Edit Values

Skylake µarch

General Info

ERROR: "atype" is missing!

Skylake (SKL) is Intel's microarchitecture using 14 nm process for mainstream desktops, servers, and mobiles. Skylake became the successor to the short-lived Broadwell which experienced severe delays.

For desktop and mobile, Skylake is branded as 6th Generation Intel Core processors. For server class processors, Intel branded it as Xeon E3 v5, Xeon E5 v5, and Xeon E7 v5.

Codenames

Core	Abbrev	Target
Skylake Y	SKL-Y	2-in-1s detachable, tablets, and computer sticks
Skylake U	SKL-U	Light notebooks, portable All-in-Ones (AiOs), Minis, and conference room
Skylake H	SKL-H	Ultimate mobile performance, mobile workstations
Skylake S	SKL-S	Desktop performance to value, AiOs, and minis

Technology

Main article: Broadwell § Technology

Skylake uses the same 14 nm process used for the Broadwell microarchitecture.

Architecture

Overall Skylake builds upon Intel's previous microarchitecture, Broadwell, but includes a more beefed up front end, more optimized execution engine, and numerous number of smaller enhancements including

Key changes from Broadwell

• Front End
  • Larger legacy pipeline delivery (5 µOPs, up from 4)
  • Larger IDQ delivery (6 µOPs, up from 4)
  • 2.28x larger allocation queue (64/thread, up from 28/thread)
  • Improved branch prediction unit
• Execution Engine
  • Larger re-order buffer (224 entries, up from 192)
  • Larger scheduler (97 entries, up from 60)
    • Larger Integer Register File (180 entries, up from 160)
  • Larger store buffer (56 entries, up from 42)
• Memory
  • L2$ was changed from 8-way to 4-way set associative
• TLBs
  • ITLB
    • 4KB page translations was changed from 4-way to 8-way associative
  • STLB
    • 4KB+2M page translations was changed from 6-way to 12-way associative

Graphics

• Skylake retires VGA support, multi-monitor support for up to 3 displays via HDMI 1.4, DP 1.2, and eDP 1.3 interfaces.
• Direct X 12
• OpenCL 2.0
• OpenGL 4.4
• Up to 24 EUs (same as Haswell, 48 EUs on Iris Pro Graphics)

New instructions

Main article: See §Added_instructions for the complete list

Skylake introduced a number of new instructions:

• SGX - Software Guard Extensions
• MPX -Memory Protection Extensions
• AVX-512 - Advanced Vector Extensions 512

Block Diagram