Intel now deactivates AVX-512 capability on new Alder Lake CPUs

Dimitrios1983

2022-03-03 22:55

It appears INTEL has taken a page out of MICROSOFT'S playbook. It also appears there is new virus that attacks politicians,miners, business companies called................................................................GREED.

#5997908

JamesSneed

2022-03-03 23:37

schmidtbag:

I don't think it's even microcode. I think it's just BIOS.

Probably for now but I wouldn't doubt Intel to start fusing that off in the new chips.

#5997909

JamesSneed

2022-03-03 23:39

tunejunky:

i agree at heart. but being local and knowing Intel the way i do i'm not being snarky or an ass when i say that's why they have the lawyers. so they can do as they like and outlast anyone to getting to and through a court case. this is better off as a complaint to a regulatory body as that's free. the sad truth is they know this will affect only a tiny sliver of folks to mass market sales, but a noticeable increase in xeon sales at the exact same time Xeon is under siege. and yes it is exactly market segregation.

The big picture it will work out. AMD will support AVX-512 and developers and people needing it will flock to AMD. So much easier when your full stack supports the same instructions.

#5997975

rl66

2022-03-04 10:16

H83:

Even worse, AVX512 was one of the few features were they could differentiate themselves from AMD...

It will stay this way: AMD will have it and Intel will not... Nice (stupid) move.

#5997978

rl66

2022-03-04 10:20

anticupidon:

Lemme get this clear. The featured is present in the silicon, at hardware level. But they choose not to enable it by some microcode alteration? Have I got this clear?

For now yes, but in this news they said that they will physicaly remove it from new CPU and force OEM to upgrade bios to disable it on old one.

#5998011

nizzen

2022-03-04 12:46

rl66:

It will stay this way: AMD will have it and Intel will not... Nice (stupid) move.

Intel has had it for many years on HEDT plattform. Not many people care about it. People just care if the take it away LOL. My 4.5 years old 7980xe has Avx 512. Never used avx 512 other than benchmarks 😛

#5998058

rl66

2022-03-04 15:02

nizzen:

Intel has had it for many years on HEDT plattform. Not many people care about it. People just care if the take it away LOL. My 4.5 years old 7980xe has Avx 512. Never used avx 512 other than benchmarks 😛

same here lol

#5998074

NewTRUMP Order

2022-03-04 15:50

nevcairiel:

They never sold you AVX-512. It was never part of their marketing or specification. You only knew about it because some people poked around in it. Therefor, they have no obligation to keep it or give it to you.

Oh I see so it's ok to disable something you own as long as you are ignorant.

#5998088

nekrosoft13

2022-03-04 16:57

schmidtbag:

I don't think it's even microcode. I think it's just BIOS.

on the new chips they blew the fuse on silicon level, so it will never enable any more, doesn't matter what bios you are using

#5998093

nizzen

2022-03-04 17:04

nekrosoft13:

on the new chips they blew the fuse on silicon level, so it will never enable any more, doesn't matter what bios you are using

And no one actually care. That's the best part 😀

#5998125

-Tj-

2022-03-04 17:53

Some linux folks do. https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=rocket-lake-avx512&num=1

#5998139

user1

2022-03-04 18:55

I don't really understand why they bother, the number of people using it is pretty low in the first place. Its not like they stand to gain anything by fusing it off, if there was any product that they should have fused it off for it would've been rocket lake, because at least with those it hurt power consumption, causing throttling under heavy load. With alder lake that is actually fixed.

#5998140

TLD LARS

2022-03-04 18:57

NewTRUMP Order:

Oh I see so it's ok to disable something you own as long as you are ignorant.

AVX512 was never ment to work on the chip, it was activated by partners that went against Intels marketing material. No one promised that AVX512 would work, it was just a nice bonus.

#5998142

user1

2022-03-04 19:07

TLD LARS:

AVX512 was never ment to work on the chip, it was activated by partners that went against Intels marketing material. No one promised that AVX512 would work, it was just a nice bonus.

It was meant to work, that's why its on the chip, the problem is that some genius at intel decided to not validate the feature , basically cut at the last minute , No real explanation has been given, though it probably has something to do with software compatibility if I had to guess.

#5998146

MegaFalloutFan

2022-03-04 19:37

If its true its Great news, our older CPUs that have this will rise in value, its time to buy more of them and then re-sale.

#5998149

TLD LARS

2022-03-04 20:03

user1:

It was meant to work, that's why its on the chip

Let me put it this way then, Intel never ment it to work on the chips sold. Just like in the old days when it was possible to unlock extra cores on some GPUes or the old 3 core Phenom CPUes. The hardware is there but it is deliberately turned off by software. I do not have a source on it, but I am pretty sure a great deal of Intel chips have working P and E cores disabled on them, because they tend to not fail in pairs. There will be 3, 5 and 7 core chips out there, that have disabled working cores to turn them into 2, 4 and 6 core CPUes. just like the iGPU is probably working on some of the KFC chips. A Ryzen 5600 or 5900 has 8 cores chips hardware but they are turned off, it still does not allow you to complain about the hardware being there but not active, because you got what you payed for and no promises was broken. A 3090 still has turned off cores on them and I am pretty sure a few of them are 100% working, but still have disabled cores on the chip to make them the same as the rest.

#5998154

nizzen

2022-03-04 20:39

-Tj-:

Some linux folks do. https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=rocket-lake-avx512&num=1

For playing benchmarks?

#5998156

-Tj-

2022-03-04 20:59

For using those apps that are mentioned in benchmarks xD Well Im happy to have this option with i7 11700, will I use it? I doubt it.. maybe just to see whats all about with this Intel Neural AI part https://community.intel.com/t5/Blogs/Tech-Innovation/Artificial-Intelligence-AI/Quantizing-ONNX-Models-using-Intel-Neural-Compressor/post/1355237 https://community.intel.com/t5/Blogs/Tech-Innovation/Artificial-Intelligence-AI/Introducing-OpenVINO-integration-with-TensorFlow/post/1347434

#5998570

user1

2022-03-06 19:36

TLD LARS:

Let me put it this way then, Intel never ment it to work on the chips sold. Just like in the old days when it was possible to unlock extra cores on some GPUes or the old 3 core Phenom CPUes. The hardware is there but it is deliberately turned off by software. I do not have a source on it, but I am pretty sure a great deal of Intel chips have working P and E cores disabled on them, because they tend to not fail in pairs. There will be 3, 5 and 7 core chips out there, that have disabled working cores to turn them into 2, 4 and 6 core CPUes. just like the iGPU is probably working on some of the KFC chips. A Ryzen 5600 or 5900 has 8 cores chips hardware but they are turned off, it still does not allow you to complain about the hardware being there but not active, because you got what you payed for and no promises was broken. A 3090 still has turned off cores on them and I am pretty sure a few of them are 100% working, but still have disabled cores on the chip to make them the same as the rest.

hardware binning is used to get a greater yield from partially defective silicon, that is a very different situation than this, as there is clear substantial benefit for doing so. I'm very skeptical that fusing off avx512 would increase yields in any meaningful way, as such a core defect would almost certainly break the entire core not just the avx units. this is much more like how fma4 is partially works on zen1 , but not advertised or officially supported . In the case of alderlake, the product ships with it disabled already, and requires the user to enable it via bios option. not many people are going to do that in the first place, what this is , is most likely a cash grab, 2 things, according to the article so far only the non-k skus seem to be fused off. secondly if they do fuse off avx-512 for all alderlake products, you'll probably have to buy an hedt product in the future to get that support. both of these = more dollars , not that any company should be saintly, but I do find it displeasing that they try to nickel and dime everybody at every chance they get, even when the benefit to intel is in the order of fractions of penny per sale.

#5998637

0blivious

2022-03-07 06:39

These impacted, unicorn builds don't really make any sense. This bargain chip requires an expensive motherboard for this avx-512 trick anyways. So any money saved by buying this chip (in hopes of squeezing more performance) is blown on the motherboard needed to overclock. EDIT: Apparently you can still buy expensive boards and overclock. AVX-512 was available on cheaper boards.