Waiting for Skylake MBP thread

[koyoot]

It will very likely be on par with the Haswell GT3e, or slightly better. That will be an amazing performance boost for people used to the 13" machines though. 13" MBPs haven't had relatively good integrated GPU performance since the Geforce 320 in the 2010 models.

Broadwell Iris has 48 cores, and gets around 1000 pts in 3dMark FireStrike.
Broadwell Iris Pro has 48 cores, plus 128 MB of eDRAM and in the same benchmark gets around 1800 pts.
Haswell Iris Pro has 40 cores with 128 MB of eDRAm and in 3dMark Firestrike gets 1400 pts.

The problem is this: Intel GPUs are not bottlenecked by eDRAM memory size, but bandwidth. Thats why Skylake Iris with 48 cores, and 64 MB of eDRAm will have the same performance as Broadwell Iris Pro. Skylake Iris Pro will have 50% more cores, and more memory, but that will not change the bandwidth.

P.S. Broadwell Iris Pro is as fast as Geforce GTX670M...

 

[dusk007]

13" MBPs haven't had relatively good integrated GPU performance since the Geforce 320 in the 2010 models.

This is really a strange statement. Just because it was Nvidia does not make it any better. The current Intel IGPs are far superior in performance. If the 320 was ever considered anything other than aweful than Intel is just amazing. This notion Intel is bad Nvidia is great is just wrong. The 320 was also a GPU limited by bandwidth and so would be a nvidia implementation today that shares the main memory bandwidth. Iris is 4 times faster than the 320. If anyone complains about Intel Iris performance they cannot possibly consider the 320 acceptable. That was a GPU that would have a hard time beating the GPU in the 5W Macbook.

 

[mikeo007]

This is really a strange statement. Just because it was Nvidia does not make it any better. The current Intel IGPs are far superior in performance. If the 320 was ever considered anything other than aweful than Intel is just amazing. This notion Intel is bad Nvidia is great is just wrong. The 320 was also a GPU limited by bandwidth and so would be a nvidia implementation today that shares the main memory bandwidth. Iris is 4 times faster than the 320. If anyone complains about Intel Iris performance they cannot possibly consider the 320 acceptable. That was a GPU that would have a hard time beating the GPU in the 5W Macbook.

You missed the word "relatively" as in relative to the DGPU performance around the same time.
Obviously newer GPUs will be better, but the relative performance gap is larger than with the 320/330 from 2010.

 

[OSX7]

Apple has offered integrated graphics only on the 15 inch pro years before now (2009 model I believe), and it has never signaled a retreat from discrete GPU altogether. One of the purposes of the Macbook Pro is to be a mobile workstation. While I get that "pointless" things are often eliminated by Apple, such as the optical drive, a dedicated graphics processor is not that. I don't see them removing dedicated graphics from the Macbook Pro for a while. They will likely offer versions without it, but I feel that it'll be an option for a good while. Integrated graphics have come a long way, but a dedicated gpu continues to be a more powerful option.

That macbook did have an integrated gpu...from nvidia (GT 9400) but it was paired up with a discreet GT 9600. The GT 9400 was "integrated" just because it came part of the nvidia chipset. These were later replaced by Intel's solutions. Caution: im not talking about CPU's when reffering to Nvidia and intel chipsets. The purpose of the macbook is just what you said, no one is disputing that. The Macbook pro is a mobile workstation and apparently Apple is confident enough in the Iris Pro and its future iterations that it considers it workstation ready. Compute performance was the sole reason behind the replacement of the 650m that came with all 15 inch macbooks (2012) with the Iris 5200 in the 2013 model. The problem lies in that they won't be able to include a dGPU if the design gets slimmer. The 13 inch macbook used to include one, but once they made it thinner (smaller battery, compromised cooling) including one was not possible anymore. If they were to include a dGPU they would have to reduce the TDP of such GPU, current dGPUs on 15 macbook are 45w parts (a.k.a mid range, not even high range, which explains why the 960m couldn't make it into this year's model). This conclusion is assuming they were to get a slimmer redesign...which is pretty much what we know Jony Ive wants.

 

[dusk007]

@koyoot
But it is bottlenecked by TDP.
A 65W, a 47W and a 28W TDP chip will not all reach the same level of performance. Especially not in game where the CPU load is usually higher than in synth. benchmarks like firestrike. Especially considering minimum frame rate.

 

[OSX7]

DGPU is not pointless. The reason to get rid of it is to allow high power APUs or SoCs work in that situation, because simply PCIe is gigantic bottleneck for EVERY modern GPU. The power of GPUs is right now way higher than it is displayed on the screen, and its bottlenecked by PCIe.

And thats exactly why everyone went with SoCs. The problem is that there is no balance. AMD has great GPUs, and rubbish CPUs, Intel has great CPUs and rubbish iGPUs. There is a hope that Zen finally will bring back AMD on the right spot, because 14 nm process, new architecture for CPUs with performance like Ivy Bridge or Haswell CPU on single core(IPC), coupled with massive 2 GB eDRAM(HBM) with extremely high bandwidth of 256 GB/s with lets say 2048 GCN cores would bring a lot of benefit for whole industry, and stagnating PC market. All packed in around 125W power envelope. Much, much less than any current solution with quad core, and that kind of performance GPU. But that is still a mist over the future.

PCIe is far from being a bottleneck for GPUs unless you are in the HPC space. It's a common misconception people have. A GTX Titan runs flawlessly on a PCIe 2.0 x8. I have even seen people connecting that beast over thunderbolt 2's PCIe x4 connection. Now with thunderbolt 3 being the equivalent of an PCIe 3.0 x4, it will be pretty much a native solution for eGPUs. It goes without saying that a Titan obliterates anything Apple has. Even a PCIe gen 1 connection proves to be little bottleneck for modern graphics cards. Here is a link: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/graphics-performance-myths-debunked,3739-3.html

 

[koyoot]

You missed the word "relatively" as in relative to the DGPU performance around the same time.
Obviously newer GPUs will be better, but the relative performance gap is larger than with the 320/330 from 2010.

Its not because the 320M was so good but more because GT330M was that rubbish.

Dusk. All Intel CPUs have the same architecture. They differ by clock, voltage, cache, and TDP. In fact the only difference between 47W chip and 65 would be the iGPU and the fact, that Turbo clock can stay longer on higher TDP CPU. From my experience I've learned to not look at Turbo states, because mostly CPU stays within 45W range and clocks itself way smaller.
The thing is: CPU downclocks itself to sustain max performance on iGPU. And iGPU performance is not affected by slower clock on CPU than slower clock on itself, or complete lack of bandwidth. Thats why Iris with eDRAM will not be bottlenecked by smaller amount of thermal headroom on CPU on Skylake.

 

[dusk007]

You missed the word "relatively" as in relative to the DGPU performance around the same time.
Obviously newer GPUs will be better, but the relative performance gap is larger than with the 320/330 from 2010.

One could argue that was more because the 330M was so **** poor and not so much an accomplishment of the 320M. Eitherway as things go bandwidth pretty much limits which hurts AMD even more than Intel. I really hope HBM will get cheaper quickly because with that there is no reason to bother with a dGPU anymore. Just a unified main memory of 16GB of HBM and as big a GPU as can fit TDP wise. That will be the best and most power efficient solution. dGPU are a waste of power, with having to spend a third to half their power just for powering the memory subsystem.
Compared to Maxwell or AMD, Intel's GPUs even with eDRAM are still lacking. HBM can help AMD leverage their advantage and bring them back into the game. Zen just has to be decent and does not even need to be an equal.

 

[koyoot]

OSX7, http://searchbusinessanalytics.techtarget.com/definition/processing-in-memory-PIM

PCIe 3.0 x16 has max bandwidth of 15 GB/s. PCIe 2.0 x16 has 8GB/s. Thats why the differences are small. But the biggest difference is the latency that PCIe bottleneck causes.

But take this. GPU is on the same die as CPU, and shares with CPU the same eDRAM which has 256 GB/s(in theory...). Also there is a technology called PiM(Processing in Memory). With absolutely NO LATENCY. No bottleneck.

If we are thinking about the HBM memory, and reducing the latency, and bringing gigantic bandwidth to the land of PCs, it was exactly designed for getting rid of all this. CPUs always were waiting for data, because of DX11 inability to work on wide GPUs even GPUs are waiting for the data to execute today. All of this is caused by gigantic bottleneck in PCIe, but is to some degree sorted with huge amounts of data in memory of GPU(wasted space in other words).

Imagine a SoC that would have all of the benefits of wide, and relatively fast CPU cores, wide, fast, and quite huge amount of RAM, and wide and fast GPU that is not bottlenecked by latency. Now we're talking!

P.S. that is a hint where the industry is going. But it will become apparent in coming months, years...

 

[cmChimera]

That macbook did have an integrated gpu...from nvidia (GT 9400) but it was paired up with a discreet GT 9600. The GT 9400 was "integrated" just because it came part of the nvidia chipset.

No, the entry model only had the 9400. You could opt into the model with both. I just double checked on Mactracker app.

apparently Apple is confident enough in the Iris Pro and its future iterations that it considers it workstation ready.

I think thats assuming a lot. Apple hasn't indicated anything of the sort.

 

[OSX7]

OSX7, http://searchbusinessanalytics.techtarget.com/definition/processing-in-memory-PIM

PCIe 3.0 x16 has max bandwidth of 15 GB/s. PCIe 2.0 x16 has 8GB/s. Thats why the differences are small. But the biggest difference is the latency that PCIe bottleneck causes.

But take this. GPU is on the same die as CPU, and shares with CPU the same eDRAM which has 256 GB/s(in theory...). Also there is a technology called PiM(Processing in Memory). With absolutely NO LATENCY. No bottleneck.

If we are thinking about the HBM memory, and reducing the latency, and bringing gigantic bandwidth to the land of PCs, it was exactly designed for getting rid of all this. CPUs always were waiting for data, because of DX11 inability to work on wide GPUs even GPUs are waiting for the data to execute today. All of this is caused by gigantic bottleneck in PCIe, but is to some degree sorted with huge amounts of data in memory of GPU(wasted space in other words).

Imagine a SoC that would have all of the benefits of wide, and relatively fast CPU cores, wide, fast, and quite huge amount of RAM, and wide and fast GPU that is not bottlenecked by latency. Now we're talking!

P.S. that is a hint where the industry is going. But it will become apparent in coming months, years...

Now that would be awesome

 

[OSX7]

No, the entry model only had the 9400. You could opt into the model with both. I just double checked on Mactracker app. I think thats assuming a lot. Apple hasn't indicated anything of the sort.

Sorry, my bad. It in fact only had the Nvidia GT 9400m as "integrated". And yes, I may be assuming a lot but this forum specialises in that kind of stuff. Nothing is written in stone. Apple is one sort of unpredictable animal.

 

[cmChimera]

Sorry, my bad. It in fact only had the Nvidia GT 9400m as "integrated". And yes, I may be assuming a lot but this forums specialises in that kind of stuff. Nothing is written in stone. Apple is one sort of unpredictable animal.

Yeah this is true. Luckily, we probably won't be waiting too long to see what they're up to with the next Pro though.

 

[OSX7]

Yeah this is true. Luckily, we probably won't be waiting too long to see what they're up to with the next Pro though.

I REALLY hope so. I want it to happen this October. I cannot wait any longer. They were going to buy me the highest end 15 inch pro but I had to stop them from doing so because I knew Apple would be releasing something soon. I just hope it's near though.

 

[koyoot]

September is possible, however, more Skylake CPUs will be available in October.

 

[mikeo007]

One could argue that was more because the 330M was so **** poor and not so much an accomplishment of the 320M. Eitherway as things go bandwidth pretty much limits which hurts AMD even more than Intel. I really hope HBM will get cheaper quickly because with that there is no reason to bother with a dGPU anymore. Just a unified main memory of 16GB of HBM and as big a GPU as can fit TDP wise. That will be the best and most power efficient solution. dGPU are a waste of power, with having to spend a third to half their power just for powering the memory subsystem.
Compared to Maxwell or AMD, Intel's GPUs even with eDRAM are still lacking. HBM can help AMD leverage their advantage and bring them back into the game. Zen just has to be decent and does not even need to be an equal.

Yup, but then you'd also have to consider how much weaker the Intel IGPU was in 2010 (Apple skipped it completely in the 13" due to how poor it was). Heck, even the 2011 version (HD3000) which actually was shipped in Macbooks wasn't up to par with the 320m. It's not saying the 320m was a great GPU, just that it was better than the alternative options.

My only point was that the 320m was a reasonable IGPU when the only other options were the terrible Intel offerings. And that's all Mac users had for the past few years.
Intel has stepped up their game with the GT3e, and now that they're including the embedded RAM in the lower TDP chipsets, I have high hopes that we'll be seeing a 13" MBP with graphical potential that we haven't seen in about 6 years.

 

[ooans]

Anyone else super curious about the possibility of using the Skylake H mobile Xeons in MacBook Pros? Too bad there's so little info on them atm. It is possible that they require so much power that Apple using them in laptops is a clear: no.

 

[NJPT]

Anyone else super curious about the possibility of using the Skylake H mobile Xeons in MacBook Pros? Too bad there's so little info on them atm. It is possible that they require so much power that Apple using them in laptops is a clear: no.

I agree, I wish there was more available information on the Skylake H mobile Xeons. As you mentioned, I think there's basically zero chance Apple puts them in MBPs. The overall vector of Apple laptop design under Ives is quite clear: thinner, lighter, and more power-efficient. A Xeon processor would be counterproductive to all of those goals.

 

[koyoot]

Those Xeons are possibly 45W TDP CPUs - the same that are in rMBP, anyway.

 

[t0mat0]

iMac?

 

[Tourgott]

Is September actually likely for the 13" MacBook Pro? I'm getting a replacement out of my Apple Care (new 2015 one) and consider to sell it directly to get a Late 2015 if there actually will be one.

 

[AYNOM]

Is September actually likely for the 13" MacBook Pro? I'm getting a replacement out of my Apple Care (new 2015 one) and consider to sell it directly to get a Late 2015 if there actually will be one.

Nope.

 

[NJPT]

Is September actually likely for the 13" MacBook Pro? I'm getting a replacement out of my Apple Care (new 2015 one) and consider to sell it directly to get a Late 2015 if there actually will be one.

The answer is no. The mobile Skylake chips being released in September per leaked roadmaps are likely to lack vPro, meaning Apple will probably not use them.

Appropriate vPro U-class chips for a 13" rMBP (i5-6300U and i7-6600U) likely won't be released until January. In the remote possibility Apple releases a quad core 13" rMBP, there might be an appropriate chip (i5-6440HQ) scheduled for October-November; even then, given rumors this chip will have a TDP of 45W, it's probably not going to happen.

 

[joscejrod]

Is September actually likely for the 13" MacBook Pro? I'm getting a replacement out of my Apple Care (new 2015 one) and consider to sell it directly to get a Late 2015 if there actually will be one.

I wouldn't expect new macbook pro before March-April 2016. I hope these new models will bring New Macbook's improvements, like all metal enclosure, high performance speakers, butterfly keyboard, usb-c (added to other ports, not only this) and slimmer design with three color options. But maybe apple wants to separate consumer products of professional producs, they are going to release new macbook pro with macpro colour. Nobody knows...
I thing Macbook Air is going to disappear soon, when they can decrease the macbook cost.
I expect these realeases for september-october keynotes.
September: iphone 6s/iphone 6s plus and apple tv with apple tv development kit
October: 5k display for mac pro(they could upgrade internal parts of this mac with thunderbolt 3 to support 4k in 60hz mode), updated imacs, maybe updated mac minis and new ipads(I'm waiting for a true ipad mini 4, not like last year model. Not interested in Air or ipad plus/pro)

What do you think about my thoughts?

 

[cmChimera]

I wouldn't expect new macbook pro before March-April 2016. I hope these new models will bring New Macbook's improvements, like all metal enclosure, high performance speakers, butterfly keyboard, usb-c (added to other ports, not only this) and slimmer design with three color options. But maybe apple wants to separate consumer products of professional producs, they are going to release new macbook pro with macpro colour. Nobody knows...
I thing Macbook Air is going to disappear soon, when they can decrease the macbook cost.
I expect these realeases for september-october keynotes.
September: iphone 6s/iphone 6s plus and apple tv with apple tv development kit
October: 5k display for mac pro(they could upgrade internal parts of this mac with thunderbolt 3 to support 4k in 60hz mode), updated imacs, maybe updated mac minis and new ipads(I'm waiting for a true ipad mini 4, not like last year model. Not interested in Air or ipad plus/pro)

What do you think about my thoughts?

Many people, including myself, do not think Apple will wait until March of next year to release a new Macbook Pro.