Side thread about laptops:
Laptop CPUs are much harder. Devs (mostly) want a powerful laptop. But laptops must be portable, so we have a battery...and limited power when we're portable. And HiDPI is great...but that's GPU power. And weight matters, so they need to be light.
Laptop CPUs are much harder. Devs (mostly) want a powerful laptop. But laptops must be portable, so we have a battery...and limited power when we're portable. And HiDPI is great...but that's GPU power. And weight matters, so they need to be light.
All of these things are fighting each other. Eating space. Competing for power. Generating heat. It's a terrible game of tradeoffs that's just recently (the last ~2 years) gotten decent. So what changed? The big game changer is GPUs, they made a huge leap last year.
When NVIDIA went from GTX 980M laptop GPUs to GTX 1050, it wasn't a small step. Laptop GPUs for nearly a decade were a dirty marketing lie.
A GTX 980M is approximately a desktop 750 Ti. (due to power) That means it wasn't a 1 generation jump to 1050...it was a 3 generation jump.
A GTX 980M is approximately a desktop 750 Ti. (due to power) That means it wasn't a 1 generation jump to 1050...it was a 3 generation jump.
Okay great, GPUs made a huge leap. That means they idle more and eat less power...so they allow more power and thermal budget for other things. Thermals are a huge problem in a laptop. Fans, heat pipes, and air space all eat space, again: tradeoffs galore.
Power longevity generally isn't a priority in a powerful laptop, devs will most often opt for mower horsepower than battery life. So our real constraint is thermals. Laptops heat up. Fast. And they can only cool so much...that's our thermal budget.
You could say screw the thermals, melt the internals and watch plastic drip off before your eyes, but not many people are going to buy the sterilizer 9000. So compared to a desktop, we're *very* limited on how much heat we can generate.
In an attempt to keep some progress (and money) going, Intel has started to ship 6-core CPUs in laptops. The new Dell 9570s and MacBook 2018s for example.
But, we're still at 14nm. So the thermals haven't changed much overall. 6 CPUs full speed? AWESOME, for a minute or two.
But, we're still at 14nm. So the thermals haven't changed much overall. 6 CPUs full speed? AWESOME, for a minute or two.
It's not a bad thing, but if you're comparing benchmarks, it's more important than ever to compare your daily workloads. Are your compiles < 1 minute? Probably awesome gains. Are they 30 minutes? Then you better test. Thermal throttling is going to be a factor.
Judging 6-core CPUs in laptop based on short duration benchmarks is basically a lie. The performance situation changes drastically once thermal limits are hit and throttling kicks in. Just be very aware of this.
Good journalism sites *are* running short & long benchmarks.
Good journalism sites *are* running short & long benchmarks.
So anyway, I expect we won't see much progress on laptop performance until 10nm processor lithography is mainstream. This is when we'll see drastic thermal and power jumps due to physics of CPUs. Hopefully we'll get that in the next 2 years...but it's been delayed many times.
