1. A Comprehensive Study of Intel Core i3, i5 and i7 family
Sultanate of Oman
Faculty of Economics, Management and Information Systems
University of Nizwa
A Comprehensive Study of Intel Core i3, i5 and i7 family
Prepared by : Amal Sultan Almuqrishi
ID:
Course Title: Advanced Computer System Theory - INFS501
submitted to: Dr. Said Younes
‘ Presentation (2) ’

2. Intel core series ( i3, i5 and i7)
Outlines :
Introduction of Intel core i3, i5 and i7 family
General technical specification :
Micro-architecture
Number of cores
Clock rate
Cache memory
Addressable memory
I/O bandwidth
Performance GFLOP
Power dissipation
Internal organization of the processor
Internal/ External connectivity
Cache organization

3. Intel core series ( i3, i5 and i7)
Introduction
Processor, that's also known as microprocessor, CPU or central processing unit, is the central component of the PC. It is the brain that runs the show inside the PC and responsible for all directly or indirect work. Obviously, it is one of the crucial components within the PC.
A multi-core processor is a single computing component with two or more “independent” processors (called "cores"). Shared memory model and distributed memory model are the two main ways to have multiple cores interact.
In November 2008 the first generation is released , called Nehalem micro-architecture.
There are three types that support this architecture , Core i3, Core i5 and Core i7 , which have different technical features that will be clear in next slide.
These types divide based on the performance of each , for example, Core i3 (low-level), Core i5 (mid-range) and Core i7 (high-end performance); thus, i7 processors are considered as the best processor nowadays.

4. Intel Core i Generations (Tick Tock)

5. Skylake Generation Skylake 6th Generation
Skylake is the sixth generation Core processor micro-architecture, and was launched in August 2015.
It comes after the Broadwell line and before Kaby Lake (the last generation 7th).
The main purpose of each generation:
Reduce the size of fabrication (in Skylake equals to 14 nm)
Improve the CPU performance as well as GPU
Decrease the power consumption

6. General Features of Intel core i3, i5 and i7
Intel Core i Series Features
General Features of Intel core i3, i5 and i7
Pure 64-bit architecture
Micro-architecture: 6th generations that mentioned before
Fabrication process in nm (45/32/14 nm)
Multiple cores on single die (2-32 cores)
CPU clock rate: 2- 4 GHz
Addressable memory: 64GB.
Virtual memory : 64 TB
Power dissipation : W
Cache memory: L1 cache 32 KB per core, L2 cache 256 KB, L3 cache 2-8 MB to 16 MB shared and L4 cache  MB
Price: $42 - $434

7. Performance of Intel core i in GFLOPS
Intel Core i Performance
Performance of Intel core i in GFLOPS

8. Organization of the processor
Intel core series ( i3, i5 and i7)
Organization of the processor

9. Difference between FSB & DMI
FSB – Front Side Bus
It is a bus technology which used for communication and move the data that goes in and out of the CPU.
Used in early Intel core series processors such as Core 2 Quad/Duo processor
It connects the processor with memory controller hub which has a connection with memory, PCIe, video and IO devices (USB, Hard disk, Network etc).
DMI – Direct Media Interface
It is also a bus technology which used for communication and move the data that goes in and out of the CPU.
Used in current Intel core series processors such as Intel Core i3, i5 and i7 processors
The main different, in the current models or architectures, is the CPU has different channels to connect with RAM, PCIe and Platform controller hub that used to communicate with all other components .
This way is better than FSB because it improve the performance and the data movement in less time.

10. Internal/ External connectivity

11. Internal/ External connectivity
Skylake micro-architecture improve the performance of the CPU by including beefed up front end, optimized execution engine and add numerous number of smaller enhancements.
It consists of DMI 3.0  rather than DMI 2.0 :
It has four-lane DMI 3.0 interface that connect the CPU with the chipset
It enhance the speed from 5.0 GT/s (2GB/sec) to 8.0 GT/s (~3.93GB/sec)
It is also upgrade DMI from PCIe 2 to PCIe 3
All these improvement in this architecture requires to reduce the motherboard traces among the processor and chipset 7 inches rather than 8 inches; therefore, it maintains the signal speed and integrity
Skylake support the last to versions of DDR4 and DDR3L .
The motherboard designer choose only one version (DDR4 or DDR3L ) but not both.
It also support 16 PCI Express 3.0 lanes in order to use for directly connected devices to the CPU. These PCIe 3.0 split to x16, x8/x8 or x8/x4/x4 with the main motherboard design.

12. Difference Between DDR3 and DDR4 RAM :
Intel core series ( i3, i5 and i7)
Difference Between DDR3 and DDR4 RAM :

13. Internal/ External connectivity
SKylake supports a new chipset which is called “dubbed Z170”.
Intel Z170 maintains dual channel memory that has four dims in total.
It also supports a very large number of USB ports.
It has14 ports in total which divide as follows :
10 of which are USB 3.0
4 are USB 2.0.
Z170 chipset consists of six SATA 6Gbps ports and 20 lanes of PCI express connectivity. In addition, it includes three SATA Express x2 interfaces and to four M.2 interfaces. 

14. Internal organization of the processor
In Front End part:
Increase the legacy pipeline delivery to 5 µOPs
Increase the IDQ delivery to 6 µOPs
Support 2.28x larger allocation queue that has 64/thread
It also improves the performance of the branch prediction unit
In Execution Engine part:
Increase the re-order buffer to 224 entries
Increase the scheduler to 97 entries and the Integer Register File to 180 entries
Increase the store buffer to 56 entries
In the Memory part:
There is a significant change in the number of ways in the second level of cache (from 8-way to 4-way set associative).
TLBs
ITLB has 8-way associative where 4KB page translations was changed
STLB has 12-way associative in which 4KB+2M page translations was changed

15. Cache organization

16. Intel Core Caches Cache organization First level cache (L1)
L1 Instruction cache
It’s size equals to 32kB
Supports 8-way set associative
Supports write-back policy
Shared by the two threads, per core
L1 Data Cache
load bandwidth equals to 64 Bytes/cycle
store bandwidth equals to 32 Bytes/cycle

17. Intel Core Caches Cache organization Second level cache (L2)
It’s a new cache feature that introduced first in Nehalem micro-architecture
It’s a unified that holds code and data
It’s size equals to 256 kB per core
Supports 8-way set associative
Supports write-back policy
Enhance the Performance of CPU:
Very low latency in which 12 cycle load-to-use
Enhance the Scalability of CPU:
The pressure on shared cache is reduced when the number of cores is increased

18. Intel Core Caches Cache organization Third level cache (L3)
Shared among all cores in the processor
It’s size equals to 8 MB per core
Supports 16-way set associative
Enhance the Performance of CPU:
The L3 cache must have the address residing in L1/L2
Enhance the Scalability of CPU:
To satisfy the future purpose needs of increase L3 size
To change core size with change core counts
Support inclusive cache policy rather than exclusive for best performance
Fourth level Cache (L4)
It’s size equals to 128 MB per core
Sometimes called eDRAM cache

19. Difference between exclusive & inclusive

20. Difference between exclusive & inclusive

21. Difference between exclusive & inclusive

22. Difference between exclusive & inclusive

23. Difference between exclusive & inclusive
L3 cache has a set of “core valid” bits per cache line where each bit represents a core
If the L1/L2 of a core may contain the cache line, then core valid bit is set to “1”
If no bits are set, there is no needed to snoop of cores
If more than 1 bit is set, line cannot be in Modified state in any core
Enhance the scalability of CPU
More cores/sockets does not boost snoop traffic seen by cores
Enhance the Latency of CPU
Decrease effective cache latency by eliminating cross-core snoops in the common case
Reduces snoop response time for cross-socket cases

24. Difference between exclusive & inclusive

25. Which Intel Core i3, i5 or i7 is the best?
Intel core series ( i3, i5 and i7)
Which Intel Core i3, i5 or i7 is the best?
A quad-core CPU will perform much better than a dual-core CPU with hyper-threading!
The Intel Core i5 series does not support hyper-threading.
Turbo Boost: i7 > i5 > i3.
Whereas, Intel Core i3 series does not support Turbo Boost.

26. Intel core series ( i3, i5 and i7)

27. Intel core series ( i3, i5 and i7)
Summary:
Introduction of Intel core i3, i5 and i7 family
General technical specification :
Number of cores
Frequency
Cache memory
Addressable memory
Micro-architecture
I/O bandwidth
Performance GFLOP
Power dissipation
Internal organization of the processor
Internal/ External connectivity
Cache organization

28. Intel core series ( i3, i5 and i7)
References

29. Intel core series ( i3, i5 and i7)
Finished
Thanks