Intel building Xeon into lapwarmers as designers, content creators call the shots Intel is putting its Xeon processors into laptops for the first time, ushering in what it hopes will be a significant performance boost and marketing opportunity. This is not only because the CPU is faster but also because they will feature the faster Thunderbolt 3 system, with palindromic USB Type-C ports that support the …
quote/excerpt from my 7 Sep 2013 AlReg post
"....alReg who like PiedPiper is taking god knows what fools behind them of look we are going to make LOHAN... yay lets eat shit! and rejoice and thank heavens! ... when they could use the makerbot fever in constructive use; say server class laptops ... alReg never tires from praising seamicro but instead of keeping itself with IT .. they keep choosing to yank off for some space odessy... afterall they have to milk money on their home turf from starwars fanboys/pons."
Isn't this what the i7 was originally meant to be about? Server grade chips in user land? IIRC the first gen ones were just a direct rebrand of the Xeon of that time (complete with lovely 3 channel memory controller which they then inexplicably took away from us for another 2 generations)
So... what is the problem?
This is aimed for laptops. People in general don't upgrade laptop processors. It's impossible with BGA (soldered) chips anyway and even if the CPU is replaceable your old laptop doesn't acquire ECC or Thunderbolt 3 or other features.
Since the Xeons probably have a different number of PCIe lanes, the Thunderbolt 3 connectivity and most importantly support for ECC memory, it is highly likely that it requires a new socket.
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Powerful, but very uncomfortable to carry around when you need. A good desktop is safer, expandable when you need it, and some part can be replaced without any need of sending it to support. Unless you really need some true mobility, usually it's just a waste of money.
I did for a long time, and then I realised that laptops are the only "do everything" device.
Seriously, my last two workstations have been laptops. I don't use docking stations or anything of the kind. But for 5-6 years, I've just had a high-end laptop running my work side of things, take it home and play all my games and my entertainment, take it on the plane on holiday and watch movies, etc. and it's on for virtually the whole day.
It has VM's for everything critical and more than enough oomph to run them all. It has enough gaming hardware to run GTA V more than comfortably. It can do video transcoding and has 2Tb of storage (not even counting that it has two SATA drive bays, with the option to poke out the optical drive to make three). It can run just about everything you throw at it, AND store it all, and do it all on the same login on the same machine with the same settings.
Just the absence of synchronising multiple devices is god-send in its own right. Phone call from work and X has gone wrong? Click, click, I'm in my work VM and connected to the VPN and have ALL the tools I need set up exactly how they are in work for no more licences. Even if I'm on holiday abroad (though, obviously, there's an extra cost there!). I have all my family photos, music, movies, subscriptions, licenses, software, utilities, scripts, passwords etc. and NO need to sync to some cloud-based thing to get them all or even have an Internet connection at all.
The laptop will never be the overclocker's dream, but for damn sure it's the best of ALL worlds. Hell, even if I'm in work and we have a power outage (we've had problems with a cross-phase in the past), the laptop just carries on going even if the UPS flakes out and gives up for its own safety. Or I can, quite literally, play GTA V on a plane if I wanted (I'd worry that someone would take offence, though!). Then I can take it round a friend's house, plug it into their HDMI and use wireless XBox controllers to have an impromptu gaming session if I really want. Or just sit and debug my hobby-project code if the party is boring enough.
The "everything in one place"-ness of such a device is inestimable until you try it. In terms of repair etc.? Sure. But a decent laptop should be lasting you at least several years and then onto the next model anyway. I've had to do that ONCE (I broke the hinges, my girlfriend broke the hinges on her exact same model the week after), and buy a replacement keyboard ONCE. But not maintaining several different devices meant that each transition is just literally "take out the drive, slap it in the new machine, re-activate as necessary" and, bam, all your old working methods back how you want them. I even have an 8 Pro Upgrade key that I could use at any time (came with the new laptop as an upgrade offer, "redeemed" into a VM, to test I'm able to do what I like with it), and that also presumably gives me a 10 key if ever I do want to upgrade.
And, no, I don't pay over the odds for my machines and go stupid Alienware-kind-of-prices. I just buy a half-decent laptop. The one I have is 6 core (12 HT), 12Gb, 2 x 1Tb (replaced one with a 1Tb SSD) and costs less than a full PC setup with monitor etc. and decent video card.
The advantage of a luggable is that you can take it with you on family holidays to visit the in-laws and have an excuse to spend some 'alone time'. It also means you can extend family visits because if you spend a few hours each day keeping on top of work when the kids are watching a movie.
How is this really that different from the 17" 'gaming' laptops that are around now with 200+ W power adapters? It shouldn't be hard to get a mobile Xeon down to the same 50 W that the high end mobile i7s run and it might even be easier since there is no internal GPU. Besides if they are looking at the 'workstation replacement' market with 15-17" displays it isn't likely to be melting anyone's family jewels since it'll probably tip the scales at 8 pounds or better since it's going to need an impressive battery.
Sure, they'll pull the usual tricks for mobile use like shutting down cores and throttling the speed so it will likely mean that you'll have trouble running that complex CFD analysis at the same time as designing up the next Airbus A385 strato-disco while flying first class in an MD-88 but... Yep, I gotta figure the target market isn't particularly worried about it since what they are looking for is not so much laptop as luggable.
One acronym: ECC. Or one word: professional.
For gaming, you don't give a monkeys that your RAM might drop a bit or two, and corrupt the results that it is generating. But if you are designing bridges or buildings or chemical plants, or even if you are just doing research for a Ph.D or big-money financial planning, you certainly ought to!
Sorry, I should have been more clear. I understand the difference but it seems there's been a bit of whinging about it being a lapwarmer that seems unjustified. Heck the current E3 Xeon series run the TDP down to 35 W have integrated graphics and will easily run with the better i7s so I don't see the cause for all the hate.
I'd be surprised if the Xeon E3-1500M is anything other than one of the following:
* Rebranded Skylake cores (4C/8T) just like the past few generations of Xeon E3's have been rebranded i7's of the current generations (E3-12x0 and E3-12x5, V1, V2, V3 ...) with a 32GB ECC UDIMM ceiling
* Rebranded Xeon D Broadwell cores like the Xeon D 1520 (25W of 4C/8T CPU, 128GB of RAM capable using RDIMMs), or the Xeon D 1540 (45W of 8C/16T goodness). Both of these are soldered to the board solutions and there's supposedly a few new variants on the way.
ServeTheHome has some reasonable info here (among other articles) - they've been covering Xeon D in detail for weeks:
http://www.servethehome.com/exclusive-intel-xeon-d-1520-benchmark-results/
Sounds like this would go into something like the Alienware systems of old. Some of them had dual hard drives and dual SLI video cards, and usually an option of some desktop processors to gain that extra bit of speed, never mind the intense heat. Apparently the battery life on one like that was about 30 minutes, I for sure would not have wanted that much hot air (let alone the hot computer itself) anywhere near my lap.
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