I work in CPU security and it's the same with microarchitecture. You wanna know if a machine is vulnerable to a certain issue?
- The technical experts (including Intel engineers) will say something like "it affects Blizzard Creek and Windy Bluff models'
- Intel's technical docs will say "if CPUID leaf 0x3aa asserts bit 63 then the CPU is affected". (There is no database for this you can only find it out by actually booting one up).
- The spec sheet for the hardware calls it a "Xeon Osmiridium X36667-IA"
Absolutely none of these forms of naming have any way to correlate between them. They also have different names for the same shit depending on whether it's a consumer or server chip.
Meanwhile, AMD's part numbers contain a digit that increments with each year but is off-by-one with regard to the "Zen" brand version.
Usually I just ask the LLM and accept that it's wrong 20% of the time.
> - Intel's technical docs will say "if CPUID leaf 0x3aa asserts bit 63 then the CPU is affected". (There is no database for this you can only find it out by actually booting one up).
I’m doing some OS work at the moment and running into this. I’m really surprised there’s no caniuse.com for cpu features. I’m planning on requiring support for all the features that have been in every cpu that shipped in the last 10+ years. But it’s basically impossible to figure that out. Especially across Intel and amd. Can I assume apic? Iommu stuff? Is acpi 2 actually available on all CPUs or do I need to have to have support for the old version as well? It’s very annoying.
I’m pretty sure the number of people at Intel who can tell you offhandedly the answer to your questions about only Intel processors is approximately zero give or take couple. Digging would be required.
If you were willing to accept only the relatively high power variants it’d be easier.
You can correlate microarchitecture to product SKUs using the Intel site that the article links. AMD has a similar site with similar functionality (except that AFAIK it won't let you easily get a list of products with a given uarch). These both have their faults, but I'd certainly pick them over an LLM.
But you're correct that for anything buried in the guts of CPUID, your life is pain. And Intel's product branding has been a disaster for years.
Intel doesn't like to officially use codenames for products once they have shipped, but those codenames are used widely to delineate different families (even by them!), so they compromise with the awkward "products formerly x" wording. Have done for a long time.
I wouldn't mind them coming up with better codenames anyway. "Some lower-end SKUs branded as Raptor Lake are based on Alder Lake, with Golden Cove P-cores and Alder Lake-equivalent cache and memory configurations." How can anyone memorize this endless churn of lakes, coves and monts? They could've at least named them in the alphabetical order.
Product lines are in design and development for years, two years is lightning fast, code names can be found for things five or more years before they were released, so everyone who works with them knows them better (much better) than the retail names.
LGA2011 was an especially cursed era of processors and motherboards.
In addition to all of the slightly different sockets there was ddr3, ddr3 low voltage, the server/ecc counterparts, and then ddr4 came out but it was so expensive (almost more expensive than 4/5 is now compared to what it should be) that there were goofy boards that had DDR3 & DDR4 slots.
By the way it is _never_ worth attempting to use or upgrade anything from this era. Throw it in the fucking dumpster (at the e waste recycling center). The onboard sata controllers are rife with data corruption bugs and the caps from around then have a terrible reputation. Anything that has made it this long without popping is most likely to have done so from sitting around powered off. They will also silently drop PCI-E lanes even at standard BCLK under certain utilization patterns that cause too much of a vdrop.
This is part of why Intel went damn-near scorched earth on the motherboard partners that released boards which broke the contractual agreement and allowed you to increase the multipliers on non-K processors. The lack of validation under these conditions contributed to the aformentioned issues.
>and allowed you to increase the multipliers on non-K processors
Wasn't this the other way around, allowing you to increase multipliers on K processors on the lower end chipsets? Or was both possible at some point? I remember getting baited into buying an H87 board that could overclock a 4670K until a bios update removed the functionality completely.
this is a perfect example of how technically correct specs can still be deeply misleading. Intel reusing FCLGA2011 across incompatible sockets feels like a trap even experienced builders can fall into. Thanks for documenting the failure mode so clearly—this will probably save someone else from buying the same $15 paperweight.
It has pretty much always been the case that you need to make sure the motherboard supports the specific chip you want to use, and that you can't rely on just the physical socket as an indicator of compatibility (true for AMD as well). For motherboards sold at retail the manufacturer's site will normally have a list, and they may provide some BIOS updates over time that extend compatibility to newer chips. OEM stuff like this can be more of a crapshoot.
All things considered I actually kind of respect the relatively straightforward naming of this and several of Intel's other sockets. LGA to indicate it's land grid array (CPU has flat "lands" on it, pins are on the motherboard), 2011 because it has 2011 pins. FC because it's flip chip packaging.
In fairness, the author should've known something was up when they thought they could put a multiple year newer chip in an Intel board. That sort of cross-generational compatibility may exist in AMD land but never in Intel.
I mean sure, that would seem suspicious. But not suspicious enough that I'd likely have caught the problem. It's not that far fetched that Intel may occasionally make new CPUs for older sockets, and when Intel's documentation for the motherboard says "uses socket FCLGA2011" and Intel's documentation for the CPU says "uses socket FCLGA2011", I too would have assumed that they use the same socket.
With Intel's confusing socket naming, you can buy a CPU that doesn't fit the socket.
With USB, the physical connection is very clearly the first part of the name. You cannot get it wrong. Yeah, the names aren't the most logical or consistent, but USB C or A or Micro USB all mean specific things and are clearly visibly different. The worst possible scenario is that the data/power standard supported by the physical connection isn't optimal. But it will always work.
I don't think the port names is what they were referring to.
The actual names for each data transfer level are an absolute mess.
1.x has Low Speed and Full Speed
2.0 added High Speed
3.0 is SuperSpeed (yes no space this time)
3.1 renamed 3.0 to 3.1 Gen 1 and added SuperSpeedPlus
3.2 bumped the 3.1 version numbers again and renamed all the SuperSpeeds to SuperSpeed USB xxGbps
And finally they renamed them again removing the SuperSpeed and making them just USB xxGbps
USB-IF are the prime examples of "don't let engineers name things, they can't"
Not at all. If you want to charge your phone, it might "always work", but if you want to use your monitor with USB hub and pass power to your MacBook, you're gonna have a hard time.
> The worst possible scenario is that the data/power standard supported by the physical connection isn't optimal. But it will always work.
I don't know what "always work" means here but I feel like I've had USB cables that transmit zero data because they're only for power, as well as ones that don't charge the device at all when the device expects more power than it can provide. The only thing I haven't seen is cables that transmit zero data on some devices but nonzero data on others.
I don't think those cables are in spec, and there are a lot of faulty devices and chargers that don't conform to the spec creating these kinds of problem (e.g. Nintendo Switch 1). This is especially a problem with USB C.
You can maybe blame USB consortium for creating a hard spec, but usually it's just people saving $0.0001 on the BOM by omitting a resistor.
I can't find a USB-C PD adapter for a laptop that uses less than 100W. As a result, I can't charge a 65W laptop from a 65W port because the adapter doesn't even work unless the port is at least 100W.
I've noticed that GAN PD's 100w and 65w adapters output is actually less (both do not charge my laptop) than lenovo 65w charger (the one with a non-detachable usbc cable). Cable does not matter, tried with many of them including ones providing power from other chargers.
It seems totally random, and you cannot rely on watts anymore.
There's a fair number of misleading our outright wrong specs if your buying from amazon or the like. And even if you're buying brand name, the specs can be misleading. They often refer to the maximum output of all the ports, not the maximum output of a port.
So a 100 watt GAN charger might be able to deliver only 65 watts from it's main "laptop" port, but it has two other ports that can do 25 and 10 watts each. Still 100 watts in total, but your laptop will never get it's 100 watts.
Not every brand is as transparent about this, sometimes it's only visible in product marketing images instead of real specs. Real shady.
I have a dell laptop that uses a usbc port to charge, but doesn't actually use the PD specification, but a custom one, so my 65w GAN charger falls back to 5v 0.5a and isn't useful at all. I'd bet dollars to donuts that your Lenovo is doing similar shit.
For this specific issue I'm surprised, I have used all kinds of USB PD chargers for my laptops and all of them but one are less than 100W, with no problem at all.
The ones I use most are 20W and 40W, just stuff I ordered from AliExpress (Baseus brand I think).
I assume someone typed it in (possibly on a mobile device with autocorrect) rather than copy & pasting it (which you would have to do twice, for the URL and for the title).
- The technical experts (including Intel engineers) will say something like "it affects Blizzard Creek and Windy Bluff models'
- Intel's technical docs will say "if CPUID leaf 0x3aa asserts bit 63 then the CPU is affected". (There is no database for this you can only find it out by actually booting one up).
- The spec sheet for the hardware calls it a "Xeon Osmiridium X36667-IA"
Absolutely none of these forms of naming have any way to correlate between them. They also have different names for the same shit depending on whether it's a consumer or server chip.
Meanwhile, AMD's part numbers contain a digit that increments with each year but is off-by-one with regard to the "Zen" brand version.
Usually I just ask the LLM and accept that it's wrong 20% of the time.
I’m doing some OS work at the moment and running into this. I’m really surprised there’s no caniuse.com for cpu features. I’m planning on requiring support for all the features that have been in every cpu that shipped in the last 10+ years. But it’s basically impossible to figure that out. Especially across Intel and amd. Can I assume apic? Iommu stuff? Is acpi 2 actually available on all CPUs or do I need to have to have support for the old version as well? It’s very annoying.
If you were willing to accept only the relatively high power variants it’d be easier.
But you're correct that for anything buried in the guts of CPUID, your life is pain. And Intel's product branding has been a disaster for years.
"Products formerly Blizzard Creek"
WTF does that even mean?
In addition to all of the slightly different sockets there was ddr3, ddr3 low voltage, the server/ecc counterparts, and then ddr4 came out but it was so expensive (almost more expensive than 4/5 is now compared to what it should be) that there were goofy boards that had DDR3 & DDR4 slots.
By the way it is _never_ worth attempting to use or upgrade anything from this era. Throw it in the fucking dumpster (at the e waste recycling center). The onboard sata controllers are rife with data corruption bugs and the caps from around then have a terrible reputation. Anything that has made it this long without popping is most likely to have done so from sitting around powered off. They will also silently drop PCI-E lanes even at standard BCLK under certain utilization patterns that cause too much of a vdrop.
This is part of why Intel went damn-near scorched earth on the motherboard partners that released boards which broke the contractual agreement and allowed you to increase the multipliers on non-K processors. The lack of validation under these conditions contributed to the aformentioned issues.
Wasn't this the other way around, allowing you to increase multipliers on K processors on the lower end chipsets? Or was both possible at some point? I remember getting baited into buying an H87 board that could overclock a 4670K until a bios update removed the functionality completely.
All things considered I actually kind of respect the relatively straightforward naming of this and several of Intel's other sockets. LGA to indicate it's land grid array (CPU has flat "lands" on it, pins are on the motherboard), 2011 because it has 2011 pins. FC because it's flip chip packaging.
That's an industry-wide standard across all IC manufacturing - Intel doesn't really get to take credit for it.
With Intel's confusing socket naming, you can buy a CPU that doesn't fit the socket.
With USB, the physical connection is very clearly the first part of the name. You cannot get it wrong. Yeah, the names aren't the most logical or consistent, but USB C or A or Micro USB all mean specific things and are clearly visibly different. The worst possible scenario is that the data/power standard supported by the physical connection isn't optimal. But it will always work.
The actual names for each data transfer level are an absolute mess.
1.x has Low Speed and Full Speed 2.0 added High Speed 3.0 is SuperSpeed (yes no space this time) 3.1 renamed 3.0 to 3.1 Gen 1 and added SuperSpeedPlus 3.2 bumped the 3.1 version numbers again and renamed all the SuperSpeeds to SuperSpeed USB xxGbps And finally they renamed them again removing the SuperSpeed and making them just USB xxGbps
USB-IF are the prime examples of "don't let engineers name things, they can't"
While not disagreeing, I'd ask for a proof it's not a marketing department's fun. Just to be sure.
Engineers love consistency. Marketing is on the opposite side of this spectra.
Not at all. If you want to charge your phone, it might "always work", but if you want to use your monitor with USB hub and pass power to your MacBook, you're gonna have a hard time.
How polite. It can be useless, not "not optimal". Especially since usb-c can burn you on a combination of power and speed, not only speed.
I don't know what "always work" means here but I feel like I've had USB cables that transmit zero data because they're only for power, as well as ones that don't charge the device at all when the device expects more power than it can provide. The only thing I haven't seen is cables that transmit zero data on some devices but nonzero data on others.
You can maybe blame USB consortium for creating a hard spec, but usually it's just people saving $0.0001 on the BOM by omitting a resistor.
I can't find a USB-C PD adapter for a laptop that uses less than 100W. As a result, I can't charge a 65W laptop from a 65W port because the adapter doesn't even work unless the port is at least 100W.
It does not always work.
It seems totally random, and you cannot rely on watts anymore.
So a 100 watt GAN charger might be able to deliver only 65 watts from it's main "laptop" port, but it has two other ports that can do 25 and 10 watts each. Still 100 watts in total, but your laptop will never get it's 100 watts.
Not every brand is as transparent about this, sometimes it's only visible in product marketing images instead of real specs. Real shady.
The ones I use most are 20W and 40W, just stuff I ordered from AliExpress (Baseus brand I think).
Email them, address is in the guidelines.