back to article Intel's makeshift Kaby Lake Cores hope to lure punters from tired PCs

Intel's stop-gap Kaby Lake processors – aka the seventh-generation Core family – will ship in laptops starting from September, we're told. According to Chipzilla, the first wave of the new Cores will appear in 10mm-thick notebooks and two-in-one convertible tablets aimed at small businesses and normal folk. The CPUs will …

  1. Charlie Clark Silver badge

    Presumably Apple has been waiting for these chips for the 2016 models.

    Hardware support for VP9 will be nice. :-)

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      You're assuming Apple will support that hardware in MacOS. Given the lack of certainty on VP9's patent status, they may stick with h.264/h.265 support since they've already licensed all the necessary patents (well at least the ones that MPEG knows about)

      1. Charlie Clark Silver badge

        You're assuming Apple will support that hardware in MacOS

        Google has already indemnified all the patent stuff. So that's 2011's battle.

        Safari for Sierra supports WebM and WebP so it looks like they've caved.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          That indemnification is worth zero if Apple is sued, because they have to fight the battle before Google is liable for anything. Google is completely unrealistic in thinking they can have a codec that isn't encumbered by patents. There were bystanders waiting until h.265 and h.265 was finalized before stepping out of the woodwork, if VP9 and VP10 becomes a thing, there will be patent holders (whether trolls or legit) coming out...

  2. Mage Silver badge

    DRM is evil

    DRM is immoral and removes rights under the Berne Convention, as unlike copyright, it doesn't usually expire.

    Anything helping the use of it is a really bad idea.

    1. Paul Crawford Silver badge

      Re: DRM is evil

      There is always the RedFox software tools to rip/bypass BD disk DRM and let you play what you bought as you want to.

      Or simply wait for the 4k files to appear on some torrent, as they always do. Such a shame the movie studios seem not to realise that playing paid-for content should be the easiest and most pleasing experience of all.

    2. Charlie Clark Silver badge

      Re: DRM is evil

      Sounds more like handwaving than anything else.

      It will probably be harder to use hardware accelerated decoding to another stream for anything that is wrapped in DRM but the CPU itself should be beefy enough to allow the DRM to be stripped software at an acceptable rate.

      Content owners always demand DRM even if the IT industry keeps telling them that it's a stopgap at best and at worst tissue paper. As long as they intend to distribute their content in places like China, they really don't need to worry about people ripping, often legitimately (backups are legal), content they have paid for elsewhere.

      1. Christian Berger

        That's why we must outlaw DRM

        "Content owners always demand DRM"

        Yes, but being faced with not selling anything or dropping DRM, they would quickly drop DRM. We could simply outlaw it, just like we outlaw electric appliances that give you a shock while using them. DRM is a defect at best and a civil rights issue at worst.

    3. Suricou Raven

      Re: DRM is evil

      The expiration of copyright is barely applicable - very few things produced in your lifetime will be public domain before your death. The only way it can happen is if an author dies while you are young, and you get to see the copyright expire seventy years later.

      1. Adam 52 Silver badge

        Re: DRM is evil

        What? Berne convention is life + 50 yrs for authors. First publication or broadcast date plus 50 yrs for films, TV etc and 25 yrs from creation for artistic works.

        So very much relevant for, say, Tolkien, The Beatles, Star Wars, Andy Warhol or David Bailey.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: DRM is evil

          So when exactly are Beatles hits going out of copyright?

          1. This post has been deleted by its author

  3. Eddy Ito
    Meh

    "... give seventh-generation Cores up to a 12 per cent performance boost over the sixth-generation – well, when running the SYSmark benchmark on a seventh-gen 15W 3.5GHz Core i7 7500U versus a sixth-gen 15W 3.1GHz Core i7 6500U."

    Just so I'm clear, they bumped the max clock speed 12.9% and got a 12% improvement. Pardon me if I'm less than tickled paisley but I'm going to hold off on the back flips for a bit longer.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      More importantly, check the Intel slides: it improves your productivity by up to 12% as well!

      In other words, simply by upgrading to the latest Intel processors, you can fire up to 10% of your workforce.

      I believe Intel have been testing this feature internally:

      http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/04/19/intel_q1_fy2016_job_cuts/

  4. jzl

    Thunderbolt & USB

    The biggest change is the inclusion of USB3.1 and Thunderbolt support in the chipset. Hopefully we'll start to see them both really take off now.

    1. Christian Berger

      Re: Thunderbolt & USB

      Since Thunderbolt is PCI-E on an external connector, it's a _huge_ security issue. You could simply read out all the RAM through it, and even patch code into our RAM so you could take over that computer. I fail to see how that could be desirable.

      1. Suricou Raven

        Re: Thunderbolt & USB

        It's very desirable if you seek to get your hands on the encryption keys for that DRM.

      2. P. Lee

        Re: Thunderbolt & USB

        >I fail to see how that could be desirable.

        For server clusters which need to sync data?

        Not all external devices are untrusted.

      3. jzl

        Re: Thunderbolt & USB

        If you don't trust hardware, you shouldn't be plugging it into trusted or secure equipment. That's true of current USB.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Intel's seventh-generation Core die ... Click to enlarge any pics

    Awww - not enough magnification for our reverse engineering :-(

  6. nematoad

    Oh?

    "...to make the studios comfortable with sharing high-quality content to PCs for the first time,"

    Presumably he's referring to the picture quality and not the quality of the picture.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Wrong target . . surprise, surprise!

    "Hollywood bosses didn't want to stream 4K ultra high-def content from their studios' websites without mechanisms in place to thwart casual rippers"

    . . .although, of course, it is not the casual rippers (or customers to give them their proper name) that they really need to be worried about. Sigh.

    1. Charlie Clark Silver badge

      Re: Wrong target . . surprise, surprise!

      Yes, but that's the way ideology works: make the man on the street feel guilty as soon as you call his name, because we all know we probably have done something "wrong". Note, this is the inverse of "you've got nothing to hide" mantra of the data suckers.

    2. isogen74

      Re: Wrong target . . surprise, surprise!

      "Hollywood bosses didn't want to stream 4K ultra high-def content from their studios' websites without mechanisms in place to thwart casual rippers"

      ... so they went back in time and screwed the telco network competition law so badly that few of the populous could even stream 4K even if they wanted to.

      If you can watch it you can't pirate it ...

    3. Dan 55 Silver badge

      Re: Wrong target . . surprise, surprise!

      So, what, some kind of protected pipeline from specific servers belonging to the M. P. Ass. of A. to the video display probably using the magic of TPM?

      I see as well as renting the OS with Windows 10 the future is paying a one-time licence fee for a computer so bigcorp may deign to let me do certain things that it approves of with it.

  8. John Savard

    Which Atari?

    I can't tell if that's an Atari 65XE or an Atari 130XE that Kaby Lake is finally going to lure people away from...

    But more seriously, if the new improved 14nm process features a wider pitch than the old one, and Dennart Scaling means smaller transistors aren't automatically all that much better, this makes it look as if going to 10nm won't allow a narrower pitch - but maybe it will, just not as much narrower as formerly expected - which makes me wonder if this means that there isn't any point in going to 10nm.

    1. I am the Walrus

      Re: Which Atari?

      Looks like my old 130XE to me but I don't recall there being a 3.5" FDD made for them? I only had a 5.25" drive with mine.

      1. AIBailey

        Re: Which Atari?

        I was going to wade in with a similar comment.

        It could be a 65XE or a 130XE - there's no way to tell on that image without seeing the badge. Either way, the A8's used 5.25" floppies almost exclusively. There may have been some company offering a 3.5" drive towards the end of its life, however no commercial software would have been released on that media.

        1. Dan 55 Silver badge

          Re: Which Atari?

          You're overthinking this. It's a stock photo. They bought an old computer and stuck some old floppies on it.

  9. Mikel

    No W7 or 8

    Microsoft won't support legacy Windows on these chips. Only Windows 10.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: No W7 or 8

      Does anyone really care about Windows any more (apart from hardcore gamers) when it comes to this sort of spec?

      Windows is doing a very good job of footgunning itself to death. Putting W10 on one of these will only speed up that process.

      My HP Laptop (with W10 installed) did the BSOD cycle of death yesterday. Some update borked it during the night. God knows how many BSOD, reboot cycles it had done before I found the poor beast and turned the power off and put it out of its mysery.

      It says 'bad driver' but no indication of which driver.

      1. Disk0
        Black Helicopters

        Re: No W7 or 8

        Sounds like your computer is fantasizing about being an autonomous vehicle, and trying to make you feel that, being a squishy one, you're a poor motorist by comparison.

  10. Pascal Monett Silver badge

    "Intel gave the entertainment giants what they wanted"

    And I will not buy that chip on that basis. I am certain they will muck it up, it will be hijacked by hackers, used as a malware insertion point, prevent me from viewing my legitimate content locally, and so on and so forth.

    DRM is not only evil, it is inherently stupid because it never considers all the use cases and defaults to "NO" if there is a doubt - meaning people can be cheated from their own content.

    My house is my castle. What I do in it is nobody's business but mine, and I will not condone surveillance imposed by anyone, especially not Hollywood & Co.

    This DRM malarky never ceases to annoy me to no end. I buy my films, and I have to put up with imposed trailers (that are laughable five years later) and those bloody FBI warnings I shouldn't even see since I BOUGHT THE DAMN DISK.

    So I buy my content, thank you very much, and then I rip the hell out of it, put it on my NAS and watch it the way I want to see it.

    They can stuff their DRM where the sun don't shine.

    1. Charlie Clark Silver badge

      Re: "Intel gave the entertainment giants what they wanted"

      I buy my films

      Actually, you never do. You only ever buy a licence to watch a film even if they tell you "you own it". The interesting thing, that neither Big Movie nor Big Music, have never come clean over, is that the licence should be independent of the medium. Many of us have, over time, bought new licences for the same content but I don't remember ever being offered to trade my VHS copy of something in for DVD version for a nominal charge to cover duplicating and handling.

      1. Pascal Monett Silver badge

        I'm well aware of the technicalities of the legal side of the argument.

        They say it's a license. I say bollocks.

        If it were a license, then you could bring in a broken disk and get a free replacement, because the disk is your right to view.

        But that never happens, ergo it's mine, license be damned.

  11. Sgt_Oddball

    70% over 2011 i5's

    This I've got to see considering my 2500k already runs 61% faster than it should do (at least in terms of raw GHz).

    Just hope they've stopped using crap thermal paste on the k series (or whatever they're called now).

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Joke

      Re: 70% over 2011 i5's

      I think they call the thermal paste "future proofing", however that is towards their desired replacement cycle.

    2. Mikey

      Re: 70% over 2011 i5's

      Amen to that, my 2500K currently bumbles along at 4.4GHz, and nothing has come close to stressing it yet. Good to see I'm not the only one out there! (Asus Sabertooth mobo, fwiw)

      1. joed

        Re: 70% over 2011 i5's

        Just to add, no Intel CPU with U moniker (especially "i7") is worth anything outside hipsters' circle.

      2. Sgt_Oddball

        Re: 70% over 2011 i5's

        4.4GHz? Not even trying... 5GHz on air cooling (it killed my watercooler...) on an Asrock extreme 4.

  12. a_yank_lurker

    The slowest part

    For most real applications the slowest part is sitting in the chair.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Speeding up web browsing by a fifth

    If your web browsing is slow on a Skylake, the problem won't be solved by more CPU performance.

    1. Ken Hagan Gold badge

      Re: Speeding up web browsing by a fifth

      You forgot about the DRM. If the web server at the other end of the wet string and your own PC have to apply and then remove a load of DRM, then CPU may still be the bottleneck at one or other end.

  14. oiseau
    Big Brother

    Not good ...

    "This video engine also enforces anti-piracy DRM protections as required by the major studios."

    Hmmm ...

    Enough for me to pass.

    I wonder what *else* is baked into these new chips.

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Zen

    No thank you sir.

    Mine's an AMD zen

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    AMD ZEN

    Very little improvement, just yearly release. I'm gonna buy a Zen.

  17. cd / && rm -rf *
    Thumb Down

    "So in other words, changing up from a 2015 Core i7 to the equivalent 2016 part can speed up web browsing by up to a fifth"

    So it's magically able to speed up the web server and the bit of t'interwebs between that server and the PC displaying the content as well?

    Yeah, right, whatever. I believe you Intel, thousands wouldn't.

  18. P. Lee

    >decode 4Kp60 HEVC at up to 120Mbps ... for watching high-quality films and TV on the internet

    I guess your internet connection is better than mine.

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Hoping against all odds

    Intel is in trouble and they know it. Summit Ridge has already shown it has Intel's best easily covered so expect fir sale pricing from Intel over the next 3-4 years as Zen based AMD products convert the Intel abused punters to AMD customers. It's all over except the dismissals at InHell Incorporated.

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