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Will Skylake bring quad core to the 13" at last?
- Thread starter emilioestevez
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Unless they can get at least an iris 7100 graphics on that chip and a 35 W TDP (similar to i7-3632QM), Apple might consider it. Anyways how come Intel haven't manufactured a 35W TDP Quad Core CPU since the 3rd gen Core CPU?
No the chip specs have been released and the Skylake 28W chips (the ones apple use in the 13 inch macbook pro) are all dual core hypethreaded exactly as they are now.
The other thing is that, generally speaking, the more cores a CPU has, the lower its single-core performance. Apps that can make use of the parallel nature of multiple cores are not widespread at this point, and tend to be something used by professionals. A quad-core chip would therefore perform worse in most situations that the 13" model would be typically used for. Not to say that adding it as an option, if it met all of the other conditions, at which point they don't, but on the other hand Apple doesn't tend to try and fill every niche with their laptop offerings.
Not really. Modern chips can allocate some of its TDP on one core (this actually started with Nehalem architecture i.e. first gen core CPUs), enabling that core to overclock well above 1 GHz while the other cores enter their power save states. This is called Turbo Boost FYI. Today however, what limits the GHz ramp up is not really the TDP, but the voltage applied to the core. Back then, Sandy and Ivy Bridge have less efficiency in allocating their TDP to one core, making their dual core counterparts clock higher per core, but starting with Haswell, the quad cores clock as much as their dual cores on singel core and even higher on the highest binned quad core model because Haswell is far more efficient in distributing the TDP to one core by making the other cores go to very low power C7 states (see here: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2622...l_cpu_better_performance_all_day_battery.html)
That's true, but you'll note that the 'base' frequency, which is the maximum 'guaranteed' frequency for a given chip is significantly higher on the dual-core processors compared to the quad cores, even when the quads have a much higher TDP - 2.7Ghz on the 13" Pro vs. 2.2Ghz on the 15".
I do believe that cores will only go up to guaranteed base clock when ALL of the cores are loaded and TDP limit is exceeded. However, when running 1-2 cores while the other cores are loaded, you can see that the GHz is always near the max GHz that they can turbo INDEFINITELY since the chip as a whole hasn't reached its 45 W TDP when running full 2 cores on max turbo GHz unless the temperature throttle is activated.
I wish I can test one or you can test one if your friend has a properly cooled quad core PC or rMBP. Run an application called Prime95, set the cores to 1 or 2 and test for 30 minutes. The dual core might drop to its guaranteed base clock while the quad core utilizing only 2 cores is still clocking close to their max GHz due to extra available TDP.
I wish I can test one or you can test one if your friend has a properly cooled quad core PC or rMBP. Run an application called Prime95, set the cores to 1 or 2 and test for 30 minutes. The dual core might drop to its guaranteed base clock while the quad core utilizing only 2 cores is still clocking close to their max GHz due to extra available TDP.
