WTF is Intel i4?

[blueskull]

No English sub so far, but I'm sure it will show up pretty quickly as it has already stirred the hive on LTT forum.

Just watch the screen display, both on BIOS page and Windows system info page.

How can there be an i4 CPU that behaves exactly like an i5?

Also worth noting, the CPU, unlike many other Intel PGA ones, does not have the black "sticker" with SL number lasered on.

I wonder where it came from? Some comments on that video says it is an BMW infotainment chip custom ordered from Intel, but so far nothing can back this up.

[wraper]

Should be i5-4210M, should be bios bug or something like that. Different ix CPUs never share same model number. And there is no i4 to begin with.
EDIT: Or simply that BIOS didn't know what it is and for some reason displayed something since it looks differently compared to i5-4210M. Might have something to do with faulty chip as well. Since it's not shown in the video what happened after repair.
EDIT2: apparently it was other laptop where internals were shown.

[Ampera]

Could be anything, maybe someone found a way to mess with the CPUID on some Intel CPUs, maybe it was a one/few off for some special purpose left unknown, or maybe it's some weird Chinese hooey, or maybe it's all a fake and someone just messed with the software.

Who knows. It's a number.

[senso]

That black "sticker" isn't there since Core2 Duo, after Sandy bridge its still there, written in cooper under the silk, SR0UX is an i7-3630QM, SR1Q8 is an i7-4720HQ, on the video its unreadable due to being smearead with some thermal paste.

[SiliconWizard]

You wouldn't believe how common this is with cheap chinese products. They can modify firmware/software just to be able to trick it to report hardware that isn't the actual hardware. Here it's a fuck-up of course, since the i4 doesn't even exist. But it's common to see fake hardware reports on those products.

I've seen that more commonly on tablets and mobile phones.

[Ice-Tea]

Oddly, this model is mentioned in this marketing blurb:

https://www.kitguru.net/lifestyle/mobile/laptops/leo-waldock/asus-tp300l-transformer-book-flip-review/

And oddly enough, in this article (dutch)

https://nl.hardware.info/artikel/5557/2/13-inch-convertible-laptops-review-hp-en-asus-dagen-lenovo-uit-asus-transformer-book-flip-tp300la-dw007h

Someone in the comments points out it had i4 in the text (but it was modified in the main body apparently..

[SiliconWizard]

So if something is modified, it has to be the chip, not the firmware/software.

And that's what makes this interesting -- how can the CPU itself being modified? It's not like masking a pin to allow the mobo to run a supposedly unsupported chip. This literally changes the information stored inside the chip.

That's weird. But... could it be that the CPU is just a clone, and not a genuine CPU that would have been modified, purposefully ID'ed as i4 in order to limit the risks of being accused of counterfeiting? I don't know if clones of Intel CPUs are common or not on the chinese market.

[wraper]

But... could it be that the CPU is just a clone, and not a genuine CPU that would have been modified, purposefully ID'ed as i4 in order to limit the risks of being accused of counterfeiting? I don't know if clones of Intel CPUs are common or not on the chinese market.

LOL, we are 23 days away from April 1st.

[Nominal Animal]

I'm not sure if a microcode update can change the processor brand string; but either the processor is fake, or somebody managed to change the processor brand string either intentionally or by accident.

[Electro Detective]

I don't know if clones of Intel CPUs are common or not on the chinese market.

If I can clone an Intel i-series from scratch, the Communist party would pay me $10B for my outstanding contribution in reducing Chinese dependency to Western technology.

What?!      a product the resourceful Chinese can't produce an 'inspired by..' knockoff ? 

ME NO BELIEVE 

and is intel development based somewheres in the middle east classed as Western technology? 

and fwiw good luck getting $10B off the comrades   


 

[SiliconWizard]

I don't know if clones of Intel CPUs are common or not on the chinese market.

If I can clone an Intel i-series from scratch, the Communist party would pay me $10B for my outstanding contribution in reducing Chinese dependency to Western technology.

Cloning was maybe not the right word. What you overlooked here is that nothing tells us it's anything close to an Intel i-series CPU. For all you know, it may just be some x86-compatible processor that identifies itself as an i4 (but that could be just any string), which is a completely different thing. That's what fake CPUs are all about. You don't get anywhere near the real deal. Just something that appears to "work" and that claims to be something better than it actually is.

As to China having x86 processors, do you know Zhaoxin?
http://en.zhaoxin.com/ZXC.aspx?seriesid=19

Again as the point I made was about fake CPUs passing as genuine stuff, you missed the point. Dubious manufacturers sell crap passing as good stuff (so for instance, some x86-compatible processor passing as an Intel i-series), they rarely bother making products really AS good as the real deal.

[Nominal Animal]

I don't know if clones of Intel CPUs are common or not on the chinese market.

If I can clone an Intel i-series from scratch

If it isn't an actual i3/i5/i7 wonkified by a microcode update, there is no reason to believe the processor implementation has anything to do with Intel i-series processors; that's why I personally wrote fake and not clone.  You know, emulating just enough of the i-series processors to not crash.. although it seems to be fast enough in Win 10 to respond to user actions without significant latencies, I bet it is more or less the genuine thing.

Would it be impossible for a fab to manufacture extra processor packages on the side? Would they have the capability to do that one-bit change?  I don't know, but I do believe the fabs actually have the tools to update the CPUID report after the chip itself has been manufactured and tested, because they can significantly improve their yield that way.  Anything in active production is likely monitored carefully, but what about earlier i-series processors?

My bet is still on a microcode update on a genuine (but much cheaper, prolly much older) i-series processor.

[wraper]

As to China having x86 processors, do you know Zhaoxin?
http://en.zhaoxin.com/ZXC.aspx?seriesid=19

Again as the point I made was about fake CPUs passing as genuine stuff, you missed the point. Dubious manufacturers sell crap passing as good stuff (so for instance, some x86-compatible processor passing as an Intel i-series), they rarely bother making products really AS good as the real deal.

That thing is about as fast as Atom, not to say it's not intel compatible electrically. Last time when x86 CPUs from different manufacturers were interchangeable was 24 years ago.

[Psi]

I have no idea, but it wouldn't surprise me if it's an engineering sample.
Maybe i4 i6 i8 are engineering sample names for i3 i5 i7 etc..