Interviewing Intel's Chief Architect of x86 Cores
7 days ago
- #Intel
- #Tech Interview
- #CPU Architecture
- Intel discussed upcoming Panther Lake and Clearwater Forest CPUs at Intel Tech Tour 2025.
- Skymont architecture features wider and deeper machine design, increased out-of-order depth, more load ports, and doubled vector hardware.
- Darkmont enhances memory disambiguation with hardware that predicts load-store connections before address generation.
- Cougar Cove in Panther Lake also focuses on memory disambiguation but with a different implementation than Darkmont.
- Intel removed SMT (Simultaneous Multithreading) in Lion Cove for Lunar Lake and Arrow Lake due to benefits in power, area, and frequency targets.
- Server workloads still benefit from SMT due to lack of hybrid compute and different workload characteristics.
- Differences between client and server implementations include RAS features, power delivery, and core usage.
- Branch prediction improvements are valuable for both client and server workloads, with server workloads potentially benefiting from larger capacity predictors.
- Intel architects prefer different cheeses, with smoked Gouda and blue cheese being favorites.