What's the point in e cores?

[Drystoner]

I understand that e cores are supposed to help with background processes like the OS and other recording applications, but why not just add more regular cores?

These e cores are never used in gaming, are not as fast as regular cores, so I don't see the point?

Surely just adding more p cores will be better at this job? And I think that's the difference we are seeing with Intel and AMD right now. AMD are sticking with lots of regular cores multithreading, and adding more cache. To me that makes more sense for gamers than the direction Intel is taking.

[Ghost Robertson]

The e-core thing might be interesting to try out, But i don't think I'd want a super hot CPU so I'd go with something like the i5 13400, 10 cores instead of 14 for the 13500.

[Illusion of Progress]

Escrito originalmente por A&A ✠:

Yes one e core is big as 1/4th p core. Having 4 e cores can be faster in parallel processing tasks than 1 p core by a little, but are they REALLY "power efficient"?

Let's pretend for a moment that they're not more power efficient, which I doubt is the case anyway. They're still (collectively, and for parallel tasks) faster. Does that not justify them?

[Andrius227]

E cores is a great idea. It will just take time to adapt and get them working properly. The same thing happened when we moved from single to multicore cpus. There are still games today that can only use a single core...

[A&A]

Escrito originalmente por Illusion of Progress:

Let's pretend for a moment that they're not more power efficient, which I doubt is the case anyway. They're still (collectively, and for parallel tasks) faster. Does that not justify them?

Not exactly. If I want the CPU to be more flexible in most tasks I'll have 4 threads per core and I think that way it's easier for the software to schedule the processes in the cores and that way you can keep single core performance on each core and the multitasking is better which is a good thing, while the LittleBig architecture is cheaper to manufacture because if the product has a defect, you are more likely to end up with a better product than without it.

[nullable]

Escrito originalmente por A&A ✠:

Escrito originalmente por Illusion of Progress:

Let's pretend for a moment that they're not more power efficient, which I doubt is the case anyway. They're still (collectively, and for parallel tasks) faster. Does that not justify them?

Not exactly. If I want the CPU to be more flexible in most tasks I'll have 3 threads per core and I think that way it's easier for the software to schedule the processes in the cores and that way you can keep single core performance on each core and the multitasking is better which is a good thing, while the LittleBig architecture is cheaper to manufacture because if the product has a defect, you are more likely to end up with a better product than without it.

Ok, so where is your tri-threaded CPU? Awww doesn't exist? I guess we'll just have to use the actually existing hardware deigned by professionals actually making hardware rather than hypothetical armchair hardware because someone just imagines their non-implemented version is easier and better.

[A&A]

Yes the fault is in me. 4 threads per core not 3. If you think this is impossible think again. The Xeon Phi series, IBM processors from the Power 7 to Power 10 family (some of them even have SMT=8, which obviously for consumer grade applications is bonkers) are examples where this was a success

With SMT=2 you are getting between 30 to 40% and with SMT=4 between 40 to 60% performance improvement over a single thread.

[Illusion of Progress]

How much space do these full cores with 4 or 8 threads take up compared to a cluster of e-cores? How much performance do they offer compared to lesser, but more numerous, e-cores?

Everything is a balance. People like to compare the e-cores to p-cores 1:1 and then they get hung up on "but I'm getting lesser cores" but back in reality, it doesn't work that way. Space is a factor that needs to be accommodated for, and once you do that, the e-cores look more promising. They never move on to realizing the collective power can actually be higher because they're stuck on looking at them 1:1.

While I don't know the exact answer myself to my first two questions (and I expect it's a bit of "it depends" anyway), I'm going to go out on a limb and presume that if they're doing it this way, it's more feasible for whatever reason.

And yes, cost does enter into it too. The market has a finite buying power. That too is part of our reality. You can't just look at p-cores to e-cores to cores with 4 or 8 threads (hello diminishing returns) 1:1, and can't look at things in a vacuum where cost doesn't matter.

If you need something with 4 or 8 threads per core or something with a lot of full cores, that's in a very niche spot to begin with, but CPUs exist for that purpose. Threadripper, whatever Xeons you're referring to, etc.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

You can see here how a 13th Gen i9 die is physically layed out.
https://fuse.wikichip.org/news/7149/intel-rolls-out-13th-gen-core-raptor-lake-processors-cranks-up-the-frequency/

The E-Cores are much smaller, divided into 4 core clusters

[[N]ebsun]

Escrito originalmente por Illusion of Progress:

People like to compare the e-cores to p-cores 1:1 and then they get hung up on "but I'm getting lesser cores" but back in reality, it doesn't work that way. Space is a factor that needs to be accommodated for, and once you do that, the e-cores look more promising. They never move on to realizing the collective power can actually be higher because they're stuck on looking at them 1:1.

If I am going to make my cpu do some work, I want it to work at maximum power.
Sure e-cores might sound nice for "background" tasks - but really... what is my OS doing in the background that it needs dedicated cores ??
I would rather get an extra p-core than 4 e-cores.

[Omega]

Escrito originalmente por Nebsun:

Escrito originalmente por Illusion of Progress:

People like to compare the e-cores to p-cores 1:1 and then they get hung up on "but I'm getting lesser cores" but back in reality, it doesn't work that way. Space is a factor that needs to be accommodated for, and once you do that, the e-cores look more promising. They never move on to realizing the collective power can actually be higher because they're stuck on looking at them 1:1.

If I am going to make my cpu do some work, I want it to work at maximum power.
Sure e-cores might sound nice for "background" tasks - but really... what is my OS doing in the background that it needs dedicated cores ??
I would rather get an extra p-core than 2 e-cores.

The thing these cores are trying to avoid is losing CPU time when switching between tasks or interupting tasks for non-important stuff.

The CPU will be just sitting their doing nothing while it is waiting for data.


AMD solves this same issue but with massive amounts of cache and registers.

[Omega]

Escrito originalmente por Nebsun:

Escrito originalmente por Illusion of Progress:

People like to compare the e-cores to p-cores 1:1 and then they get hung up on "but I'm getting lesser cores" but back in reality, it doesn't work that way. Space is a factor that needs to be accommodated for, and once you do that, the e-cores look more promising. They never move on to realizing the collective power can actually be higher because they're stuck on looking at them 1:1.

If I am going to make my cpu do some work, I want it to work at maximum power.
Sure e-cores might sound nice for "background" tasks - but really... what is my OS doing in the background that it needs dedicated cores ??
I would rather get an extra p-core than 2 e-cores.

Your OS is doing a lot of stuff in the background constantly.
- Managing network traffic
- Rendering your desktop
- Issueing commands to other devices
- Tracking timers for various processes
- Logging
- Looking for updates
- Indexing your disk
- Processing your mouse and keyboard inputs

And a thousands other very technical less abstract tasks.

Now consider that your system has to drop whatever it is currently doing to deal with any of these things.

[Overseer]

System events range into the thousands per second on modern systems. An software update or some optimization would make a rare instance in that case.
With threads its also complicated because there are small ones with a few tasks, but there are also large threads that need to jump around a lot. Even games nowadays run plenty of threads and something as simple as storage access does not need peak computational power. Especially when most of it is just waiting for data.

Escrito originalmente por Illusion of Progress:

Escrito originalmente por A&A ✠:

Yes one e core is big as 1/4th p core. Having 4 e cores can be faster in parallel processing tasks than 1 p core by a little, but are they REALLY "power efficient"?

Let's pretend for a moment that they're not more power efficient, which I doubt is the case anyway. They're still (collectively, and for parallel tasks) faster. Does that not justify them?

If the CPU draws 300 Watts and earns the crown of hottest chip there is nothing that would scream efficiency. Especially when its beaten by the competition. They are just smaller which allows Intel to increase the core count on less space.
Generally this e-core architecture needs more refinement and the current unhinged state of tech does not help.

[[N]ebsun]

Escrito originalmente por Overseer:

System events range into the thousands per second on modern systems.
With threads its also complicated because there are small ones with a few tasks, but there are also large threads that need to jump around a lot. Even games nowadays run plenty of threads and something as simple as storage access does not need peak computational power. Especially when most of it is just waiting for data.

Escrito originalmente por Omega:

Your OS is doing a lot of stuff in the background constantly.
- Managing network traffic
- Rendering your desktop
- Issueing commands to other devices
- Tracking timers for various processes
- Logging
- Looking for updates
- Indexing your disk
- Processing your mouse and keyboard inputs

And a thousands other very technical less abstract tasks.

Now consider that your system has to drop whatever it is currently doing to deal with any of these things.

Sounds like the hardware is trying to compensate for poorly optimised OS.. some of those I wouldn't consider "background" like processing mouse, kb and network traffic shouldn't be background. Other things are stuff I would turn off - no need to index my disk, look for updates, or issue commands to devices unless I am actually running those manually.

[Omega]

Escrito originalmente por Nebsun:

Escrito originalmente por Overseer:

System events range into the thousands per second on modern systems.
With threads its also complicated because there are small ones with a few tasks, but there are also large threads that need to jump around a lot. Even games nowadays run plenty of threads and something as simple as storage access does not need peak computational power. Especially when most of it is just waiting for data.

Escrito originalmente por Omega:

Your OS is doing a lot of stuff in the background constantly.
- Managing network traffic
- Rendering your desktop
- Issueing commands to other devices
- Tracking timers for various processes
- Logging
- Looking for updates
- Indexing your disk
- Processing your mouse and keyboard inputs

And a thousands other very technical less abstract tasks.

Now consider that your system has to drop whatever it is currently doing to deal with any of these things.

Sounds like the hardware is trying to compensate for poorly optimised OS.. some of those I wouldn't consider "background" like processing mouse, kb and network traffic shouldn't be background. Other things are stuff I would turn off - no need to index my disk, look for updates, or issue commands to devices unless I am actually running those manually.

You seem to not understand how computers work, whenever it does anything it needs to be computed. Whenever you want something to respond automatically it has to be constantly checked.

It wouldn't be ideal if your computer was incapable of detecting hardware changes on its own right?

Eg. you unplug a mouse and the computer will just assume it to still be there until you tell it otherwise. You want to manually tell your computer you disconnected your mouse?

Or what if you run in to a hardware issue? Your GPU crashes, should the computer detect this and try to recover or just assume the card is still there and continue to present a blank screen?

Ensuring your computer time is still correct, you want to manually perform this action every hour or so?

Also want to manually decide what to do with every single incoming request over the network?

You do want to index files, if you don't you will be complaining that Windows is slow because it takes 10 minutes for it to find XY file on your filesystem when you search for it.


You are making these things out to be way more simple than they actually are, you have become spoiled and do not realize how much work your computer is actually doing for you.


Windows specifically is like MacOS made for the average user, a tech illiterature idiot who needs handholding every step of the way. If you want the full control over all this background stuff run something else, GNU/Linux or *BSD for example. Then if you really want you can manually load device drivers on demand.

"I plugged in a USB flash drive, better load the usb_storage and usbhid drivers or it will not work."

"My system time is out of sync again, better run ntp manually".

"Maybe do some manual disk compression on X file to save 50KB of disk space, then do it for the other 50000 files spread around this volume also"

[Agent]

I've also noticed my OS to be snappier and smoother with more cores. So it appears things like your OS does scale with cores, at least for W11.

So with intel, they can assign important processes to your e cores leaving your p cores to do the gaming or tasks where you want to squeeze as much single threading or performance out your regular cores as possible.

That being said if I were buying a CPU today whether it's from Intel or AMD. I'd make sure it has 8 regular cores. Consoles have 8 proper zen 3 cores now so it makes sense to match that amount. The e cores are just there to help with the OS. I believe Xbox OS and probably PlayStation assign a core for the OS.