Maybe a next generation Precision (xx70?) pre-release discussion thread?

Nice... I had to talk myself out of getting a MacBook Pro after seeing the M1 Max information last week. (...The idea of switching to macOS is kind of alluring, since I already use iPhone / Apple Watch / Apple TV, but I just can't get behind some choices that they've made with the MacBook design and also some software that I'd be losing on Windows. Especially without a good option for x86 OS virtualization...)

Anyway. I was just trying to interpret the text at the bottom of the slide and I think that those are week numbers for the production ramp-up. For instance for TGL-H it shows WW15-18'21, which means weeks 15-18 in 2021. Mid-April through early May, about right, Tiger Lake H45 was actually formally announced on May 11 (though they had H35 CPUs out in January). ADL-P shows WW45'21-10'22, so, the time period covers basically all of November through early March. And since in the slide ADL-P covers many families of CPUs (12W - 45W), no telling exactly where in that window H45 falls. Previous information seemed to indicate that they'd be starting with lower-end CPUs, and they did do that with 10th and 11th gen launches, but... There are many things about the 12th-gen rollout that are different than "normal", so all bets are off.

In any case, we'll know more in just a few days. But now I'm thinking that jumped the gun a bit in getting my hopes up for a possible early launch.

 

I watched the presentation from Intel on the new CPUs. What basically came out is...

* Desktop CPUs available November 4 (pre-order now... oops, they're sold out already).
* Alder Lake encompasses 60 or so CPU designs altogether.
* 28 Alder Lake CPU variants are currently shipping to OEMs. (...Got to assume that not all of these are desktop CPUs, but that wasn't clear...)
* High-end mobile CPUs will begin shipping to OEMs in November.

Desktop systems announcements immediately followed, like these new XPS Desktop and Alienware Aurora R13 systems from Dell.
https://www.delltechnologies.com/en-us/blog/beauty-meets-brawn-unleashing-the-new-xps-desktop/
https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/des.../spd/alienware-aurora-r13-desktop/wdr13aur10h

With OEMs not getting volume shipments of "high-end mobile CPUs" until next month, I doubt that there will be any systems on sale before CES timeframe. Still may well see lower-end laptop CPUs in laptops in time for holiday shopping season, as OEMs have supposedly been getting some of CPUs for a while already. Intel didn't offer any specifics on mobile CPU timeframes, but rumors have previously suggested a "late November" timeframe for low-end Alder Lake laptops.

 

More rumors about an Ampere refresh swirling over the past day or two.

https://videocardz.com/newz/nvidia-...s-rtx-3080ti-or-rtx-3090-laptop-gpu-is-coming

Specifically, there's some sort-of hard information regarding a new device ID being entered into a hardware database, presumably for a "GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Laptop GPU" using a new GA103 chip. (GA103 has previously been rumored for a GeForce 3080 SUPER GPU. Whether NVIDIA decides to call it "3080 SUPER" or "3080 Ti" or "3090 mobile" doesn't really matter.)

GA103 specs are nebulous at this point but some older rumors are having it with 7680 CUDA cores, quite a jump over the 6144 CUDA cores in the Quadro RTX A5000 / GeForce 3080 (mobile versions). TechPowerUp has bought into this and has listed spec sheet pages for the GA103 chip and the mobile 3080 Ti.

https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/nvidia-ga103.g989
https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/geforce-rtx-3080-ti-mobile.c3840

(I'm suspicious of these older rumored specs. They could be for a never-materialized desktop chip slotted between GA102 and GA104. If NVIDIA reworked GA103 as a mobile-only chip then it may well have different specs than the earlier rumors suggested.)

GA103 supposedly has some power efficiency improvements over GA104/GA102, as it is being designed specifically for mobile systems, but it remains to be seen if it will really offer that much more performance over the (power-starved) GA104 chip used in the GeForce 3080 (mobile) and RTX A5000 (mobile). After all, we are seeing RTX A5000 performing not that much faster than RTX A4000 for many workloads because even A4000 is power-capped.

I have seen nothing about NVIDIA releasing refreshed mobile RTX workstation GPUs with the GA103 chip (i.e. "NVIDIA RTX A5200") but I think that it's pretty likely that they would. (They might also use GA107 to refresh some of the lower-end workstation GPUs.) There have been many generations of Precision with refreshed Quadro GPUs when the timing works out, like Quadro K5100M and Quadro P5200. There was no Turing refresh for the Precision 7X50, but the Turing Quadro RTX 5000 used a maxed out TU104 chip and at the time there was nothing else available that made sense to use for a refresh.

If the rumors pan out then the release timeframe is the same as Alder Lake H45. Conveniently, the refresh cycle for the next-gen laptop CPUs and GPUs could happen at the same time. Official announcements probably won't happen before CES 2022, but more specific rumors or leaks are always possible...

[Edit] 11/3: GeForce 3070 Ti Laptop GPU has been spotted as well.

 

Re-reviewing these "leaked" CPU specs (from one year ago). The details ended up being spot on for Tiger Lake H. Alder Lake P would be Alder Lake H45, and Alder Lake S-BGA would be Alder Lake H55. (They're likely "rebranding" these.)



Looking at this, it seems like there's no way that Alder Lake P will be used in a (7000-series) Precision workstation, if these specs are accurate. If they did, it would require taking a step down from the current systems in terms of some of the specs. Ignoring the business with Alder Lake P having two fewer CPU cores...

* Alder Lake P is limited to 64 GB of RAM.

* Looking at PCIe configuration, Alder Lake P doesn't have any ×16 connections for the dGPU; maybe they could make it work by using all 16 Gen5 and Gen4 lanes coming off of the CPU, but then there would not be any PCIe4 lanes left for an SSD. Also, assuming the dGPU uses 16 lanes, then there are only 12 lanes left so three NVMe SSDs max without compromising max PCIe3 speed (7760 has four NVMe slots) — nevermind other PCIe devices like the Wi-Fi card and other internal/onboard devices.
(Technically, an Ampere GPU at PCIe4×8 would probably be fine; that would be the same bandwidth as PCIe3×16 and tests have shown that Ampere doesn't benefit much from PCIe4 over PCIe3 at ×16. I don't think PCIe5 will be supported in an Ampere refresh, but that could be a surprise too.)

* The "perk" of Alder Lake P is that it has 96 Xe EUs, so its integrated graphics performance would be in theory three times better than Tiger Lake's, whereas Alder Lake S BGA will be the same as Tiger Lake.

I'd sort of expect to see Alder Lake P announced at CES and launching soon after, and Alder Lake S-BGA behind by "several weeks". We'll see.

 

Alder Lake P is shipped to manufacturers: https://twitter.com/gregorymbryant/status/1462930390029516803 - maybe new Precisions by the end of Q1 2022?

 

See post immediately above — I am thinking that Alder Lake P (H45) won't cut it for Precision (7000) — mostly because of the PCIe configuration / lack of lanes (and also the 64GB RAM cap). We'll have to wait a bit longer for Alder Lake S-BGA (H55).

Would love to be wrong (about the Alder Lake P specs, or timeframe in general). I'm chomping at the bit for a 7770. Still hoping for some sort of news in the CES timeframe. I'm just feeling more and more like it's going to be around April/May before the systems are available to order and June before anyone actually sees one.

 

So the H45 might be a nice option for a 5x70 with i9 and no dGPU, for people like me, who like CPU and have no big need for the GPU performance.

But would Dell go with the H55 only? They typically offer the complete range from i5 to i9 in the Precision line, so they would need to use H45 as well, don't you think?

 

Not sure. There would definitely be a design difference so they’d need two rather different versions of the motherboard. (In addition to the difference in PCIe lanes and memory support, P has the PCH included in the CPU package, but it is a standalone chip with S-BGA.)

Also, we don’t know much about the S-BGA lineup. It will have 55w TDP at the top but they may well have a good range of CPU choices available — mirroring the “S” (non-BGA) lineup, which is the desktop CPU lineup.

 

NVIDIA is prepping a "RTX A4500" desktop workstation GPU.
https://www.pny.com/nvidia-rtx-a4500

Specs have leaked already, with it basically slotting in between the desktop RTX A4000 and RTX A5000 as one would expect.

This is a desktop GPU, but refreshed laptop GPUs will probably use the same naming convention. I would expect to see RTX A5500 at the top, running on the new GA103 chip which will also be powering new laptop GeForce GPUs. Five weeks until CES and some new solid/official information on the GPU refresh (at least on the consumer/GeForce side) should be coming around then. From the leaked information it looks like CUDA cores could be raised to 7,680, and VRAM will remain capped at 16GB. The CUDA core bump is a bit crazy since the current RTX A4000/A5000 GPUs are already rather power-starved so adding cores isn't going to boost performance that much, unless they also raise the power limit (or maybe they have added some efficiency improvements in GA103). GA103 in laptops could support TGP up to 200W, but most systems will have the power limit set way lower than that.

With the refreshed GPUs cramming in even more CUDA cores, and Alder Lake S-BGA/H55 also pushing up the CPU TDP compared to the last few generations, I think that it's likely that we'll be getting a new chassis with some cooling system refinements. (I wouldn't mind if they increased the dimensions of the laptop slightly to add even more cooling potential but I rather doubt that they'll go for that.)

(Even if Precision 7X70 does not drop until summer 2022, there's no real chance of getting next-gen NVIDIA GPUs — Lovelace, most likely — as these will not be available in desktops until late 2022. Just today I am seeing articles about NVIDIA selecting TSMC 5nm for their next-gen GPUs. The node shrink should allow a substantial performance boost when those GPUs are finally out.)

 

Some MSI laptop information leaked. It looks like they will be launching systems with "Alder Lake P" CPUs (Core i7 and i9), and also, there are GPU identifiers that match the leaks for GeForce RTX "3080 Ti" and "3070 Ti" laptop GPUs that we saw earlier — seeming to confirm that NVIDIA Ampere laptop GPU refreshes are on the way.
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/msi-alder-lake-nvidia-rtx-30-refresh-laptops