen intel thin-and-light laptops.

 

[bluvg]

Some are calling it Intel's Bulldozer moment. Is there any truth to that?

I think it's Moore's Law is Dead saying that. His comparisons are interesting, but I think he's lost some objectivity on MTL. It makes for good story-telling as humans are wont to do. Time will tell.