This is what the end of Moore's Law looks like

From Mark Walton at arstechnica:

Intel Core i7-7700K Kaby Lake review: Is the desktop CPU dead?

With identical performance to Skylake, Intel brings desktop performance to a standstill.

The Intel Core i7-7700K is what happens when a chip company stops trying. The i7-7700K is the first desktop Intel chip in brave new post-"tick-tock" world—which means that instead of major improvements to architecture, process, and instructions per clock (IPC), we get slightly higher clock speeds and a way to decode DRM-laden 4K streaming video. Huzzah.

For the average consumer building or buying a new performance-focused PC, a desktop chip based on 14nm Kaby Lake remains the chip of choice—a total lack of competition at this level makes sure of that.

But for the enthusiast—where the latest and greatest should perform better than what came before—Kaby Lake desktop chips are a disappointment, a stopgap solution that does little more than give OEMs something new to stick on a label in a 2017 product stack.

Walton's article goes into more detail, of course, and is worth a read if you're looking to replace your current PC for some reason, but the big takeaway is something that I've been saying for a while now: if your current PC is still working, then there's no rush to replace it, because even the next generation of CPUs (and GPUs, for that matter) offer very little in the way of a performance boost. AMD's Zen/Ryzen chips are still coming, of course, but are unlikely to offer much more than parity with Kaby Lake.

Intel, in particular, has been talking a big game about vertical processor design, but nobody knows what that means yet, and nobody's working on building actual-3D chips, even in the lab, let alone something that will scale up for mass production; right now, 3-D chips are just stacks of 2-D chips, which adds processor cores but doesn't do much for your processing power... especially since the software probably isn't even utilizing all the cores you have on your PC already.

This is something that PC gamers, in particular, may take a while to figure out, something which is helping boost Windows 10's share of Steam users (gamers are the only ones still buying new PCs out of habit, rather than necessity), but the simple truth is that the gaming PC you bought a few years ago will probably do you for a few years yet, unless you're looking to get into streaming in a big way, or VR. The days of needing to buy a new PC every couple of years just to stay in the game... they're well and truly done.

Incidentally, this probably bodes well for Nintendo Switch, which is using last-generation Intel chips. While Switch will still be significantly less powerful than either PS4 or XBOne, let alone a PC, it's not going to be significantly less powerful than it could have been, had Nintendo used the newer Pascal chips, and it won't fall farther behind any time soon, either.

Good news, Linux fans! Kaby Lake PCs will still run your OS of choice.

When it was announced a little while back that Intel's new Kaby Lake and AMD's new Zen processors would not get Windows 7 support, I was reluctant to weigh in. It seemed like a pretty cut-and-tried example of collusion, with Intel, AMD, and Microsoft effectively performing like a cartel to push Windows 10 by limiting new CPUs to running Windows 10 only, if you wanted your OS to run properly.

Even at the time, though, there seemed to be a lot of confusion, and no real sense that anyone knew what this development was actually going to mean. And as more details came out, the picture got murkier, not clearer. Would PCs build on the new chipsets be able run older versions of Windows at all, even if Microsoft wouldn't add drivers to Windows 7 or 8 to facilitate that? Would Intel or AMD ensure that PCs built on their new chips could run Linux?

There were lots of guesses, but nobody really seemed to know, so I bided my time and waited for the dust to settle. I'm not in the market for a new PC anytime soon, after all, and probably won't be until Windows 7 support stops completely in 2020, so I could afford the time.

Today, my procrastination patience has been rewarded.

From PC World:

Three new models of Dell’s slick XPS 13 Developer Edition will be available with Ubuntu OS and 7th Generation Core processors in the U.S. and Canada starting on Oct. 10.

Prices for XPS 13 DE will start at $949. Dell also announced the XPS 13 model with Kaby Lake and Windows 10, which will ship on Oct. 4 starting at $799.

[...]

Dell has remained committed to Linux while major PC vendors shift to Windows 10 on PCs. Intel made a major commitment to supporting Windows 10 with its new Kaby Lake chips but hasn’t talked much about Linux support.

XPS 13 DE is perhaps the sexiest and thinnest Linux laptop available, with an edge-to-edge screen being a stand-out feature. It is the latest in Dell’s Project Sputnik line of laptops, and it is targeted at computer enthusiasts who want a Windows or Mac alternative.

Head over to PC World for more details, or to Slashdot for more discussion -- the folks discussing this development over there will mostly be more better informed than I am. I'm just happy that consumers will continue to have options, viable alternatives to Windows 10, in spite of Microsoft's best efforts. That's good news.

It feels like it's been a better-than-average week for pro-consumer news.