Intel's minds have come up with a new complex plane process. They measure their feature size by taking the square root of the height of the gate. By extending the gate downward, their measurements start at -1, leading to measurements in the scale of i, which tickles their marketing department no end. Sadly, i doesn't deliver on a real timeline.
Do not disregard complex timelines so casually. Intel can well deliver in a + bi, where a = Q (quarter), b = year and i is, you know, the imaginary thingy.
Assuming a claimed Q1 2025 delivery in the real plane of Intel's RibbonFET 20A parts, in the complex plane where Intel lives the actual delivery would be in Q1 + 2025i. Let's say Jan 2025i; right after the complex holiday season of 2024 / 2025, complete with an imaginary Santa and complex elves.
Yeah, Intel is still king of the liars. I've got a box full of Intel CPUs, but Intel really crapped the bed. Intel 7 is the new 10nm. Can't make this stuff up! We can't put out a competitive product so we'll call it 7 anyways! GO INTEL GO!
Which is exactly what TSMC did with their 14nm node. This was how the whole naming problem got started but no one seemed to care since it seemed like they were catching up to Intel and all the Intel haters were happy to see it.
When Intel shocked the world and released its FinFET (Tri-Gate) process at 22nm TSMC followed it with the horrible 20nm planar node though it had lower transistor density than Intel 22nm. TSMC was claiming its 20nm node was a half shrink of the 22nm node and therefore meant they were keeping up with Intel. TSMC felt they were justified in this because Intel 22nm transistor density missed the target of a full node shrink by a bit with the introduction FinFET's. This was a consequence of the new trench contact structure required between the Fin’s and Metal 0. TSMC has the same problem when they introduce Fin’s. Then, Intel released 2nd Gen FinFET, the 14nm node, with more than a full node of shrinkage to get back on track with what they missed at 22nm.
TSMC then released their 14nm node shortly after with the same backend as the 20nm node - so no transistor density scaling, it was the same node really (sound familiar). Then, Intel got over-optimistic and tried to scale more than a full node again using Spacer Quad patterning at 10nm and got stuck in a 6 year delay. At the same time they decided to pass on using EUV for 10nm because at the time it was not ready for production.
TSMC bought up all the EUV steppers in the world and then proceeded down the lithographic scaling trail of 10nm, 7nm, 5nm, and soon 3nm. A smart move on their part and easier to make since the throughput of the EUV tool increased in the meantime (since they were a bit behind Intel in that development decision). Essentially all this scaling was handed to them on a silver platter by ASML. Also, the transistor density of these 3-4 nodes has been well off the traditional density shrink which is why Intel 2 nodes (or more depending on how you interpret the marketing names) still has a density that matches them.
They did not produce any real innovations in any of those nodes. Gate-all-around has been the obvious next step for 5-6 years. If they were "innovating" all this time with all these new nodes why did they not develop this. Now we see everyone claiming to have it ready to go in the 2024-2025 timeframe since IBM made their 2nm announcement. Funny how that is, wonder where everyone is getting it from?
All I am saying is, if you are going to call Intel a Liar then you have to call everyone else one first.
Given the confusion in the industry and the desire to truly compare technologies names with matched Transistor density, the whole world pushed Intel into changing their naming scheme since there was no possibility of getting the foundries to go backwards.
As I've said several times, Intel can just name their node with a monotonically increasing sequence that has no obvious or direct relation to density. Just opt out of the whole nm race, entirely.
Any proof? Or just pulling thin air out of your arse to satisfy your agenda? The density comparison graph in the first page of this article literally disapprove your statement.
@Butterfish - not to agree with DigitalFreak here, but it's worth noting that Intel haven't actually managed to produce a shipping design anywhere near their quoted density for 10nm, while TSMC customers (most notably AMD) have come much closer to their quoted density.
I'd still say that 10ESF looks broadly comparable to TSMC 7nm, though - much moreso than Samsung's 8nm.
@Butterfish - You're citing the broken chip that only shipped in one cut-price notebook; one that doesn't have public figures for transistor count available, so we don't know anything for sure about the density. The possibilities are either that you're technically correct in the worst way - i.e. they haven't shipped anything that /worked properly/ with their quoted 100M density - or you're wrong on both counts. 🤷♂️
Back in the world of numbers we know for sure, Lakefield hit almost exactly 49% of their quoted 10nm density, and that had all the inconvenient I/O stuff shunted off to its secondary die.
You know that Intels numbers that they out out haven't been spotted in the wild on any of their products, right? They had been doing these marketing stunts for a while, just with a different disguise. 107MTr/mm2 vor 10SF, my Ass.
Since Pat has relased some Transistor count figures, we know that cometlake with 4,2BTr and 205mm2 only has a density of around 21MTr/mm2 instead of the claimed 44MTr/mm2 for 14nm++ and even the newest shiniest rocketlake is worse than AMDs original zeppelin design in Density (6BTr on 270mm2 vs 4.8BTr on 192mm2). Since Tigerlake-H is only different in its L3 cache system, we know it is around 8-9BTr compared to cypress cove based Rocketlake. And it still has the much larger DIE coming in at 190mm2 compared to AMDs Cezanne with 10,78BTr including a much beefier GPU.
And this is comparing Apples to Apples, so HP processes to HP, not High density to mobile. TSMCs and Samsungs Mobile Processes are in reality so far ahead in Density and Power of anything Intel ships, that you really need an M1 class of chip to show it.
Intel has us fooled by meaningless laboratory numbers that can nowhere be found in real products for years and now they fuck us over again by renaming those already pretty desperate naming schemes.
Not if those transistor estimates never match real products… For years now, nothing Intel ships is close to their claimed transistor density. It’s like 2 to 3x off.
So does most chip made by other foundries. These figure are for the high density library. If you look at AMD’s CPU and GPU which use TSMC’s high performance library that aren’t optimized for density you will see much lower density number compare to what was advertised for the process nodes they are using.
Yes, you will see lower density - but something like 60-80% of the quoted density. Intel are hitting something more like 33-50% of what they quoted for 10nm.
Yeah, as a journalist, he shouldn't be trying to influence the industry. He can ask them questions like how they feel about TSMC/Samsung's node naming, during interviews, but that about as far as it should go.
I'm always confused by that idea that there's some magical bright line between being a journalist and an enthusiast. Ian can advocate for whatever he wants from Intel - as long as he's actually honest about it, IDGAF.
Everyone brings many biases, regardless of what label they stick on themselves. It's better to be open about those biases than to feign objectivity.
Come clean with one's biases (as much as one can, since they are a form of blindness) and, simultaneously, try to present the facts — clearly/thoroughly.
Your vision of a journalist sounds like a stenographer. Journalism is supposed to have activism as part of its function. That's what makes it different from stenography.
How lame. Just because there's no such thing as a perfectly neutral reporter doesn't mean that journalistic standards don't still have value.
> It's better to be open about those biases than to feign objectivity.
This is a canard used to legitimize partisan media. Time and again, surveys of consumers of partisan media have been shown to be less well-informed about relevant subject material.
> Come clean with one's biases
Yes, conflict of interests should be disclosed. However, one should take reasonable measures not to *further* said entanglements. That makes objectivity even more difficult.
> Your vision of a journalist sounds like a stenographer.
No, and I already explained the difference.
> Journalism is supposed to have activism as part of its function.
No, but thanks for at least confirming your ignorance on the subject.
@mode_13h - I guess I just disagree with you that Ian has "involved [him]self in the agenda" of Intel by advocating for some sort of change in their process naming conventions. It's equally likely he was tired of having to write articles explaining the difference between foundry Xnm and Intel XXnm, and/or the difference between "++", "+++" and "ESF".
While perfect impartiality is hard to find, it does exist as an ideal which we've got to keep before us. Without that gold standard, practice would sink lower and lower.
> I just disagree with you that Ian has "involved [him]self in the agenda" > of Intel by advocating for some sort of change in their process naming conventions.
What it does is give him a sense of ownership of their new process naming scheme, and that risks coloring his reporting. I'm not going to reread the entire article just to find examples, but I did note a few instances of what seemed to be favorable coverage. I can't say that's the result of his advocacy, but I wouldn't even have the question if he hadn't committed it.
> It's equally likely he was tired of having to write articles explaining the difference > between foundry Xnm and Intel XXnm, and/or the difference between "++", "+++" > and "ESF".
First, that's not a good excuse for advocacy. Reporters always face the issue of having to provide context for readers who haven't been following the subject closely. The magic of hyperlinks can be used to minimize the amount of repetition, by simply writing an explainer and linking to it from articles that deal with the relative differences between process nodes.
Second, he's still going to be in a similar position of potentially having to explain the differences between a given TSMC node and whichever Intel node is relevant. So, I don't see how this really improves the situation.
Distinguishing between editorial content and reporting separates the domain of fair and ethical reporting from one of advocacy. I think most major news organizations don't even let the same people who do reporting participate in op/ed.
To suggest that all editorials are instances of "casual and sloppy thinking" just shows you don't really know what you're talking about.
You're missing the point, and yet you attack *my* post for being stupid. Which is really just a half-step away from an "ad hom".
The point isn't that journalists should faithfully parrot what Intel says. I'm all for critical analysis of their claims, among other things. I don't even know why you'd think I wasn't.
The point is that they shouldn't try to *directly influence* the behavior of those they're reporting on. That violates impartiality, and I think you can see some of its more subtle effects in this article.
I worry that you're focusing so much on attacking me that you're losing the plot. I don't mind if you disagree with me, but when our exchanges cease to be productive, then it's veering in the direction of trolling.
It's okay to not be charitable in your interpretations, but I don't believe your interpretation to be correct. It isn't a matter of Ian trying to appeal to Intel in order for Intel "to look better for itself"... It's a matter of whether or not a new naming convention that's more in line with the rest of the industry would reduce confusion and- yes- makes for an environment where the truth comes out more easily. To advocate for the truth- Isn't that also a journalist's job?
> To advocate for the truth- Isn't that also a journalist's job?
Nothing about Intel's convention is more truthful. If he were advocating for them to publish real density figures, that would be different. That *is* advocating for more transparency, and I think that's appropriate.
'I worry that you're focusing so much on attacking me that you're losing the plot.'
mode_13 in a nutshell. Always tossing in blithe 'crystal ball/ouija board/tarot card' ad homs, whilst simultaneously feigning occupancy of the high road.
Consider yourself fortunate that I'm still replying to your posts at all.
I support what Ian is doing, but what mode_13h is trying to say is, that by putting his hand in it, Ian is no longer an objective/impartial observer. He has influenced what he was observing and is now a part of that setup. In practice, though, not a problem, and his predecessor used to do the same thing.
> Consider yourself fortunate that I'm still replying to your posts at all.
Certainly not. Your replies are consistently rather vapid, offer little value to the discussion, and your posts serve mostly to derail it onto unrelated tangents. I think we'd probably do better without your contributions, entirely.
Says the person who said, in reply to one of my posts ‘we know you’re smart ... use your powers for good’.
You typically post whatever sounds reasonable at a given time, no matter how inaccurate it is. I, by contrast, am capable of remembering what has been said — the positions that have been taken.
One cannot simultaneously claim I’m obviously intelligent and that my posts are valid. One cannot also post ‘agreed’ — as you did in another topic whilst pretending that my posts are vapid — unless you’re with that very vapidity.
I also find it droll that you employ the royal ‘we’ here. Are you a member of staff or merely that entitled?
> Says the person who said, in reply to one of my posts ‘we know you’re smart > ... use your powers for good’.
There's no logical inconsistency, there. Most of your posts seem to pull threads off-topic and offer little of value to the original subject. And quite a few are just snarky, cynical trolls.
> You typically post whatever sounds reasonable at a given time
I try to engage my brain and look at the other side of an issue, or at least from a perspective other than my narrow self-interest. And most often, what draws me to the other side of an issue is when someone takes an extreme position or makes absolutist statements that seem unjustified. If there's one thing you could say I consistently oppose, it's oversimplification.
> no matter how inaccurate it is.
Ah, now that's interesting. Accuracy is rooted in fact. And the facts are where you completely fall apart. You consistently fail to support your claims and assertions with good & relevant sources.
With that said, if I post something that's demonstrably inaccurate, then please do us *all* a favor and point it out. I never claimed to know everything or be infallible. I've even learned things from debates and spirited discussions.
> I, by contrast, am capable of remembering what has been said — > the positions that have been taken.
This might blow your mind, but I have actually changed positions, on a few occasions. Not many, but I'm actually willing to re-evaluate my position, after looking at the arguments on both sides.
Also, I try not to be overly partisan, which is to say that I try not to take a side of an issue purely on the basis of political allegiance or preoccupation with self-consistency. If I think one side is overstating their case or otherwise acting in bad faith, I might come out against their position, even while I might've previously been supportive on another issue.
> One cannot simultaneously claim I’m obviously intelligent and that my posts are valid.
Why not? Intelligence describes the actor, while the writing of posts describes their actions. I can criticize the latter, without invalidating the former. Plenty of smart people do things that are thoughtless, counterproductive, antisocial, or worse. However, at some point, the actions do begin to define the actor.
> One cannot also post ‘agreed’ — as you did in another topic whilst pretending > that my posts are vapid
I said they're "consistently", not "uniformly" or "without exception". If I thought you were a complete waste of time, then I wouldn't spend so much time replying to you.
> unless you’re with that very vapidity.
Well, I'm not going to claim I've never made a vapid post. I try to say things worth saying, but I'm not infallible. It is just a news comment thread, and I don't worry too much about a post here or there.
> I also find it droll that you employ the royal ‘we’ here.
It wasn't. I was speaking on behalf of myself AND other forum participants. That it was preceded by "I think", signifies it as a speculative statement. Others are welcome to disagree.
What? Intel has long sandbagged its numbers. Unfortunately, we've all decided to follow the marketing, so yeah, at least Intel is more honest now. But none of it matters until they deliver it. I'm not trusting any marketing announcements from Intel. I want the desktop / laptop CPU in-hand so that there's actual benchmarks.
Wow, that sure takes some mental gymnastics to see Intel participating in the same disinformation race as "more honest".
You could say they're being more consistent... until TSMC and Samsung decide to rebrand their process nodes to stay ahead of Intel's naming.
All of this argues that it's an exercise in futility to pretend these names actually mean anything. They should just use codenames, or maybe a completely arbitrary schema involving sequential numbering + letters or Greek alphabet characters.
Sure, noted. "More honest" relative to the industry = more consistent. I'm flabbergasted how anyone has any problem with this, when literally no one had a problem TSMC & Samsung have done this for years, lol.
OK? Why wouldn't TSMC & Samsung play more bullshit w/ foundry marketing? They started it a while ago, so it's more than expected to continue. Good technology has never needed exaggerations: Intel, TSMC, and Samsung all know that.
lol, this is just the tip of the iceberg of marketing. We don't need "i7" or "Ryzen 3", either. How deep do you want to go?
Node names *absolutely* mean something: it's the progression within a foundry. Almost nobody dual-sources CPUs any more, but everyone wants to play "Fantasy Nodes".
That's the more interesting problem. Why is the peak density leap between 10->7 larger than 7->4? Because, clearly, density is not the *only* metric involved in a node.
> literally no one had a problem TSMC & Samsung have done this for years, lol.
How do you know? Did you run a survey?
Unlike what Intel is doing, Samsung and TSMC never had a press conference to announce they're going to use more dishonest naming. If they had, you'd probably have seen the same kind of sentiment you're seeing when Intel did just that.
> Good technology has never needed exaggerations
That's not true. Not as long as exaggerations can help you sell a little more. Nvidia exgerates like all damn day, even while they've been sitting comfortably atop the heap.
> it's the progression within a foundry
Right, so the names just need to reflect that. Like I said, they should use sequential numbering for big steps, and then letter suffixes to denote minor iterations.
> density is not the *only* metric involved in a node.
All the more reason to cut ties between their naming and any pretense of density.
"Right, so the names just need to reflect that. Like I said, they should use sequential numbering for big steps, and then letter suffixes to denote minor iterations"
Tell TSMC, Samsung, along with everyone else to do it, at the same time.
(TSMC with its N7+, N5P, and Samsung with its 3GAE...)
If you want to apply some standard, apply it to everyone first. Lest you'd be the one who ends up looking agenda-ladened.
> Tell TSMC, Samsung, along with everyone else to do it, at the same time.
The beauty of it is that Intel can simply opt out of the game, without requiring others to do the same.
> If you want to apply some standard
No, you don't have to replace a false standard with another standard (false or not). The point is just to drop the pretense that the node names really mean anything.
Especially when Intel has failed to ship anything remotely close to the peak density while TSMC is. Ian has lost credibility with his hype-boy-isms in this article.
That's because the article is reporting on their press conference. So, all they're doing it taking the Intel-provided slides and commentary and making it more accessible for us plebs.
Where I think you could legitimately say Ian has a bit of Stockholm Syndrome is in his lobbying for "industry standard naming". I think it's crossing the line, as journalist, to do anything more than ask his interviewees questions about this confusion.
You really believe that — that journalists are stenographers?
Finding one who is actually independent (since media is owned by the wealthy) is like trying to find citizens of Atlantis. (Also, even with a valiant attempt at true objectivity we’re all products of culture as well as genetic biases — aka personality.)
However, there is a some range in journalism between the stenographer for corporate/plutocratic marketing and someone who has an advanced/terminal degree in the field being covered. The latter can, at least, make the effort to have a dialogue rather than passively listening to monologue and regurgitating it on cue.
> You really believe that — that journalists are stenographers?
No, of course not. They can & should add context and critical analysis. I think the article does some of that, but it's primarily concerned with conveying and explaining Intel's message.
I was simply trying to explain why it reads like a press release. It's hard to faithfully cover a press event and *not* have it sound somewhat like that.
It's not. It's a clarification. My position on this issue hasn't changed, so any apparent contradiction is probably a case of misinterpretation or where I was being too terse. I generally try to keep my comments short and to-the-point, sometimes to a fault.
TSMC & Samsung have been doing this for *years*: blatantly misleading people. There is no "TSMC 12nm" nor a "TSMC 6nm" nor a "TSMC 4nm". These are not actually genuinely noticeable peak density increases versus 16nm, 7nm, nor 5nm.
You have to admit it's kind of bullshit when Intel has an aging (or mature, depending on how you think of it) 10nm process that has more transistor density than TSMC's 7nm.
This has been going on a long time. Years ago when Intel launched 14++ (third gen 14nm) TSMC was full steam ahead on 10nm which was barely an improvement over Intel's 14.
Sure, it's BS. It always was. But Intel can just opt out and choose not to play that game by naming their manufacturing process something other than purported node size.
Especially when you consider that it's only Intel apologists, and not Intel itself, who keep repeating the erroneous TSMC's 7nm = Intel's 10nm. If Intel could assert with credibility that (1) TSMC @ 7nm = Intel @ 10nm, you better believe they'd be doing that all day long...;) But they can't, so they don't. Intel needs products, not marketing claptrap. Over the last three years Intel's execution record of prior roadmaps has been abysmal.
Intel's 10nm doesn't actually have higher density in shipping products than TSMC's significantly more aged (or mature, depending on how you think of it) 7nm, though. It's a little lower, if anything, but the improvements from ESF should at least bring it into contention for PPW for the first time in a while.
Given that the number bears no relationship to feature size, I think we will one day be in the interesting position that the headline number used to name the process will actually be smaller than the spacing between silicon atoms (which would happen at 5A)
Marketing and switching to picometers makes the mantissa that much larger than the previous nanometer figures. Going from 3 nm to 2000 pm makes the later seem much much larger to those who don't know metric suffixes that well.
Realistically you'd think that there marketing departments would do when they switched from microns to nanometers: the first few sub-micron generations were expressed as a decimal micron: 0.8 um, 0.65 um, then they switches to nanometers. Main point here is that there is a firm bottom limit to how low these numbers can go.
There is also the problem that we're up against atomic size limitations. A single silicon atom is ~118 pm wide. The difference between the 20A process and 18A process if they fully represented physical characteristics would simply be two Si atom's width.
This only matters if they actually deliver. Intel has a gaping credibility problem. The bar is high for them to convince customers & investors they've actually fixed the root problems behind prior delays.
Things went a little off the rails with 14nm, which was about six months late. 10nm was nominally delivered in 2018 (two years late), but given that Rocket Lake, released earlier this year, used 14nm, I don't think you can really claim that 10nm was fully there prior to this year. Intel now plans to deliver a new process every year, but the changes between are smaller, so that's similar to their previous goal of a new process every two years. So you add five years to the original tick-tock road map, giving:
10nm 2021 4nm 2023 2nm 2025
That's ambitious. Time will tell whether they can pull it off.
This is the key thing. The article concludes that Intel 10nm=industry's 7nm, but performance of the actual chips (CPUs and also GPUs) are night and day different. It doesn't match up to reality. Which doesn't mean that Intel/article are wrong, but it needs some explaining if the x86 instruction set or Windows/Android/NVIDIA/AMD are the culprits or what. Everyone using Mac laptops through the years knows what the reality is. Same with AMD vs Intel on the desktop in the last couple years.
> The article concludes that Intel 10nm=industry's 7nm
Um, did you read it? Because they didn't *completely* lay this out, but Intel is projected to have 4 full iterations of 10 nm, by the time they move to a higher density. The first was Cannon Lake, Ice Lake was second (10 nm+), Tiger Lake (10 nm SF) is 3rd, and Alder Lake (10 nm ESF - now Intel 7) is to be the 4th. There are significant performance and efficiency changes between each.
The wheels fell off because they thought the could continue to shrink without EUV including buying expensive ASML machines that have limited supply and take long from order to delivery. Once they realized their error they were stranded. Note that this is just inferred as a reasonable explanation from what transpired - there is no hard proof of this, so the real cause may be something else.
One thing we can reliably infer is that the solutions involved decreasing density in shipping products and (initially, at least) accepting abysmal yields. For example, even now, they still talk about wafers when they talk about finally producing more 10nm than 14nm... but wafers are input, not output.
Instead of this meaningless "nm" node name stupidity, Intel should've just moved to a transistor-density-based node naming. For example, "Intel 100" for 100 million transistors per square mm. Then for same-node refinement (where density stays the same but transistor or circuit performance improves), they could've used a revision number - e.g. Intel 100 mk. 1, Intel 100 mk. 2, etc.
That would've returned industry nomenclature back to reality, and also poked the eye of Intel's competitors who have been propagating this "nm" nonsense.
I think if there's confusion between nanometers and nautical miles, something has gone very wrong with the conversation.
It is like millivolts and megavolts. Yes, they are both spelled mv(case-insensitively), but if one is confused for the other there was a LOT of context missing.
(I wanted to use millimeter and megameter, but every time I use the latter I am met with confusion or scorn.)
> every time I use the latter I am met with confusion or scorn.
Same thing, when I try to casually drop kiloseconds or megaseconds into a conversation. : )
Seriously, the people mainly using distances on the order of 10^6 m are astronomers or rocket scientists. And they're dealing with such a large range of distances that it makes more sense to just drop the SI prefix and use scientific notation.
Who cares if nobody follows? That's actually better, because then people have to compare based on actual metrics instead of some fake metrics that don't really tell you anything!
The point is they did it and nobody else followed, so therefore nobody uses transistor density as a metric for comparison, and everyone still use nm. How exactly were you thinking to force people to use the metric you want them to use?
Again, you don't. Intel can just go its own way, with naming. Then, people have to compare based on cost, peak performance, perf/W ...you know, the stuff that actually matters!
It's notable that they started trying to do that right around when they were failing to get 10nm off the ground but still predicting unprecedentedly high density, and stopped trying after they got 10nm products out the door with drastically reduced density from their predictions.
I don't think any of these companies want to be directly compared to each other in this way unless they're clearly winning, and as they can't always guarantee they'll be winning, it makes more sense to use nonsense-numbers backed up by half-truths.
You can measure what you want and they will find a way to score better. Transistors are used for different things so they will start putting huge piles of useless high density transistors into the design to bump up the density measure. At the end of the day, they should stop talking about nodes altogether and talk about sing/multi/heat per dollar - of course, they can't do that because nobody would but another Intel chip for a couple years.
Agreed, lets just go buy transistors, or list both. People can compare whatever makes more sense to them...LOL. Agree with OP too, joining the fake club while Intel tried to stay real for years. OH well, if you can't beat them, join them and come up with something new (2025)...LOL. Whatever works. Buying up 3nm was great too, will keep others from gaining far more NET INCOME from getting said 3nm wafers and competing with their own top end stuff. Direct those 3nm chips at as much server/mobile you can (maybe some desktop top end chips, the top3 maybe) or just make a TON of 3nm gpus with whatever is left all year. I hope Pat bought 18mo of 3nm so nobody else gets them. Apple got batch1, messed it up on the 2nd, so hopefully Intel bought 3-4B of them until the cash runs out on it. Make everything AMD thinks is a cash cow, and leave them with stuff on the shelf (and written off a year later...LOL).
Anything still left? GO 3nm GPU to hurt everyone. Meaning, apple coming right after 3nm cpu (gpu just waiting for wafers surely to avoid AMD/NV next, developing now in home consoles likely), but longer now, going 4nm..LOL, AMD, NVDA NET hurt here too. I'll be shocked if pat didn't nail down even more than planned when apple stepped out of batch2.
30K wafers were batch1 - How many in batch 2? 100k? Make the largest gpus you can to eat them all (assuming AMD's top server/mobile dies are attacked already with coming chips), and watch as AMD/NV Q reports go down, and all 3 rejig their next parts on 4nm etc...ROFL (apple already did it). 6nm Warhol dead (well, the fake 6nm process that is). You get the point.
We all need 3nm gpus anyway right? Heck most of you would probably take ANYTHING these days...LOL. Intel to the gpu rescue Q1 2023 with 3nm TSMC all year (and 6nm coming up??)?? Sell them DIRECT like a NVDA founders cards, and only ONE per household AND/or visa etc. I think gamers would warm to Intel if they helped us get cards soon. 6nm sounds good to me if you can't get any 7nm yet really. No I refuse to pay 2-3x, heck for that matter I refuse to pay over MSRP. I'll wait, build HTPCs, etc etc. I won't bite until price isn't stupid even though I can afford it.
> I refuse to pay 2-3x, heck for that matter I refuse to pay over MSRP.
Dude, you *just* posted in another thread that people should stop whining about high component prices and live like peasants to save up whatever it costs to buy the latest GPU!
FWIW, I'm with you. I'm fortunate that I don't need the latest & greatest GPU, so I plan to wait until I can get one at a reasonable price.
You know, Intel can't even hit 7nm yet--so there's no sense in discussing anything at all beyond that. He who makes the best products shall win the game--not so hard to understand, is it, Intel? I haven't seen an interesting architecture out of Intel yet! AMD has flashed by you as if you are sitting still...but hey--you are just sitting still, aren't you, Intel? Products talk--BS walks.
What kind of crap is this? You know Intel acknowledges their own faults now, and they're trying to remedy that with the first of these announcements. This node scheming is only for the purpose of realinging with the industry— and they're being more honest for that sake. Why not hold them to account to see if they're getting more and more competitive by the next few years?
Intel has been about as transparent as a brick wall. Their disclosures of schedule slip have been the bare minimum required by their customers and SEC reporting requirements. To this day, we still have zero visibility into exactly what went wrong. They've listed a bunch of leadership and organizational changes, but without insight into the root problems, it just amounts to: "trust us this time, for realz!"
> Why not hold them to account to see if they're getting more and more competitive > by the next few years?
Been there, done that. They've published similar roadmaps in the past, and they turned out to be worth less than the bits they were printed on.
Many years late, Intel did manage to get 10 nm products into end users' hands, followed by 10 nm SFF. So, they haven't lost *all* credibility. We can expect them to deliver on most of their promises *eventually*. It's mainly just a question of which decade.
Intel hasn't disclosed what went wrong but looking at what the other fabs have done it should be pretty evident: they went with EUV sooner and were not as aggressive pursuing peak density. Intel's 10 nm process was a quad pass, self aligned schema that is seemingly too complex for mass production. The super fin and enhanced super fin advancements sacrificed that absolute density in favor of getting a working node.
EUV is a great reset on as it reduces the need for multi-pass layers. This is also why Intel does have a legit chance in surpassing the other foundries with high-NA by securing these next generation ASML machines before their competitors. If the competition doesn't have these same tools at the same time as Intel, it is a clear technological advantage. The real question is how much money did it take to secure that deal.
Uh, no. I thought they were *late* to the EUV party and got themselves in a position of having to wait in line to get EUV machines. The article is consistent with this.
> were not as aggressive pursuing peak density.
I heard their 10 nm was too high-density, and that was part of the problem. From the chart on page 1, it's certainly claimed to be higher-density than TSMC 7 nm.
> EUV is a great reset on as it reduces the need for multi-pass layers.
I thought EUV requires more passes, which is one reason it's more expensive.
@mode_13h - I think Kevin G meant Intel's *competitors* went with EUV sooner, not Intel - hence also them not aggressively pursuing peak density, which is not something Intel could be accused of...
EUV reduces the number of passes required, because less (or no) multi-patterning is required to reach the same density as a process using DUV. The problem you're likely thinking of is that EUV machines are still in a state where each pass through them is slower than through a DUV machine due to relatively weak beam intensity, and the masks have to be handled with greater care (no pellicles) and replaced more often.
Presumably Intel thought they would be better off sweating existing known-good assets than trying to figure out how to integrate relatively experimental tech into an entirely new workflow. They lost that bet.
ACKNOWLEDGE their faults? That’s why they used that very careful language to say that they are shipping more WAFERS at 10nm than 14nm, but not more CHIPS? Because they still don’t want to admit 10nm yield issues… Such transparency. Much honesty.
You seem completely unaware of the OTHER ways to fight. IE: Buying out the other guy's next wafer requirements to launch 3nm. Intel already killed 6nm Warhol plans (maybe NV too, they're 5nm now). The 3nm 2nd batch already killed Apple 3nm macs next year too.
You are ignorant. The simple thing for Intel to do here, is just buy up everything they think AMD/NV could need making DISCRETE gpu anything (server, workstation, desktop all discrete), and make the crap out of them at 3nm and flood the market vs. all others. They won't be competing with their own stuff for the most part as they have no discrete retail cards for ages.
What is 2nm batch 100K wafers? First was 30k. I can't remember the link to the ramp stats they expect (semiwiki or wikichips, eetimes, semiconductor-digest etc - too many to keep track of and many need translators). Anyone?
You seem to be awfully confident that the non-appearance of products that were only ever rumoured from leaked roadmaps of an indeterminate age is down to Intel. You also seem to think that the abusive, self-defeating behaviour you hypothesise would be smart. The mind boggles.
> You also seem to think that the abusive, self-defeating behaviour you hypothesise would be smart.
Yeah, I can't imagine TSMC would sell out its 3 nm production run to a competitor of its own foundry and a competitor to many of its other customers. I mean, talk about self-defeating...
Not gonna lie, 8-core Tiger Lake is a solid product. There are trade-offs vs the AMD competition, but it's an ambitious design and no doubt about it - albeit apparently one they can't make in sufficient volume for the desktop, even though it operates with desktop boost power levels and desktop I/O capabilities. Alder Lake looks even more interesting architecturally, though it remains to be seen how that works in practice.
Intel figures if they promise what they know they can't deliver that their stock price will increase while their profits decrease. They've been able to bamboozle the gullible for decades and have never ever admitted what a disaster their failed 10Nm process is. Even Pat Gelsinger is gonna have a tough time fixing a very broken and unscrupulous Intel who has been convicted many times of anti-trust violations in their efforts to prevent a level playing field and competition from superior products to Intel's over-priced extortion based products.
There is no such thing as impossible in semiconductor industry. No one thought TSMC would take a leadership when their 20nm was considered dud 7 years ago.
That's the example you want to go with? TSMC makes huge investments into development and facilities. TSMC is going to be collecting unprecedented revenue from every semiconductor player on Earth, including Intel when it builds chips for them.
Enjoy your Intel dividends, because they don't spend earnings on engineering or manufacturing. Go read the finance reports for yourself. This company has been run for shareholder value for 16 years. It is NOT possible to reclaim lost leadership in 4.
And no one thought AMD would come back to become $100B company either. I know there is a better chance TSMC will remain the leader in 2025 and beyond, but anything can happen between now and 2025. I wouldn't completely rule Intel out.
@Machinus - maybe don't use slurs against other people's intelligence when you managed to fatally misread not one, but two replies to your comments.
You were shown two examples that logically counter your claim that a comeback is "impossible", and your response was to mock the person for pointing out the indisputable fact that those comebacks were considered exceedingly unlikely *before they happened*.
You are in effect identifying yourself as someone who would have thought those things back then, given that you are arguing so passionately that it's true about Intel now.
@Machinus - fatal for your argument, absolutely. I thought that was implicit, but this appears to be a game where you misread everything and then insist you're smarter than everyone else.
Your comments didn't "explain" anything, they made inaccurate assertions.
Yeah, like China could take back Taiwan. Then, it would be largely irrelevant how good TSMC is. AMD would have to go cap-in-hand to IFS and beg for some capacity.
Right, but officially, Taiwan is still officially the Republic of China(the pre-communist name for the country). They didn't LEAVE. Both Taiwan and Mainland Taiwan claim they are the one true chinese government and the other side is a bunch of traitorous usurpers.
I do get the point, I just enjoy poking at mainland Taiwan.
> Both Taiwan and Mainland Taiwan claim they are the one true chinese government > and the other side is a bunch of traitorous usurpers.
I knew a guy who was an officer in the Taiwanese military, back in the 90's. At that time, he said their mantra was "we will go back" (to the mainland). These days, I can't imagine anyone would even say such things. From what I can tell, Taiwan is pretty content with the status quo, and would prefer it stay that way (within reason).
There are some downsides to not having formal independence. For instance, mainlanders can buy property in Taiwan. That's bidding up property values and is probably something they'd dare to regulate, if recognized as an independent country. Expensive real estate also increases the cost of doing business, which is one reason many young Taiwanese are moving to the mainland to start their careers.
> No one thought TSMC would take a leadership when their 20nm was considered dud 7 years ago.
Yeah, but they're only leading because Intel fell on its face. Had it continued to execute anything like it did up to 14 nm, they'd still be leading today.
> Somehow this means TSMC is bad while the competition is better LMFAO.
What I'm doing is comparing Intel's old roadmaps to where TSMC is, today. It doesn't diminish TSMC's accomplishments.
With that said, TSMC certainly benefitted from Intel's missteps, because a less dominant Intel creates more demand for alternatives. And most of those alternatives, be they x86 or ARM, are manufactured by TSMC. That gave TSMC more revenue to fuel further R&D and continue improving their manufacturing process.
TSMC also invested heavily in expertise and manufacturing. Intel had to fuck up and TSMC had to get better for Intel to have such a massive failure that they lost their lead. TSMC is increasing their lead, market share, capacity...there is no way in hell Intel is going to "catch up" anytime soon.
@Machinus - it's not *likely*, but it's not impossible either. If (big if!) Intel hit their targets for the "4" process then they'll recover a lot of the lead they lost already. If, in the meantime, any of TSMC's bets don't pay off - e.g. no GAA at 3nm (remember, no FinFet at 20nm was their last big L) - then no amount of money is going to magically fix that for them.
Like I said, I don't think it's likely. I do think it's likely that Intel will gain enough ground for it to be functionally irrelevant, though.
It still wasn't apparent as recently as their 10nm, which was like a less dramatic repeat of 20nm. It really wasn't until TSMC rolled out 7nm that they had a process which was consistently outperforming Intel on all relevant metrics - density, power, switching performance, yield.
Easy to claim things are obvious / impossible when we look backwards, isn't it :D
It is possible as they are getting the better EUV first from ASML. That'll be a strategic advantage over the other foundries.
Two questions remain: how much did Intel have to pay to get those first? Secondly, can Intel get the rest of their processor roadmap in line prior to receiving those critical machines?
No. There is better EUV on the horizon, it's called High NA EUV from ASML and relies on a new optical design that improves the Numerical Aperture (NA) of the system to allow for more dense designs/smaller minimum feature size.
Why do companies eventually shifts terms away from its original perceived concept? As seen in politics and at the msm, to mislead the uniformed masses, of course.
It's a lot easier to inflate the degree of progress than to actually deliver it.
I don't know why you're trying to tie that to the MSM, by the way. If you want misleading and inflated stories of progress or decline, nobody beats the partisan media.
I dont know why you are trying to create another "media" to protect MSM when the MSM has not only become hyper partisan the last 5 years, but has also lost nearly all credibility after being caught in one lie and scandal after another.
As for the politics, well shifting terms to cover up the lack of innovation and progression is typical of the government.
I don't see how you can trust someone with a blatant political bias to be more truthful than someone with actual journalistic ethics and standards. Calling out lies doesn't make them partisan. And if your guy happens to be a compulsive liar, then yeah it's going to look like they're against him.
Absolutely. Along with mathematics. Time and time again, the mathematician discovers some new region of maths, and decades later the physicists find it's just the thing they needed.
When someone diminishes the value and even the existence of truth, a rebuke of some form is to be expected. And politics is no cover for being untruthful.
BTW, your post was actually countered by @GeoffreyA. Mine was a reply to his. You're losing the plot. Or maybe we're beyond that point and you're just needling me out of sheer spite.
If you have to talk in such general terms about the media that you're not even able to refer to the specific acts a "mainstream" news organisation took part in that somehow persuaded you to distrust *all of them equally*, it's a good indicator that you're repeating talking points rather than saying anything of value.
Fox News is "MSM", for the record. Same with the Daily Mail in the UK - outsells any other paper, most popular website. Both are hyper-partisan, both mainstream. Then you have these swirling masses of pseudo-news organisations that harp on relentlessly about the MSM - The Daily Caller, GB News, Rebel Media, etc. - that exist entirely to push propaganda. Their not being "mainstream" doesn't make their perspectives more valid. Same goes for partisan dickholes with their own pages like Drudge and Guido.
No media source is universally reliable. Some do at least have standards, even if they don't always hew to them.
Weird that you just segued to "the government" for no reason. Which government, where? 🤷♂️
You seem to conflate "partisan" with conservative, which broadcasts an obvious bias and double standard.
Leftist websites like the Guardian, NYT, and Washington Post are extremely unreliable because they're partisan leftists, with no apparent deeper commitment to truth or professional journalism. We've found some amazing patterns of false statements in their work, especially when they couch it as "fact checking", which was unexpected. We haven't yet found comparable patterns at Fox News, though their story selection on their homepage is clearly biased (story selection is a different bias measure entirely, and leftist websitre score high on that form of bias as well – try finding coverage of the Biden Administration flagging posts or topics for censorship for Facebook at any of the leftist websites...)
Daily Caller might have the only credible fact-checking operation in the US at the moment. They score much higher than anyone else I've seen, in the US at least.
> Leftist websites like the Guardian, NYT, and Washington Post
It's funny how those who do the most to discredit quality journalism also happen to be the ones who stand the most to gain by having no critical oversight of their actions within office.
Right-wingers decry anyone as leftist who doesn't hew to their ideology. Sorry, that's not how it works.
> try finding coverage of the Biden Administration flagging posts
Maybe because there's no substance to it? Just because they don't pick up whatever stories right-wing media gins up doesn't mean they're leftist.
The reason ASML is switching to High-NA EUV is diffraction. Diffraction makes an image blurry, and increasing the aperture of a lens decreases the amount of diffraction.
Photographers normally measure apertures in terms of “f-stops” rather than “numerical aperture.” The current ASML EUV machines have an aperture of f/1.5, while the high-NA machines will have an aperture of f/0.91.
Thanks for that - I did wonder what it corresponded to! I know there are other engineering and optical issues that creep in with wider apertures, so I'm guessing that's what's preventing them switching to High-NA sooner.
I think it's doubtful that we'll ever see these nodes. It's certainly unlikely that Intel will deliver them on schedule, even though the schedule is now several years behind their original promises.
It would be very interesting to see some rigorous organizational research on how some foundries are able to reliably advance with new nodes and shrinks, while others fail. It's a complete mystery to me how TSMC is able to reliably advance on schedule, moving the threshold of the physics and engineering, but Intel is simply unable to do the same. It's not clear what is different in terms of process, talent, organization, etc. Does TSMC have secret discoveries in engineering management? Is it possible for companies to decide to hit a node and then hit that node? What makes it work for some and not others?
Whatever the reasons, it looks like Intel is simply unable to advance. They've been treading water for many years now. It's been a long time since they did anything major. If not for TSMC, it would make me think that the physics just didn't work for any more shrinks.
Taiwan is smart enough to invest it its industry, and TSMC is smart enough not to waste all of its retained earnings on shareholders. Research project done.
> If someone tells you to "reasearch" anything to support their argument
He didn't. What he meant was for someone like a prof at a respected business school to do a thorough analysis of the organization, in order to understand how they've been so successful. This sort of thing happens, from time to time, and usually ends up in a best-selling book like those you can find about other massively successful companies in recent history.
That's not how knowledge works, or how reality works. It's not possible to know the answers to these sorts of questions by a moment's reflection and opinion generation, especially when the opinions contain no real info. "smart enough to invest" is meaningless without concrete data, like how much "Taiwan" actually "invested" in TSMC, when they did so, and how this investment influenced TSMC's ability to develop new nodes, if at all.
(And your second clause is probably false in that I don't think any chipmaker wastes all of their retained earnings on shareholders, and of course "wastes" is a loaded term that would have to be justified with arguments and data.)
You can't really know anything about the world around you using your method here.
> It would be very interesting to see some rigorous organizational research on > how some foundries are able to reliably advance with new nodes and shrinks
True. But these must be closely-held secrets. I'm sure they'd closely guard them for decades.
> it looks like Intel is simply unable to advance.
They're advancing, just slowly. They finally got 10 nm performing competitively, by the time they reached 10 nm++ (SuperFin).
And they've delivered products with Foveros and EMIB.
That's why I said above that it's not a question so much of *whether* Intel will deliver, but in what decade!
Is Foveros in anything? In desktops? I haven't heard anything.
I don't remember what EMIB is, but it only matters if it matters. That is, if it confers benefits to users, like speed.
I don't trust their plus sign stacking anymore, or labels like "Super"-this or that. At this point it's all going to be bottom line metrics for me re: Intel. Is it faster? How much faster? That sort of thing.
Also, it has to actually exist and be ready to buy by normal means, like Dell, Amazon, etc. If there are no desktops with SuperFin+++++ Tiger Claw, Cougar Lake, Bald Eagle Lake, Rocket Man, etc. then it's moot. I think whatever Lake is supposed to have SuperFin++++ is in desktops yet.
> Is Foveros in anything? In desktops? I haven't heard anything.
Lakefield, but I'm guessing that's why you added "in desktops". Chip development times seem to be around 4 years or so. That means you wouldn't expect an overnight transition to something like Foveros. First, it has to be proven and refined. Then, you might see chips still early in their design phase start to utilize it, but that should result in a gap between the first example and more widespread adoption. So, the fact that we haven't yet seen widespread adoption doesn't mean anything, in itself.
> I don't remember what EMIB is
It's easy to look up. It's Intel's technology for building multi-chip modules. I think Sapphire Rapids is slated to use it. Otherwise, I think Meteor Lake might be first.
> I don't trust their plus sign stacking anymore
If we were talking about 14 nm, then I'd agree. However, they've been a bit more transparent about what distinguishes 10 nm+, 10 nm++, and 10 nm+++. For details, see the article (which refers to ++ as SF and +++ as ESF).
> Is it faster? How much faster? That sort of thing.
Their foundry business should offer new transparency into their manufacturing node. Before, when Intel was practically their fabs' only customer, they didn't need to reveal detailed performance characteristics of their process iterations. However, when you're trying to attract customers to use your fabs, the standard for transparency is a lot higher. It also means that Intel needs to be more conservative about their roadmaps, since actual manufacturing contracts are going to hang by on-time and on-target delivery.
However, I agree that the end result (cost, area, power, frequency, and wafers per month) are what really matters. I'm not really bothered about dubious density metrics, and that's why I think they should just switch to a sequential version numbering scheme.
> Also, it has to actually exist and be ready to buy by normal means
Manufacturing process roadmaps are not of much interest to end-consumers, precisely because the timelines for getting end products on shelves is so far out.
Also, I'd say consumer shouldn't even think much about manufacturing tech. Good product reviews will show the relevant performance and power characteristics, and that's what most people really care about.
> I think whatever Lake is supposed to have SuperFin++++ is in desktops yet.
Ice Lake uses "regular" 10 nm, which is really 10 nm+ (but Intel doesn't call it that, because they'd rather pretend that Cannon Lake's 10 nm didn't happen). Ice Lake launched in laptops toward the end of 2019 and in servers a few months ago.
Tiger Lake uses 10 nm SF. The quad-core launched in laptops at the end of 2020 and 8-core launched a few months ago. The only "desktops" that have either are small-form-factor PCs, such as NUCs. Intel skipped selling it as a normal desktop CPU, probably due to manufacturing constraints (i.e. insufficient volume), but *maybe* also having to do with performance or power scaling.
Alder Lake should launch (for desktops!) around the end of this year and will be the first CPU on 10 nm ESF (now called "Intel 7"). It'll be the first "10 m" product they've launched for desktops.
@mode_13h, Foveros isn't new though. It's old. I first read about it in 2019, or earlier. My comment rested on my unstated framing view that Foveros is old, and it's in my bucket of "Things Intel has hyped but never delivered.", like the optical Thunderbolt (Lightpeak?), Hybrid Memory Cube RAM, especially HMC2 and later, silicon photonics (as something that exists in even high-end desktops and servers), 10nm, 7nm, Phi/Knights (in computers we can buy), Panel Self-Refresh, and that optical connector embedded in functional USB ports (which would be awesome; I think Sony did something similar on a VAIO).
I don't know what Lakefield is, but Googling it reveals that Intel has cancelled it, so Foveros isn't real yet, and might never be, not as something in a computer we can buy. I doubt EMIB will ever matter.
I didn't mention desktop as some sort of cynical ploy. I mentioned it because it's what I care about most, and it's also where Intel has failed to advance the most, re: 10nm etc. It's also a pet peeve of mine that desktop computing is often dismissed as unimportant because of what I call the Growth Fallacy, or the Relative Growth Fallacy. It's the fallacy that a market or industry doesn't matter, or doesn't matter much, is it's not growing at any arbitrary present. Or if some other category is growing faster, or growing a lot. Desktop is enormously important, a huge market, and where work happens. So I care most about desktop. The 7 watt stuff doesn't solve any problems for me.
In the relative scheme of things, it's pretty new. It's also newer than the rest of the things you mentioned. And, for some of those, the issue is more that their time hasn't yet come. For instance, the OCP article (Rebecca Weekly interview) mentioned silicon photonics as an area of growing focus.
> Lakefield ... Googling it reveals that Intel has cancelled it
Not cancelled, but it reached end-of-life. There's an important difference, as one involves actually bringing a functioning product to market and supporting it.
I think Foveros is slated to appear possibly in Meteor Lake, which will be Intel's first chiplet-based desktop CPU. It's planned to come after Raptor Lake, which will follow Alder Lake. So, probably near the end of 2023. I'm not sure if they have any other products planned to use it, before then, but I wouldn't be surprised.
> desktop computing is often dismissed as unimportant
I haven't heard that, recently. For several years, the PC sector was on a slope of inexorable decline, but that changed around the time Zen launched.
> Desktop is enormously important,
It's indisputably high-profile. It was the beachfront for AMD's comeback in the CPU space, and it routinely generates lots of publicity for Nvidia and AMD's GPU products.
BTW, I'm not trying to be an Intel apologist, here. I'm just trying to present the facts as I understand them. And my understanding is that technologies like EMIB and Foveros are still in their commercial infancy. Certainty will only come with time.
To be fair, after a few years of complete stagnation, during the last 4 years Intel has improved steadily their 10 nm process.
For example the maximum clock frequency has increased from 3.2 GHz in 2018 to 4 GHz in 2019, then 5 GHz in 2020 and finally 5.3 GHz (according to rumors) in 2021.
The renamed "Intel 7" manufacturing process will be the first Intel process better than the 7 nm TSMC process, if the Intel claims are true.
The problem for Intel is that this slow recovery might be too late, because meanwhile TSMC has been using already for a long time the superior 5 nm process, in high volume production (for Apple).
> the maximum clock frequency has increased from 3.2 GHz in 2018 to 4 GHz in 2019, > then 5 GHz in 2020 and finally 5.3 GHz (according to rumors) in 2021.
Anyway, the real point is that the first two of those iterations basically don't count. The first was *completely* noncompetitive and the second was *barely* competitive.
Usually, when Intel introduces a new node, it's already superior to the existing node, which is something we can't really say until their 3rd gen 10 nm (SF). Granted, if they hadn't refined their 14 nm quite so much, Ice Lake (2nd gen 10 nm) probably would've compared more favorably to it.
So they finally caught up to where they were before 5 years after the product was support to be used for a mass release? At least according to rumors, there's no telling if alder lake will actually be able to do that, let alone sustain such speeds.
Based on what information? Are you sure you don't mean Kaby or Coffee Lake? Skylake was only the second architecture on 14nm - the tock to Broadwell's tick (or whichever way around that went).
TSMC hasn't always been like this. They had a history of delayed, underperforming, or even cancelled nodes - 32nm was a big one, as it screwed up both ATi and Nvidia's plans for a generation and effectively gave Nvidia time to catch up after the Fermi disaster. More recently, AMD had to cancel their 20nm projects because the node sucked, and swallow the resulting financial losses at a time when they couldn't really afford it.
I'd say their secret sauce is learning from experiences like that and - as others have said - ploughing funds into R&D rather than resting on their successes.
This is probably the only site on the Internet that swallows Intel's marketing and puts(on the title) "3nm" next to Intel's name. I would expect better from this site.
i agree. can't believe theyre just eating all this crap whereas they could have easily investigated Intel's 10nm 8 core laptop vs. AMD/TSMC 7nm laptop chips.
Ah, you have to firgive them. They simply didn't understand yet that the slave boats with 2 whipmen and hundreds of rowers have been "out of fashion" for quite some time now.
Looking at the suboptimal density found in Apple A14 SOC (5nm TSMC), this look like a good roadmap. We must remember that TSMC does a lot of claims about great density, still we find disappointing results in final products. There is too much enphasis on density, a lot less on availability of the process across the customers and a lot less about real yields at the claimed high density.
Bet in these days many have pissed off TSMC (Automotive, Nvidia in primis). A lot of claims but in pratics TSMC can not satisfy the demand cause low yields, simple and plain. AMD is a good example of the disaster. Qualcomm large utilization of Samsung say a lot.
This statement about TSMC is a strong claim. The ONLY validated TSMC 5 density we have is A14/M1 and those are weird cases bcs Apple’s ONLY priority with them was to ship on time and working correctly (as far as x86/Mac transition matters). Physical optimization may have been tossed overboard as schedule slipped.
There are claims that the Huaiwei chip fabbed on N5 met TSMC density as expected, but since few have seen that chip (bcs US forced Huawei off TSMC) who knows? I’d wait for an alternative chip on N5 (should be one soon, surely) before making strong density claims.
"TSMC can not satisfy the demand cause low yields" False. We know their yields, and they're good. They can't satisfy demand for many reasons, mainly that they simply don't have enough fabs, but also including literally running out of water.
wtf is this waste of time. they band-aid their problems with a name change? Intel 10nm is inferior to TSMC 7nm, as I found in their latest 8 core 10nm laptop chips vs AMD's. If you dont believe me, the clue is in TSMCs use of EUV in a few layers of 7nm products. TSMC is no engineering slouch and Intel can't beat physics by just using DUV
Regardless of the naming scheme, the problem for Intel is a lot less about deceptive naming by competitors and a lot more about being able to actually stick to their own roadmap. You can show me an impressively aggressive roadmap and that's all well and good, but my confidence in Intel's ability to stick to said roadmap is at about 2%.
Seems like the more straightforward naming convention would be based on the density, going ever upward. If the new process offers no advantage in density, you get +, ++ etc. for power improvements and whatnot.
Makes sense, but I think their 14 nm debacle spoiled the idea of using "+".
I'd rather see sequential numbering for major advancements, with letter suffixes for minor ones. Or heck, maybe just a sequential versioning scheme like 2.1 for major.minor improvements.
so many so called enthusiasts are hyper focused on process size, and unfortunately type comments that often read like that of a 12 year old. Most of these types of comments are called trolls, or trolling? What matters in processor technology are results, results in performance and stability. It looks as if this new Intel CEO knows what he is doing, and seems to be steering the ship back in the right direction. I am looking forward to this new competition he is bringing to the industry.
Can't agree more. Pat showed difficulties ahead and provided how they'll overcome that hardship using technologies only Intel has. He's also brought IDF back which made Intel a great company.
It wasn't merely a 1~2 year hyped self-praise, but it was more like long term roadmap to be great again. People are saying that IDM's time is done, but who knows. There are things only IDM can do and Pat seems to know a lot.
Lol is all just Lol Seems Anandtech is still swallowing all Intels Bull so a 4 is not 4nm but is actually 7nm! You just know they are failing at producing decent CPUs at up to date processes when they think of a ruse like this to slap on machines in store to make the non Techies of the world swallow the pill intel is lower so must therefore be better, shame on you Anandtech for not calling this what it is an Intel crap sandwich
When I started reading I automatically assumed this meant Intel is going to lie about the process just like everyone else is. Then I saw that I was right. Maybe Intel should be using density as they have suggested before instead of lying like everyone else. There's also the most real life relevant performance per dollar metric too. Intel should be setting standards that people can use not playing a stupid marketing game with the coke addled wallstreet gimps.
Manufacturers never *want* to use real metrics. Maybe when their products are head-and-shoulders above everyone else, but otherwise not.
It's like how hi-fi gear uses A-weighted SNR, when they really should use C-weighted (if they even tell you the SNR, that is). Why do they use A-weighted? Because someone figured they could get better numbers that way and then everyone else had to follow.
But they'd really rather sell on the basis of non-quantifiable things, like Apple is probably most famous for doing. When Apple lists product specs, it's mostly just to upsell its customers vs. other products they're considering or already own. But rarely does someone actually buy Apple because of the specs.
‘But rarely does someone actually buy Apple because of the specs.’
Tell that to all the Mac owners who were forced to buy replacement machines because Apple force-fed them the APFS file system — incompatible with hard drives (unless one counts glacial speeds as evidence of compatibility).
Then, there are the quickly-orphaned iPad 1 owners, orphaned because Apple put so little RAM into them. (That’s Apple’s #1 ploy and has been since 1984.)
You're still making a pretty solid argument in favour of most Apple owners not buying due to specs. I know a few people who still used iPad 1s until relatively recently (usually as a glorified e-Reader) and really didn't care about the OS not being updated. Most of them only stopped when the devices got physically broken.
For most of the people who got screwed by the things you mentioned, it was a surprise because they just didn't think about those specs until they were forced to.
Android was quite an inferior experience the last time I used it — and I think a good number of iOS design choices are vile. Just today, for instance, it harassed me with pop ups twice in a row (three times over the course of me writing a single message) — demanding that I turn on dictation. It also popped up a harassment window to order me to enter my Apple ID.
So, for Android to be a worse experience than that says what needs to be said about the state of ‘smart’ phones.
There's not a singular Android experience. Each phone maker customizes it in varying ways and to varying degrees. Samsung supposedly does heavier customization, among phone makers.
Back when Google had the "Nexus" product line, it was supposed to be mostly unmodified. I'm not sure if their Pixel devices continue that tradition, but it would make sense.
Android and iOS have grown towards each other over time. Today, it looks like iOS in many ways and is a lot more polished. Things have certainly changed. Going from Lollipop to Pie in 2019 was quite a departure for me but I got used to it after a few days. My Android experience (always Samsung) has been pleasant all the way, and I don't think I'll ever go onto Apple, though I hand to Tim, Craig, and the gang for their polish and their conservative addition approach vs. Android's curtailing the open doors.
I think for many people, the mobile brand and OS square with who they are, so to speak. For my part, I'd feel pretty odd using an iPhone, despite the excellent hardware. Quite likely, it's just the whole Apple atmoshere that I've got an aversion to. They'll have to send me to Room 101 if they want to convert me.
I really wanted Mozilla to succeed with their Firefox OS phone project. I wish they'd stuck with it a bit longer. If they'd gotten it on another generation of phones, I was going to buy one.
I know a dyed-in-the-wool Windows user & developer who tried to stick with their phone platform, but even he got burned too many times and eventually jumped ship. If they ever had any hope of competing with Android, they couldn't afford so many strategic blunders. Also, they really just needed to copy the open source model, or at least not try to make a profit on the OS.
> Let's hope they keep developing Gecko and Quantum and don't go over to Blink.
I don't follow their developments that closely, but I know I had to disable Proton when it got switched on. It was too resource intensive and bogged down the browsing experience considerably.
No, why do you say that? And why would Google get Mozilla to make a phone OS that's a competitor to Android?
> Just take a look at how many entries Google gets in about:config
That's proof of what, exactly? With one exception, they're 'browser.safebrowsing.provider.google'. If you have better providers, I'll bet Mozilla would like to hear about it.
Wow, you're like one of these conspiracy theory nuts that finds a spelling error in some random document and uses it as if it's iron clad proof of some vast, sweeping scheme.
Before Google had their Chrome browser, they were indeed a big backer of Mozilla. However, those days are long gone. Mozilla had big layoffs about a year ago, unfortunately.
‘You're still making a pretty solid argument in favour of most Apple owners not buying due to specs.’
I have met a good number of intelligent people who quit buying MtG cards long ago. Sometimes people need to learn the hard way to not feed a bad deal.
Then, there are wealthy lazy people, who I have also seen, who will fork over the blood money to Apple. In their defense, many of them are quite old and don’t want to learn new tricks — even though UI is changing anyway, mainly due to the penchant of corporations for having only contempt for the productivity and happiness of customers.
" Intel believes it can follow an aggressive strategy to match and pass its foundry rivals"
Isn't that exactly what caused their failures with 10nm? The blame for the repeated delays was usually put on them being too agressive with their 10nm shrink, attempting too big reductions in feature sizes, increases in density, etc.
That's true but it was also because they were still ahead of everyone else with 14nm so they continued shooting for unrealistic goals on 10nm instead of just accepting the density loss and shipping something, which is basically what they've done with their SF/ESF updates. They also weren't willing to eat margins to ship products and enjoyed huge profits for a long time.
If they accept the costs and react fast to failing strategies then maybe they can actually ship something closer to TSMC's timeline instead of being years behind. Either way they have to be aggressive considering TSMC is still improving.
Aggressively pursuing density can also serve greed, since it means more dies per wafer -> bigger profit margins. I think this is the more plausible explanation, because Intel had a comfortable lead at the time they were initially designing their 10 nm process.
Heh, I feel sorta weird for having to point that out to you.
I think by now we all know that the XXnm naming convention don't mean anything. It does somewhat give you an indication there is some progress in the node, but that's all. In my opinion, I don't really think Intel's current 10nm is in reality, better than TSMC's 7nm. I know the CPU architecture is also a major factor in the efficiency, but just looking at Intel's Tiger Lake H vs AMD's Ryzen 5000H, it is clear that the former consumes a lot more power to reach its performance target. And at the higher power limit, it is not able to decisively pull itself away from the Ryzen processor. Even Alder Lake is rumoured to launch with a PL2 value of 228W, despite using the improved 10nm SuperFin is quite a high number compared to a proper 16 cores Ryzen 5950X.
This move reminds me of Dewalt when they went from torque to UWO. They couldn't compete in torque so they made up their own unit of measurement so they didn't look bad. 20A makes me think of 20Amps.
How do consumers follow these advantages on real systems? TDP and energy efficiency, benchmarking tools from chip companies or reviews of integration into different systems or scores/$ and per years of duty?
4 new nodes in 4 years. Very aggressive. If they can do it, they might actually regain the tech leadership. Wow, 20A tech in 2025 should bring more cores, significant more speed at less power than today's CPU (and GPUs). Can't complain if that happens.
What happened to the December 2019 roadmap that put a 3nm target on 2025? Is this not an admission that they’ll already miss that target by at least a whole generation?
Considering the interval between 14 nm and 10nm mainstream desktop CPUs, I'd recommend we look at one step at a time, lest the next shrink step take an additional 7 years...
I’m more concerned with how much power is going to be sacrificed to pursue the AI/spyware route.
That’s Apple’s big thing in particular but it’s an industry-wide trend. Individuals are data, products corporations believe are purchased by them when individuals fork over cash.
We have already seen Apple roll out, for instance, a file system that’s abominably inefficient with hard disks and slower than the old one with flash. Then there are all those groovy black box piggybacked chips. I have read that the preposterously-named T2 is now to be embedded in the M2 CPU, like AMD’s PSP and whatever Intel’s spy chip is called.
A new page in CPU reviews will have to be devoted to how much power and die space is going to AI/spyware tech — like making it easier for the government:corporate complex to not only scan your files and take extremely extensive data about them — but move forward with thought crime like ‘preventative indefinite detention’ — a policy then president Obama laid out in a speech.
China is working to force employees to grin correctly in order for office equipment to work. Ugh.
This is *exactly* what I meant by pulling the thread off-topic. Sometimes, it naturally meanders into these directions, but you grab the wheel and launch us directly off the path and into the weeds.
This is not contributing in good faith, IMO. It's like you're just searching for somewhere to air your grievances, not unlike the right-wingers who try to derail the discussion into some dark place about same-sex bathrooms.
> ‘preventative indefinite detention’ — a policy then president Obama laid out in a speech.
If he uttered those words, it must have been in reference to Guantanamo Bay, which he actually tried to shut down (and on his very first day in office, no less)! And while that move was foiled by political opposition, he did succeed in mostly emptying it out. Obama lectured on Constitutional law at Harvard and he was an institutionalist (for better and for worse). He's not the guy to end Habeas Corpus.
> China is working to force employees to grin correctly in order for office equipment to work.
One of Intel's main issues is they are trying to push transistor density beyond the capability of the manufacturing process. They are being hyper aggressive with their designs and can't back it up with their manufacturing capability. What that wiki chip transistor density comparison shows is they aren't changing the aggressive nature of their designs which likely means they won't be achieving high enough yields to meet targets and they might continue to miss their manufacturing roadmaps.
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shabby - Monday, July 26, 2021 - link
Lol this guy is a great comedian 😂at_clucks - Tuesday, July 27, 2021 - link
They're also preparing the elusive 0nm process. Really tiny, great power consumption too.RealBeast - Tuesday, July 27, 2021 - link
Don't get sucked into those 0nm chips, wait for the negative nm the following year. ;)linuxgeex - Wednesday, July 28, 2021 - link
Intel's minds have come up with a new complex plane process. They measure their feature size by taking the square root of the height of the gate. By extending the gate downward, their measurements start at -1, leading to measurements in the scale of i, which tickles their marketing department no end. Sadly, i doesn't deliver on a real timeline.mode_13h - Thursday, July 29, 2021 - link
:DSantoval - Sunday, October 24, 2021 - link
Do not disregard complex timelines so casually. Intel can well deliver in a + bi, where a = Q (quarter), b = year and i is, you know, the imaginary thingy.Assuming a claimed Q1 2025 delivery in the real plane of Intel's RibbonFET 20A parts, in the complex plane where Intel lives the actual delivery would be in Q1 + 2025i.
Let's say Jan 2025i; right after the complex holiday season of 2024 / 2025, complete with an imaginary Santa and complex elves.
nandnandnand - Monday, July 26, 2021 - link
"Isn't Intel Just Trying To Pull The Wool Over Our Eyes?"Yes. Otherwise there's no need for the marketing dept to magically shrink the fake 10nm node to become a fake 7nm.
ianmills - Monday, July 26, 2021 - link
When everyone lies nobody is wrong...nandnandnand - Monday, July 26, 2021 - link
As long as they put out accurate transistors per square millimeter estimates, everything's fine.Who is the biggest liar now? Probably Samsung.
DigitalFreak - Monday, July 26, 2021 - link
Nope. Still Intel.bigboxes - Tuesday, July 27, 2021 - link
Yeah, Intel is still king of the liars. I've got a box full of Intel CPUs, but Intel really crapped the bed. Intel 7 is the new 10nm. Can't make this stuff up! We can't put out a competitive product so we'll call it 7 anyways! GO INTEL GO!Geef - Saturday, July 31, 2021 - link
At least Intel is consistent. They have consistently added a + to their 14nm chips every single year!mode_13h - Sunday, August 1, 2021 - link
:Daovander - Tuesday, August 3, 2021 - link
Which is exactly what TSMC did with their 14nm node.This was how the whole naming problem got started but no one seemed to care since it seemed like they were catching up to Intel and all the Intel haters were happy to see it.
When Intel shocked the world and released its FinFET (Tri-Gate) process at 22nm TSMC followed it with the horrible 20nm planar node though it had lower transistor density than Intel 22nm. TSMC was claiming its 20nm node was a half shrink of the 22nm node and therefore meant they were keeping up with Intel. TSMC felt they were justified in this because Intel 22nm transistor density missed the target of a full node shrink by a bit with the introduction FinFET's. This was a consequence of the new trench contact structure required between the Fin’s and Metal 0. TSMC has the same problem when they introduce Fin’s. Then, Intel released 2nd Gen FinFET, the 14nm node, with more than a full node of shrinkage to get back on track with what they missed at 22nm.
TSMC then released their 14nm node shortly after with the same backend as the 20nm node - so no transistor density scaling, it was the same node really (sound familiar). Then, Intel got over-optimistic and tried to scale more than a full node again using Spacer Quad patterning at 10nm and got stuck in a 6 year delay. At the same time they decided to pass on using EUV for 10nm because at the time it was not ready for production.
TSMC bought up all the EUV steppers in the world and then proceeded down the lithographic scaling trail of 10nm, 7nm, 5nm, and soon 3nm. A smart move on their part and easier to make since the throughput of the EUV tool increased in the meantime (since they were a bit behind Intel in that development decision). Essentially all this scaling was handed to them on a silver platter by ASML. Also, the transistor density of these 3-4 nodes has been well off the traditional density shrink which is why Intel 2 nodes (or more depending on how you interpret the marketing names) still has a density that matches them.
They did not produce any real innovations in any of those nodes. Gate-all-around has been the obvious next step for 5-6 years. If they were "innovating" all this time with all these new nodes why did they not develop this. Now we see everyone claiming to have it ready to go in the 2024-2025 timeframe since IBM made their 2nm announcement. Funny how that is, wonder where everyone is getting it from?
All I am saying is, if you are going to call Intel a Liar then you have to call everyone else one first.
Given the confusion in the industry and the desire to truly compare technologies names with matched Transistor density, the whole world pushed Intel into changing their naming scheme since there was no possibility of getting the foundries to go backwards.
mode_13h - Wednesday, August 4, 2021 - link
@aovander thanks for the info.As I've said several times, Intel can just name their node with a monotonically increasing sequence that has no obvious or direct relation to density. Just opt out of the whole nm race, entirely.
Dex4Sure - Tuesday, November 23, 2021 - link
Intel's 10nm is actually slightly better than TSMC's 7nm in density... So they may as well call it "Intel 7".Butterfish - Tuesday, July 27, 2021 - link
Any proof? Or just pulling thin air out of your arse to satisfy your agenda? The density comparison graph in the first page of this article literally disapprove your statement.Spunjji - Wednesday, July 28, 2021 - link
@Butterfish - not to agree with DigitalFreak here, but it's worth noting that Intel haven't actually managed to produce a shipping design anywhere near their quoted density for 10nm, while TSMC customers (most notably AMD) have come much closer to their quoted density.I'd still say that 10ESF looks broadly comparable to TSMC 7nm, though - much moreso than Samsung's 8nm.
Butterfish - Thursday, July 29, 2021 - link
Yes they have. The Cannon Lake Core i3-8121U did use the high density libraries that has the advertised maximum density for 10nm.Spunjji - Friday, July 30, 2021 - link
@Butterfish - You're citing the broken chip that only shipped in one cut-price notebook; one that doesn't have public figures for transistor count available, so we don't know anything for sure about the density. The possibilities are either that you're technically correct in the worst way - i.e. they haven't shipped anything that /worked properly/ with their quoted 100M density - or you're wrong on both counts. 🤷♂️Back in the world of numbers we know for sure, Lakefield hit almost exactly 49% of their quoted 10nm density, and that had all the inconvenient I/O stuff shunted off to its secondary die.
Maksdampf - Tuesday, July 27, 2021 - link
You know that Intels numbers that they out out haven't been spotted in the wild on any of their products, right? They had been doing these marketing stunts for a while, just with a different disguise. 107MTr/mm2 vor 10SF, my Ass.Since Pat has relased some Transistor count figures, we know that cometlake with 4,2BTr and 205mm2 only has a density of around 21MTr/mm2 instead of the claimed 44MTr/mm2 for 14nm++ and even the newest shiniest rocketlake is worse than AMDs original zeppelin design in Density (6BTr on 270mm2 vs 4.8BTr on 192mm2).
Since Tigerlake-H is only different in its L3 cache system, we know it is around 8-9BTr compared to cypress cove based Rocketlake. And it still has the much larger DIE coming in at 190mm2 compared to AMDs Cezanne with 10,78BTr including a much beefier GPU.
And this is comparing Apples to Apples, so HP processes to HP, not High density to mobile.
TSMCs and Samsungs Mobile Processes are in reality so far ahead in Density and Power of anything Intel ships, that you really need an M1 class of chip to show it.
Intel has us fooled by meaningless laboratory numbers that can nowhere be found in real products for years and now they fuck us over again by renaming those already pretty desperate naming schemes.
name99 - Tuesday, July 27, 2021 - link
Not if those transistor estimates never match real products…For years now, nothing Intel ships is close to their claimed transistor density. It’s like 2 to 3x off.
So…
Butterfish - Tuesday, July 27, 2021 - link
So does most chip made by other foundries. These figure are for the high density library. If you look at AMD’s CPU and GPU which use TSMC’s high performance library that aren’t optimized for density you will see much lower density number compare to what was advertised for the process nodes they are using.Spunjji - Wednesday, July 28, 2021 - link
Yes, you will see lower density - but something like 60-80% of the quoted density. Intel are hitting something more like 33-50% of what they quoted for 10nm.cheshirster - Tuesday, July 27, 2021 - link
Intel hide transistor density of their products since Coffee Lake.For years as of now.
cheshirster - Tuesday, November 23, 2021 - link
Still Intel, cause their transistors counts aren't disclosed for any 10nm product.IntelUser2000 - Monday, July 26, 2021 - link
No, Ian lobbied for it.Boo!!
mode_13h - Tuesday, July 27, 2021 - link
Yeah, as a journalist, he shouldn't be trying to influence the industry. He can ask them questions like how they feel about TSMC/Samsung's node naming, during interviews, but that about as far as it should go.Oxford Guy - Wednesday, July 28, 2021 - link
I can only assume your post is not particularly well-executed parody of the misguided point of view it’s espousing.What a stupid comment.
Journalists, of course, can (and often should) be more than marketing department parrots, more than stenographers.
Spunjji - Thursday, July 29, 2021 - link
I'm always confused by that idea that there's some magical bright line between being a journalist and an enthusiast. Ian can advocate for whatever he wants from Intel - as long as he's actually honest about it, IDGAF.mode_13h - Thursday, July 29, 2021 - link
Good journalism requires impartiality, which is hard to maintain when you're directly involving yourself in the agenda of those you're reporting on.Impartiality isn't about not having opinions. It's about separating them from one's reporting.
Oxford Guy - Thursday, July 29, 2021 - link
Impartiality is a myth.Everyone brings many biases, regardless of what label they stick on themselves. It's better to be open about those biases than to feign objectivity.
Come clean with one's biases (as much as one can, since they are a form of blindness) and, simultaneously, try to present the facts — clearly/thoroughly.
Your vision of a journalist sounds like a stenographer. Journalism is supposed to have activism as part of its function. That's what makes it different from stenography.
mode_13h - Sunday, August 1, 2021 - link
> Impartiality is a myth.How lame. Just because there's no such thing as a perfectly neutral reporter doesn't mean that journalistic standards don't still have value.
> It's better to be open about those biases than to feign objectivity.
This is a canard used to legitimize partisan media. Time and again, surveys of consumers of partisan media have been shown to be less well-informed about relevant subject material.
> Come clean with one's biases
Yes, conflict of interests should be disclosed. However, one should take reasonable measures not to *further* said entanglements. That makes objectivity even more difficult.
> Your vision of a journalist sounds like a stenographer.
No, and I already explained the difference.
> Journalism is supposed to have activism as part of its function.
No, but thanks for at least confirming your ignorance on the subject.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalism_ethics_an...
Activism should be reserved for editorials. There should be a bright line between reporting and editorial content.
> That's what makes it different from stenography.
No. Where it differs is by providing context and fact-checking.
Spunjji - Friday, July 30, 2021 - link
@mode_13h - I guess I just disagree with you that Ian has "involved [him]self in the agenda" of Intel by advocating for some sort of change in their process naming conventions. It's equally likely he was tired of having to write articles explaining the difference between foundry Xnm and Intel XXnm, and/or the difference between "++", "+++" and "ESF".GeoffreyA - Friday, July 30, 2021 - link
I've got to agree with Ian's trying to shake some sense into Intel.GeoffreyA - Saturday, July 31, 2021 - link
I think both points of view are right (mode_13h's and Oxford Guy's) and need to be combined.mode_13h - Sunday, August 1, 2021 - link
> both points of view are right ... and need to be combined.Um, how?
GeoffreyA - Sunday, August 1, 2021 - link
While perfect impartiality is hard to find, it does exist as an ideal which we've got to keep before us. Without that gold standard, practice would sink lower and lower.mode_13h - Sunday, August 1, 2021 - link
> I just disagree with you that Ian has "involved [him]self in the agenda"> of Intel by advocating for some sort of change in their process naming conventions.
What it does is give him a sense of ownership of their new process naming scheme, and that risks coloring his reporting. I'm not going to reread the entire article just to find examples, but I did note a few instances of what seemed to be favorable coverage. I can't say that's the result of his advocacy, but I wouldn't even have the question if he hadn't committed it.
> It's equally likely he was tired of having to write articles explaining the difference
> between foundry Xnm and Intel XXnm, and/or the difference between "++", "+++"
> and "ESF".
First, that's not a good excuse for advocacy. Reporters always face the issue of having to provide context for readers who haven't been following the subject closely. The magic of hyperlinks can be used to minimize the amount of repetition, by simply writing an explainer and linking to it from articles that deal with the relative differences between process nodes.
Second, he's still going to be in a similar position of potentially having to explain the differences between a given TSMC node and whichever Intel node is relevant. So, I don't see how this really improves the situation.
Oxford Guy - Wednesday, August 11, 2021 - link
Slapping the word ‘editorial’ onto a piece of writing doesn’t magically change it.All it does is typically label the piece an example of casual sloppy thinking.
mode_13h - Thursday, August 12, 2021 - link
Distinguishing between editorial content and reporting separates the domain of fair and ethical reporting from one of advocacy. I think most major news organizations don't even let the same people who do reporting participate in op/ed.To suggest that all editorials are instances of "casual and sloppy thinking" just shows you don't really know what you're talking about.
mode_13h - Thursday, July 29, 2021 - link
You're missing the point, and yet you attack *my* post for being stupid. Which is really just a half-step away from an "ad hom".The point isn't that journalists should faithfully parrot what Intel says. I'm all for critical analysis of their claims, among other things. I don't even know why you'd think I wasn't.
The point is that they shouldn't try to *directly influence* the behavior of those they're reporting on. That violates impartiality, and I think you can see some of its more subtle effects in this article.
I worry that you're focusing so much on attacking me that you're losing the plot. I don't mind if you disagree with me, but when our exchanges cease to be productive, then it's veering in the direction of trolling.
wut - Thursday, July 29, 2021 - link
It's okay to not be charitable in your interpretations, but I don't believe your interpretation to be correct. It isn't a matter of Ian trying to appeal to Intel in order for Intel "to look better for itself"... It's a matter of whether or not a new naming convention that's more in line with the rest of the industry would reduce confusion and- yes- makes for an environment where the truth comes out more easily. To advocate for the truth- Isn't that also a journalist's job?mode_13h - Sunday, August 1, 2021 - link
> To advocate for the truth- Isn't that also a journalist's job?Nothing about Intel's convention is more truthful. If he were advocating for them to publish real density figures, that would be different. That *is* advocating for more transparency, and I think that's appropriate.
Oxford Guy - Thursday, July 29, 2021 - link
'I worry that you're focusing so much on attacking me that you're losing the plot.'mode_13 in a nutshell. Always tossing in blithe 'crystal ball/ouija board/tarot card' ad homs, whilst simultaneously feigning occupancy of the high road.
Consider yourself fortunate that I'm still replying to your posts at all.
GeoffreyA - Friday, July 30, 2021 - link
I support what Ian is doing, but what mode_13h is trying to say is, that by putting his hand in it, Ian is no longer an objective/impartial observer. He has influenced what he was observing and is now a part of that setup. In practice, though, not a problem, and his predecessor used to do the same thing.GeoffreyA - Friday, July 30, 2021 - link
Also, when you do something for someone, or even advise them, you tend to become more kindly disposed towards them.mode_13h - Sunday, August 1, 2021 - link
Yes, that's my point.mode_13h - Sunday, August 1, 2021 - link
> In practice, though, not a problemHow can you know? We can't run the counter-factuals and see what his coverage would be like had he not involved himself.
mode_13h - Sunday, August 1, 2021 - link
> Consider yourself fortunate that I'm still replying to your posts at all.Certainly not. Your replies are consistently rather vapid, offer little value to the discussion, and your posts serve mostly to derail it onto unrelated tangents. I think we'd probably do better without your contributions, entirely.
Oxford Guy - Wednesday, August 11, 2021 - link
Says the person who said, in reply to one of my posts ‘we know you’re smart ... use your powers for good’.You typically post whatever sounds reasonable at a given time, no matter how inaccurate it is. I, by contrast, am capable of remembering what has been said — the positions that have been taken.
One cannot simultaneously claim I’m obviously intelligent and that my posts are valid. One cannot also post ‘agreed’ — as you did in another topic whilst pretending that my posts are vapid — unless you’re with that very vapidity.
I also find it droll that you employ the royal ‘we’ here. Are you a member of staff or merely that entitled?
Oxford Guy - Wednesday, August 11, 2021 - link
And... please — for the benefit of this forum...Learn the list of common logical fallacies. Your latest use of ad baculum is only worthy of yet another eyeroll.
mode_13h - Thursday, August 12, 2021 - link
> Says the person who said, in reply to one of my posts ‘we know you’re smart> ... use your powers for good’.
There's no logical inconsistency, there. Most of your posts seem to pull threads off-topic and offer little of value to the original subject. And quite a few are just snarky, cynical trolls.
> You typically post whatever sounds reasonable at a given time
I try to engage my brain and look at the other side of an issue, or at least from a perspective other than my narrow self-interest. And most often, what draws me to the other side of an issue is when someone takes an extreme position or makes absolutist statements that seem unjustified. If there's one thing you could say I consistently oppose, it's oversimplification.
> no matter how inaccurate it is.
Ah, now that's interesting. Accuracy is rooted in fact. And the facts are where you completely fall apart. You consistently fail to support your claims and assertions with good & relevant sources.
With that said, if I post something that's demonstrably inaccurate, then please do us *all* a favor and point it out. I never claimed to know everything or be infallible. I've even learned things from debates and spirited discussions.
> I, by contrast, am capable of remembering what has been said —
> the positions that have been taken.
This might blow your mind, but I have actually changed positions, on a few occasions. Not many, but I'm actually willing to re-evaluate my position, after looking at the arguments on both sides.
Also, I try not to be overly partisan, which is to say that I try not to take a side of an issue purely on the basis of political allegiance or preoccupation with self-consistency. If I think one side is overstating their case or otherwise acting in bad faith, I might come out against their position, even while I might've previously been supportive on another issue.
> One cannot simultaneously claim I’m obviously intelligent and that my posts are valid.
Why not? Intelligence describes the actor, while the writing of posts describes their actions. I can criticize the latter, without invalidating the former. Plenty of smart people do things that are thoughtless, counterproductive, antisocial, or worse. However, at some point, the actions do begin to define the actor.
> One cannot also post ‘agreed’ — as you did in another topic whilst pretending
> that my posts are vapid
I said they're "consistently", not "uniformly" or "without exception". If I thought you were a complete waste of time, then I wouldn't spend so much time replying to you.
> unless you’re with that very vapidity.
Well, I'm not going to claim I've never made a vapid post. I try to say things worth saying, but I'm not infallible. It is just a news comment thread, and I don't worry too much about a post here or there.
> I also find it droll that you employ the royal ‘we’ here.
It wasn't. I was speaking on behalf of myself AND other forum participants. That it was preceded by "I think", signifies it as a speculative statement. Others are welcome to disagree.
ikjadoon - Monday, July 26, 2021 - link
What? Intel has long sandbagged its numbers. Unfortunately, we've all decided to follow the marketing, so yeah, at least Intel is more honest now. But none of it matters until they deliver it. I'm not trusting any marketing announcements from Intel. I want the desktop / laptop CPU in-hand so that there's actual benchmarks.//
https://www.tsmc.com/english/dedicatedFoundry/tech...
Otherwise there's no need for the TSMC marketing dept to magically shrink the fake 16nm node to become a fake 12nm.
>An enhanced version of TSMC's 16nm process was introduced in late 2016 called "12nm".
https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/16_nm_lithography_pro...
mode_13h - Monday, July 26, 2021 - link
> at least Intel is more honest now.Wow, that sure takes some mental gymnastics to see Intel participating in the same disinformation race as "more honest".
You could say they're being more consistent... until TSMC and Samsung decide to rebrand their process nodes to stay ahead of Intel's naming.
All of this argues that it's an exercise in futility to pretend these names actually mean anything. They should just use codenames, or maybe a completely arbitrary schema involving sequential numbering + letters or Greek alphabet characters.
ikjadoon - Tuesday, July 27, 2021 - link
Sure, noted. "More honest" relative to the industry = more consistent. I'm flabbergasted how anyone has any problem with this, when literally no one had a problem TSMC & Samsung have done this for years, lol.OK? Why wouldn't TSMC & Samsung play more bullshit w/ foundry marketing? They started it a while ago, so it's more than expected to continue. Good technology has never needed exaggerations: Intel, TSMC, and Samsung all know that.
lol, this is just the tip of the iceberg of marketing. We don't need "i7" or "Ryzen 3", either. How deep do you want to go?
Node names *absolutely* mean something: it's the progression within a foundry. Almost nobody dual-sources CPUs any more, but everyone wants to play "Fantasy Nodes".
That's the more interesting problem. Why is the peak density leap between 10->7 larger than 7->4? Because, clearly, density is not the *only* metric involved in a node.
mode_13h - Wednesday, July 28, 2021 - link
> literally no one had a problem TSMC & Samsung have done this for years, lol.How do you know? Did you run a survey?
Unlike what Intel is doing, Samsung and TSMC never had a press conference to announce they're going to use more dishonest naming. If they had, you'd probably have seen the same kind of sentiment you're seeing when Intel did just that.
> Good technology has never needed exaggerations
That's not true. Not as long as exaggerations can help you sell a little more. Nvidia exgerates like all damn day, even while they've been sitting comfortably atop the heap.
> it's the progression within a foundry
Right, so the names just need to reflect that. Like I said, they should use sequential numbering for big steps, and then letter suffixes to denote minor iterations.
> density is not the *only* metric involved in a node.
All the more reason to cut ties between their naming and any pretense of density.
wut - Thursday, July 29, 2021 - link
"Right, so the names just need to reflect that. Like I said, they should use sequential numbering for big steps, and then letter suffixes to denote minor iterations"Tell TSMC, Samsung, along with everyone else to do it, at the same time.
(TSMC with its N7+, N5P, and Samsung with its 3GAE...)
If you want to apply some standard, apply it to everyone first. Lest you'd be the one who ends up looking agenda-ladened.
mode_13h - Sunday, August 1, 2021 - link
> Tell TSMC, Samsung, along with everyone else to do it, at the same time.The beauty of it is that Intel can simply opt out of the game, without requiring others to do the same.
> If you want to apply some standard
No, you don't have to replace a false standard with another standard (false or not). The point is just to drop the pretense that the node names really mean anything.
twtech - Tuesday, July 27, 2021 - link
A really bold move would have been to move away from "nm" naming altogether and call it 100D or something for 100 million transistor density.Spunjji - Thursday, July 29, 2021 - link
Then someone might expect them to actually release a product approaching that density 😬arashi - Monday, July 26, 2021 - link
Especially when Intel has failed to ship anything remotely close to the peak density while TSMC is. Ian has lost credibility with his hype-boy-isms in this article.arashi - Monday, July 26, 2021 - link
Just compare the wording to the sponsored posts. I don't see a difference.mode_13h - Monday, July 26, 2021 - link
That's because the article is reporting on their press conference. So, all they're doing it taking the Intel-provided slides and commentary and making it more accessible for us plebs.Where I think you could legitimately say Ian has a bit of Stockholm Syndrome is in his lobbying for "industry standard naming". I think it's crossing the line, as journalist, to do anything more than ask his interviewees questions about this confusion.
Oxford Guy - Wednesday, July 28, 2021 - link
You really believe that — that journalists are stenographers?Finding one who is actually independent (since media is owned by the wealthy) is like trying to find citizens of Atlantis. (Also, even with a valiant attempt at true objectivity we’re all products of culture as well as genetic biases — aka personality.)
However, there is a some range in journalism between the stenographer for corporate/plutocratic marketing and someone who has an advanced/terminal degree in the field being covered. The latter can, at least, make the effort to have a dialogue rather than passively listening to monologue and regurgitating it on cue.
mode_13h - Thursday, July 29, 2021 - link
> You really believe that — that journalists are stenographers?No, of course not. They can & should add context and critical analysis. I think the article does some of that, but it's primarily concerned with conveying and explaining Intel's message.
I was simply trying to explain why it reads like a press release. It's hard to faithfully cover a press event and *not* have it sound somewhat like that.
Oxford Guy - Wednesday, August 11, 2021 - link
‘No, of course not. They can & should add context and critical analysis’Don’t contradict what you said before in this very topic or anything.
‘I was simply trying to explain why it reads like a press release.’
You could have said that rather than what you did say.
mode_13h - Thursday, August 12, 2021 - link
> Don’t contradict what you said beforeIt's not. It's a clarification. My position on this issue hasn't changed, so any apparent contradiction is probably a case of misinterpretation or where I was being too terse. I generally try to keep my comments short and to-the-point, sometimes to a fault.
ikjadoon - Monday, July 26, 2021 - link
OK, wild, what?TSMC & Samsung have been doing this for *years*: blatantly misleading people. There is no "TSMC 12nm" nor a "TSMC 6nm" nor a "TSMC 4nm". These are not actually genuinely noticeable peak density increases versus 16nm, 7nm, nor 5nm.
nandnandnand - Tuesday, July 27, 2021 - link
>These are not actually genuinely noticeable peak density increases versus 16nm, 7nm, nor 5nm.Well that's not true. TSMC 6nm is 18% more dense than TSMC 7nm, which is more than what a 6/7=0.857... calculation would imply.
carewolf - Tuesday, July 27, 2021 - link
Remember to square the numbers.. A node with half the metric should have four times the density.Amandtec - Tuesday, July 27, 2021 - link
Shut up carewolf. We were all having a great conversation and expressing our feelings and now you have gone and ruined the whole party with math ;-)mode_13h - Wednesday, July 28, 2021 - link
> A node with half the metric should have four times the density.Wasn't that TSMC's whole justification for using the 7 nm name? They doubled density over 14 nm, so they decided to halve the number?
I clearly remember something like that, but it doesn't match up with the table 2/3rds down the first page.
Samus - Tuesday, July 27, 2021 - link
You have to admit it's kind of bullshit when Intel has an aging (or mature, depending on how you think of it) 10nm process that has more transistor density than TSMC's 7nm.This has been going on a long time. Years ago when Intel launched 14++ (third gen 14nm) TSMC was full steam ahead on 10nm which was barely an improvement over Intel's 14.
mode_13h - Tuesday, July 27, 2021 - link
Sure, it's BS. It always was. But Intel can just opt out and choose not to play that game by naming their manufacturing process something other than purported node size.WaltC - Wednesday, July 28, 2021 - link
Especially when you consider that it's only Intel apologists, and not Intel itself, who keep repeating the erroneous TSMC's 7nm = Intel's 10nm. If Intel could assert with credibility that (1) TSMC @ 7nm = Intel @ 10nm, you better believe they'd be doing that all day long...;) But they can't, so they don't. Intel needs products, not marketing claptrap. Over the last three years Intel's execution record of prior roadmaps has been abysmal.Spunjji - Wednesday, July 28, 2021 - link
Intel's 10nm doesn't actually have higher density in shipping products than TSMC's significantly more aged (or mature, depending on how you think of it) 7nm, though. It's a little lower, if anything, but the improvements from ESF should at least bring it into contention for PPW for the first time in a while.Netmsm - Friday, July 30, 2021 - link
agree :]ericjs - Tuesday, October 19, 2021 - link
Hey, remember this? https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-cpu-proces... "7 nm in 2017, and 5 nm in 2019" Uh huh.Kamen Rider Blade - Monday, July 26, 2021 - link
Why Angstrom?Why not Picometers?
That should be the next logical prefix we use after the nm if you follow SI Length conventions.
nandnandnand - Monday, July 26, 2021 - link
https://hplusmagazine.com/2011/11/01/femtocomputin...GauravMunjal - Monday, July 26, 2021 - link
First, it's femtometer, then picometer. Second, given that most atoms are bigger than 1 angstrom, I doubt we'll ever need a smaller unit.martinpw - Monday, July 26, 2021 - link
Given that the number bears no relationship to feature size, I think we will one day be in the interesting position that the headline number used to name the process will actually be smaller than the spacing between silicon atoms (which would happen at 5A)Unashamed_unoriginal_username_x86 - Monday, July 26, 2021 - link
Nano: 10^-9Pico: 10^-12
Femto: 10^-15
I agree with your second point though
ishould - Monday, July 26, 2021 - link
Nuh uhcolaman - Monday, July 26, 2021 - link
Lol no, pico is larger than femto. Double check before you call someone out.Kevin G - Monday, July 26, 2021 - link
Marketing and switching to picometers makes the mantissa that much larger than the previous nanometer figures. Going from 3 nm to 2000 pm makes the later seem much much larger to those who don't know metric suffixes that well.Realistically you'd think that there marketing departments would do when they switched from microns to nanometers: the first few sub-micron generations were expressed as a decimal micron: 0.8 um, 0.65 um, then they switches to nanometers. Main point here is that there is a firm bottom limit to how low these numbers can go.
There is also the problem that we're up against atomic size limitations. A single silicon atom is ~118 pm wide. The difference between the 20A process and 18A process if they fully represented physical characteristics would simply be two Si atom's width.
mode_13h - Monday, July 26, 2021 - link
This only matters if they actually deliver. Intel has a gaping credibility problem. The bar is high for them to convince customers & investors they've actually fixed the root problems behind prior delays.KAlmquist - Monday, July 26, 2021 - link
If they deliver on this roadmap, that will do a lot to fix their credibility issues. Their tick-tock strategy had the following schedule:32nm 2010
22nm 2012
14nm 2014
10nm 2016
4nm 2018
2nm 2020
Things went a little off the rails with 14nm, which was about six months late. 10nm was nominally delivered in 2018 (two years late), but given that Rocket Lake, released earlier this year, used 14nm, I don't think you can really claim that 10nm was fully there prior to this year. Intel now plans to deliver a new process every year, but the changes between are smaller, so that's similar to their previous goal of a new process every two years. So you add five years to the original tick-tock road map, giving:
10nm 2021
4nm 2023
2nm 2025
That's ambitious. Time will tell whether they can pull it off.
mode_13h - Monday, July 26, 2021 - link
I'd give them 10 nm in 2019. Volumes were low, but Ice Lake was a real product (unlike Canon Lake). 10 nm SF reached comparable volumes in 2020.throAU - Tuesday, July 27, 2021 - link
as an ice lake laptop user it may have been a shipping product, but it’s crap. hot, noisy, outperformed by my 3 year old ipad pro.nico_mach - Tuesday, July 27, 2021 - link
This is the key thing. The article concludes that Intel 10nm=industry's 7nm, but performance of the actual chips (CPUs and also GPUs) are night and day different. It doesn't match up to reality. Which doesn't mean that Intel/article are wrong, but it needs some explaining if the x86 instruction set or Windows/Android/NVIDIA/AMD are the culprits or what. Everyone using Mac laptops through the years knows what the reality is. Same with AMD vs Intel on the desktop in the last couple years.mode_13h - Wednesday, July 28, 2021 - link
> The article concludes that Intel 10nm=industry's 7nmUm, did you read it? Because they didn't *completely* lay this out, but Intel is projected to have 4 full iterations of 10 nm, by the time they move to a higher density. The first was Cannon Lake, Ice Lake was second (10 nm+), Tiger Lake (10 nm SF) is 3rd, and Alder Lake (10 nm ESF - now Intel 7) is to be the 4th. There are significant performance and efficiency changes between each.
Amandtec - Tuesday, July 27, 2021 - link
The wheels fell off because they thought the could continue to shrink without EUV including buying expensive ASML machines that have limited supply and take long from order to delivery. Once they realized their error they were stranded. Note that this is just inferred as a reasonable explanation from what transpired - there is no hard proof of this, so the real cause may be something else.Spunjji - Thursday, July 29, 2021 - link
One thing we can reliably infer is that the solutions involved decreasing density in shipping products and (initially, at least) accepting abysmal yields. For example, even now, they still talk about wafers when they talk about finally producing more 10nm than 14nm... but wafers are input, not output.FreckledTrout - Monday, July 26, 2021 - link
20Å ~= 20 AmpsIntel please change it to 20Å as it looks cooler and isn't as confusing.
regsEx - Monday, July 26, 2021 - link
99% of users in this World have no this letter on their keyboardsAshinjuka - Monday, July 26, 2021 - link
ALT+143 is literally how I typed this: Åikjadoon - Monday, July 26, 2021 - link
Å, well bam, there ya.Amandtec - Tuesday, July 27, 2021 - link
That is four letters so regsEx is right. Still is would be pretty CÖÖL!DigitalFreak - Monday, July 26, 2021 - link
It is 20 amps. That's how many amps @ 110v you'll need in the near future to power just their processor.mode_13h - Monday, July 26, 2021 - link
Lol. Pretty much.Timoo - Tuesday, July 27, 2021 - link
Although 20A sounds reasonable for an Intel, these days /sboeush - Monday, July 26, 2021 - link
Instead of this meaningless "nm" node name stupidity, Intel should've just moved to a transistor-density-based node naming. For example, "Intel 100" for 100 million transistors per square mm. Then for same-node refinement (where density stays the same but transistor or circuit performance improves), they could've used a revision number - e.g. Intel 100 mk. 1, Intel 100 mk. 2, etc.That would've returned industry nomenclature back to reality, and also poked the eye of Intel's competitors who have been propagating this "nm" nonsense.
Alistair - Monday, July 26, 2021 - link
i think that would have been a better idea, just overturn the NM naming convention completely, now it feels like joining the fake clubboozed - Monday, July 26, 2021 - link
Nautical Miles?!Kamen Rider Blade - Monday, July 26, 2021 - link
I think Nautical Miles should really use the "NMi" abreviation.This would make it less confusing when somebody accidentally writes lower case "nmi" and not create confusion with between Nanometer & Nautical Mile.
Lord of the Bored - Tuesday, July 27, 2021 - link
I think if there's confusion between nanometers and nautical miles, something has gone very wrong with the conversation.It is like millivolts and megavolts. Yes, they are both spelled mv(case-insensitively), but if one is confused for the other there was a LOT of context missing.
(I wanted to use millimeter and megameter, but every time I use the latter I am met with confusion or scorn.)
mode_13h - Wednesday, July 28, 2021 - link
> every time I use the latter I am met with confusion or scorn.Same thing, when I try to casually drop kiloseconds or megaseconds into a conversation.
: )
Seriously, the people mainly using distances on the order of 10^6 m are astronomers or rocket scientists. And they're dealing with such a large range of distances that it makes more sense to just drop the SI prefix and use scientific notation.
Lord of the Bored - Thursday, July 29, 2021 - link
But megameter is such an awesome word!Kilosecond is weird because we don't use a base ten time system. Not even the threat of the guillotine could win that fight against traditional units.
mode_13h - Thursday, July 29, 2021 - link
> Kilosecond is weird because we don't use a base ten time system.It seems you've never heard of Metric Time!
martinpw - Monday, July 26, 2021 - link
They tried that, but nobody else followed their lead.arashi - Monday, July 26, 2021 - link
That's right, if you can't lead, follow.Is that what Intel wants to do?
Lord of the Bored - Thursday, July 29, 2021 - link
Wouldn't be the first time.Ask Intel how they feel about AMD64 some time.
mode_13h - Monday, July 26, 2021 - link
Who cares if nobody follows? That's actually better, because then people have to compare based on actual metrics instead of some fake metrics that don't really tell you anything!martinpw - Tuesday, July 27, 2021 - link
The point is they did it and nobody else followed, so therefore nobody uses transistor density as a metric for comparison, and everyone still use nm. How exactly were you thinking to force people to use the metric you want them to use?mode_13h - Tuesday, July 27, 2021 - link
Again, you don't. Intel can just go its own way, with naming. Then, people have to compare based on cost, peak performance, perf/W ...you know, the stuff that actually matters!HarryVoyager - Tuesday, July 27, 2021 - link
When did they do that? I completely missed it.martinpw - Tuesday, July 27, 2021 - link
Here is where they tried to do it:https://newsroom.intel.com/editorials/lets-clear-u...
Spunjji - Thursday, July 29, 2021 - link
It's notable that they started trying to do that right around when they were failing to get 10nm off the ground but still predicting unprecedentedly high density, and stopped trying after they got 10nm products out the door with drastically reduced density from their predictions.I don't think any of these companies want to be directly compared to each other in this way unless they're clearly winning, and as they can't always guarantee they'll be winning, it makes more sense to use nonsense-numbers backed up by half-truths.
GeoffreyA - Friday, July 30, 2021 - link
"it makes more sense to use nonsense-numbers backed up by half-truths."Fantastic.
mode_13h - Sunday, August 1, 2021 - link
> it makes more sense to use nonsense-numbers backed up by half-truths.Or just drop any pretense of meaning and use some other scheme, such as Major.Minor version numbers. Or, even just use sequential integers.
mode_13h - Monday, July 26, 2021 - link
> Intel should've just moved to a transistor-density-based node naming.Agreed, but they could either continue using modifiers like SF and ESF or I'd say they should go with letters.
GeoffreyA - Friday, July 30, 2021 - link
Letters.Amandtec - Tuesday, July 27, 2021 - link
You can measure what you want and they will find a way to score better. Transistors are used for different things so they will start putting huge piles of useless high density transistors into the design to bump up the density measure. At the end of the day, they should stop talking about nodes altogether and talk about sing/multi/heat per dollar - of course, they can't do that because nobody would but another Intel chip for a couple years.TheJian - Tuesday, July 27, 2021 - link
Agreed, lets just go buy transistors, or list both. People can compare whatever makes more sense to them...LOL. Agree with OP too, joining the fake club while Intel tried to stay real for years. OH well, if you can't beat them, join them and come up with something new (2025)...LOL. Whatever works. Buying up 3nm was great too, will keep others from gaining far more NET INCOME from getting said 3nm wafers and competing with their own top end stuff. Direct those 3nm chips at as much server/mobile you can (maybe some desktop top end chips, the top3 maybe) or just make a TON of 3nm gpus with whatever is left all year. I hope Pat bought 18mo of 3nm so nobody else gets them. Apple got batch1, messed it up on the 2nd, so hopefully Intel bought 3-4B of them until the cash runs out on it. Make everything AMD thinks is a cash cow, and leave them with stuff on the shelf (and written off a year later...LOL).Anything still left? GO 3nm GPU to hurt everyone. Meaning, apple coming right after 3nm cpu (gpu just waiting for wafers surely to avoid AMD/NV next, developing now in home consoles likely), but longer now, going 4nm..LOL, AMD, NVDA NET hurt here too. I'll be shocked if pat didn't nail down even more than planned when apple stepped out of batch2.
30K wafers were batch1 - How many in batch 2? 100k? Make the largest gpus you can to eat them all (assuming AMD's top server/mobile dies are attacked already with coming chips), and watch as AMD/NV Q reports go down, and all 3 rejig their next parts on 4nm etc...ROFL (apple already did it). 6nm Warhol dead (well, the fake 6nm process that is). You get the point.
We all need 3nm gpus anyway right? Heck most of you would probably take ANYTHING these days...LOL. Intel to the gpu rescue Q1 2023 with 3nm TSMC all year (and 6nm coming up??)?? Sell them DIRECT like a NVDA founders cards, and only ONE per household AND/or visa etc. I think gamers would warm to Intel if they helped us get cards soon. 6nm sounds good to me if you can't get any 7nm yet really. No I refuse to pay 2-3x, heck for that matter I refuse to pay over MSRP. I'll wait, build HTPCs, etc etc. I won't bite until price isn't stupid even though I can afford it.
mode_13h - Wednesday, July 28, 2021 - link
> I refuse to pay 2-3x, heck for that matter I refuse to pay over MSRP.Dude, you *just* posted in another thread that people should stop whining about high component prices and live like peasants to save up whatever it costs to buy the latest GPU!
FWIW, I'm with you. I'm fortunate that I don't need the latest & greatest GPU, so I plan to wait until I can get one at a reasonable price.
Spunjji - Wednesday, July 28, 2021 - link
TheJian doesn't make sense *within* a single post, let alone between them.Spunjji - Wednesday, July 28, 2021 - link
"I hope Pat bought 18mo of 3nm so nobody else gets them."Why? That would fuck things up for everyone.
Spunjji - Wednesday, July 28, 2021 - link
Agreed. It doesn't make much sense to decry the disconnect between the numbers and reality, and then just jump on board with the existing nonsense!svan1971 - Monday, July 26, 2021 - link
why not just say 1nm in 2025 ? If your gonna lie, lie big or go homeishould - Monday, July 26, 2021 - link
Well, then Intel would win all silicon, game over, ggWaltC - Monday, July 26, 2021 - link
You know, Intel can't even hit 7nm yet--so there's no sense in discussing anything at all beyond that. He who makes the best products shall win the game--not so hard to understand, is it, Intel? I haven't seen an interesting architecture out of Intel yet! AMD has flashed by you as if you are sitting still...but hey--you are just sitting still, aren't you, Intel? Products talk--BS walks.RanFodar - Monday, July 26, 2021 - link
What kind of crap is this? You know Intel acknowledges their own faults now, and they're trying to remedy that with the first of these announcements. This node scheming is only for the purpose of realinging with the industry— and they're being more honest for that sake. Why not hold them to account to see if they're getting more and more competitive by the next few years?DigitalFreak - Monday, July 26, 2021 - link
Re-aligning with the industry? They're just making things up.persondb - Monday, July 26, 2021 - link
What are they making up? Their 10nm/7nm node is in the end about equal to TSMC and Samsung 7nmmode_13h - Monday, July 26, 2021 - link
Intel has been about as transparent as a brick wall. Their disclosures of schedule slip have been the bare minimum required by their customers and SEC reporting requirements. To this day, we still have zero visibility into exactly what went wrong. They've listed a bunch of leadership and organizational changes, but without insight into the root problems, it just amounts to: "trust us this time, for realz!"> Why not hold them to account to see if they're getting more and more competitive
> by the next few years?
Been there, done that. They've published similar roadmaps in the past, and they turned out to be worth less than the bits they were printed on.
Many years late, Intel did manage to get 10 nm products into end users' hands, followed by 10 nm SFF. So, they haven't lost *all* credibility. We can expect them to deliver on most of their promises *eventually*. It's mainly just a question of which decade.
Kevin G - Tuesday, July 27, 2021 - link
Intel hasn't disclosed what went wrong but looking at what the other fabs have done it should be pretty evident: they went with EUV sooner and were not as aggressive pursuing peak density. Intel's 10 nm process was a quad pass, self aligned schema that is seemingly too complex for mass production. The super fin and enhanced super fin advancements sacrificed that absolute density in favor of getting a working node.EUV is a great reset on as it reduces the need for multi-pass layers. This is also why Intel does have a legit chance in surpassing the other foundries with high-NA by securing these next generation ASML machines before their competitors. If the competition doesn't have these same tools at the same time as Intel, it is a clear technological advantage. The real question is how much money did it take to secure that deal.
mode_13h - Wednesday, July 28, 2021 - link
> they went with EUV soonerUh, no. I thought they were *late* to the EUV party and got themselves in a position of having to wait in line to get EUV machines. The article is consistent with this.
> were not as aggressive pursuing peak density.
I heard their 10 nm was too high-density, and that was part of the problem. From the chart on page 1, it's certainly claimed to be higher-density than TSMC 7 nm.
> EUV is a great reset on as it reduces the need for multi-pass layers.
I thought EUV requires more passes, which is one reason it's more expensive.
Spunjji - Thursday, July 29, 2021 - link
@mode_13h - I think Kevin G meant Intel's *competitors* went with EUV sooner, not Intel - hence also them not aggressively pursuing peak density, which is not something Intel could be accused of...EUV reduces the number of passes required, because less (or no) multi-patterning is required to reach the same density as a process using DUV. The problem you're likely thinking of is that EUV machines are still in a state where each pass through them is slower than through a DUV machine due to relatively weak beam intensity, and the masks have to be handled with greater care (no pellicles) and replaced more often.
Presumably Intel thought they would be better off sweating existing known-good assets than trying to figure out how to integrate relatively experimental tech into an entirely new workflow. They lost that bet.
mode_13h - Thursday, July 29, 2021 - link
Okay, makes sense. Thanks for that.name99 - Tuesday, July 27, 2021 - link
ACKNOWLEDGE their faults?That’s why they used that very careful language to say that they are shipping more WAFERS at 10nm than 14nm, but not more CHIPS? Because they still don’t want to admit 10nm yield issues…
Such transparency. Much honesty.
Spunjji - Thursday, July 29, 2021 - link
Yeah, I do wish little tells like that would be pointed out in the main article.WaltC - Wednesday, July 28, 2021 - link
Intel needs products--vaporware will not help them. Intel no longer "runs" the industry, if you haven't noticed.JasonLD - Monday, July 26, 2021 - link
This is exactly the reason why Intel is renaming their nodes like TSMC/Samsung.TheJian - Tuesday, July 27, 2021 - link
You seem completely unaware of the OTHER ways to fight. IE: Buying out the other guy's next wafer requirements to launch 3nm. Intel already killed 6nm Warhol plans (maybe NV too, they're 5nm now). The 3nm 2nd batch already killed Apple 3nm macs next year too.You are ignorant. The simple thing for Intel to do here, is just buy up everything they think AMD/NV could need making DISCRETE gpu anything (server, workstation, desktop all discrete), and make the crap out of them at 3nm and flood the market vs. all others. They won't be competing with their own stuff for the most part as they have no discrete retail cards for ages.
What is 2nm batch 100K wafers? First was 30k. I can't remember the link to the ramp stats they expect (semiwiki or wikichips, eetimes, semiconductor-digest etc - too many to keep track of and many need translators). Anyone?
Spunjji - Thursday, July 29, 2021 - link
You seem to be awfully confident that the non-appearance of products that were only ever rumoured from leaked roadmaps of an indeterminate age is down to Intel. You also seem to think that the abusive, self-defeating behaviour you hypothesise would be smart. The mind boggles.mode_13h - Sunday, August 1, 2021 - link
> You also seem to think that the abusive, self-defeating behaviour you hypothesise would be smart.Yeah, I can't imagine TSMC would sell out its 3 nm production run to a competitor of its own foundry and a competitor to many of its other customers. I mean, talk about self-defeating...
Spunjji - Thursday, July 29, 2021 - link
Not gonna lie, 8-core Tiger Lake is a solid product. There are trade-offs vs the AMD competition, but it's an ambitious design and no doubt about it - albeit apparently one they can't make in sufficient volume for the desktop, even though it operates with desktop boost power levels and desktop I/O capabilities. Alder Lake looks even more interesting architecturally, though it remains to be seen how that works in practice.dubeg - Monday, July 26, 2021 - link
Typo: "We asked Intel is a pre-briefing"Techie2 - Monday, July 26, 2021 - link
Intel figures if they promise what they know they can't deliver that their stock price will increase while their profits decrease. They've been able to bamboozle the gullible for decades and have never ever admitted what a disaster their failed 10Nm process is. Even Pat Gelsinger is gonna have a tough time fixing a very broken and unscrupulous Intel who has been convicted many times of anti-trust violations in their efforts to prevent a level playing field and competition from superior products to Intel's over-priced extortion based products.DigitalFreak - Monday, July 26, 2021 - link
"Previously known as 10nm Enhanced Super Fin"So 10nm+++++++++++++++
mode_13h - Tuesday, July 27, 2021 - link
Yeah, the article conspicuously didn't map out their 10 nm nodes, but it should be:10 nm -> Cannon Lake (2018)
10 nm+ -> Ice Lake (2019)
10 nm++ -> Tiger Lake (2020): 10 nm SF
10 nm+++ -> Alder Lake (2021): 10 nm ESF -> Intel 7
Machinus - Monday, July 26, 2021 - link
It is impossible to reclaim lost process leadership in 4 years. This is a joke.JasonLD - Monday, July 26, 2021 - link
There is no such thing as impossible in semiconductor industry. No one thought TSMC would take a leadership when their 20nm was considered dud 7 years ago.Machinus - Monday, July 26, 2021 - link
That's the example you want to go with? TSMC makes huge investments into development and facilities. TSMC is going to be collecting unprecedented revenue from every semiconductor player on Earth, including Intel when it builds chips for them.Enjoy your Intel dividends, because they don't spend earnings on engineering or manufacturing. Go read the finance reports for yourself. This company has been run for shareholder value for 16 years. It is NOT possible to reclaim lost leadership in 4.
JasonLD - Monday, July 26, 2021 - link
And no one thought AMD would come back to become $100B company either. I know there is a better chance TSMC will remain the leader in 2025 and beyond, but anything can happen between now and 2025. I wouldn't completely rule Intel out.Machinus - Monday, July 26, 2021 - link
I would like to short your portfolio.JasonLD - Tuesday, July 27, 2021 - link
Nice ad hominem. Thanks for reminding me not to bother with comments section lol.Machinus - Tuesday, July 27, 2021 - link
No, it isn't. Are you literate? (That is one, though.)Coward can't defend his stupid opinions. (That's number two.)
TheinsanegamerN - Tuesday, July 27, 2021 - link
Oh look, the reddit crybabies are leaking onto anandtech nowNow see, THAT was an ad hominem.
Machinus - Tuesday, July 27, 2021 - link
redditards should be put into a playpen away from other websitesSpunjji - Thursday, July 29, 2021 - link
@Machinus - maybe don't use slurs against other people's intelligence when you managed to fatally misread not one, but two replies to your comments.You were shown two examples that logically counter your claim that a comeback is "impossible", and your response was to mock the person for pointing out the indisputable fact that those comebacks were considered exceedingly unlikely *before they happened*.
You are in effect identifying yourself as someone who would have thought those things back then, given that you are arguing so passionately that it's true about Intel now.
Machinus - Thursday, July 29, 2021 - link
fatally? Were they fatal?This comeback is impossible. read my comments that already explained why you're wrong. :)
Spunjji - Friday, July 30, 2021 - link
@Machinus - fatal for your argument, absolutely. I thought that was implicit, but this appears to be a game where you misread everything and then insist you're smarter than everyone else.Your comments didn't "explain" anything, they made inaccurate assertions.
Machinus - Tuesday, August 3, 2021 - link
No, my comments were excellent, unlike the tripe appearing next to your username.mode_13h - Tuesday, July 27, 2021 - link
> anything can happen between now and 2025.Yeah, like China could take back Taiwan. Then, it would be largely irrelevant how good TSMC is. AMD would have to go cap-in-hand to IFS and beg for some capacity.
Lord of the Bored - Tuesday, July 27, 2021 - link
Taiwan's the older of the two. Taiwan didn't split, the communists just never conquered them."The communist regime could finish their conquest of China." would be more historically accurate.
mode_13h - Wednesday, July 28, 2021 - link
> the communists just never conquered them.Well, sure. If you're only going that far back. But, according to Wikipedia:
"Qing dynasty formally annexed Taiwan, placing it under the jurisdiction of Fujian province."
Anyway, you seem to get my point. Not that I want to see that happen, but its likelihood has certainly been increasing in recent years.
Threska - Wednesday, July 28, 2021 - link
Japan might want to get in on this, along with a few other countries.Lord of the Bored - Thursday, July 29, 2021 - link
Right, but officially, Taiwan is still officially the Republic of China(the pre-communist name for the country). They didn't LEAVE.Both Taiwan and Mainland Taiwan claim they are the one true chinese government and the other side is a bunch of traitorous usurpers.
I do get the point, I just enjoy poking at mainland Taiwan.
mode_13h - Sunday, August 1, 2021 - link
> Both Taiwan and Mainland Taiwan claim they are the one true chinese government> and the other side is a bunch of traitorous usurpers.
I knew a guy who was an officer in the Taiwanese military, back in the 90's. At that time, he said their mantra was "we will go back" (to the mainland). These days, I can't imagine anyone would even say such things. From what I can tell, Taiwan is pretty content with the status quo, and would prefer it stay that way (within reason).
There are some downsides to not having formal independence. For instance, mainlanders can buy property in Taiwan. That's bidding up property values and is probably something they'd dare to regulate, if recognized as an independent country. Expensive real estate also increases the cost of doing business, which is one reason many young Taiwanese are moving to the mainland to start their careers.
mode_13h - Tuesday, July 27, 2021 - link
> No one thought TSMC would take a leadership when their 20nm was considered dud 7 years ago.Yeah, but they're only leading because Intel fell on its face. Had it continued to execute anything like it did up to 14 nm, they'd still be leading today.
Also, didn't hurt that GloFo stopped at 12 nm.
TheinsanegamerN - Tuesday, July 27, 2021 - link
So in the absence of any competition TSMC has managed to put out not one but two great nodes, with a third on the way.Somehow this means TSMC is bad while the competition is better LMFAO.
mode_13h - Wednesday, July 28, 2021 - link
> Somehow this means TSMC is bad while the competition is better LMFAO.What I'm doing is comparing Intel's old roadmaps to where TSMC is, today. It doesn't diminish TSMC's accomplishments.
With that said, TSMC certainly benefitted from Intel's missteps, because a less dominant Intel creates more demand for alternatives. And most of those alternatives, be they x86 or ARM, are manufactured by TSMC. That gave TSMC more revenue to fuel further R&D and continue improving their manufacturing process.
Spunjji - Thursday, July 29, 2021 - link
Why does it have to be about who is "bad"? It's literally just a discussion of what /is/.Machinus - Tuesday, July 27, 2021 - link
TSMC also invested heavily in expertise and manufacturing. Intel had to fuck up and TSMC had to get better for Intel to have such a massive failure that they lost their lead. TSMC is increasing their lead, market share, capacity...there is no way in hell Intel is going to "catch up" anytime soon.Spunjji - Thursday, July 29, 2021 - link
@Machinus - it's not *likely*, but it's not impossible either. If (big if!) Intel hit their targets for the "4" process then they'll recover a lot of the lead they lost already. If, in the meantime, any of TSMC's bets don't pay off - e.g. no GAA at 3nm (remember, no FinFet at 20nm was their last big L) - then no amount of money is going to magically fix that for them.Like I said, I don't think it's likely. I do think it's likely that Intel will gain enough ground for it to be functionally irrelevant, though.
Spunjji - Thursday, July 29, 2021 - link
It still wasn't apparent as recently as their 10nm, which was like a less dramatic repeat of 20nm. It really wasn't until TSMC rolled out 7nm that they had a process which was consistently outperforming Intel on all relevant metrics - density, power, switching performance, yield.Easy to claim things are obvious / impossible when we look backwards, isn't it :D
Kevin G - Monday, July 26, 2021 - link
It is possible as they are getting the better EUV first from ASML. That'll be a strategic advantage over the other foundries.Two questions remain: how much did Intel have to pay to get those first? Secondly, can Intel get the rest of their processor roadmap in line prior to receiving those critical machines?
duploxxx - Tuesday, July 27, 2021 - link
It is not "better EUV" it is just more layers on EUV. Exactly the same as TSMC is doing...Marketing naming and information :)
PhantomTaco - Tuesday, July 27, 2021 - link
No. There is better EUV on the horizon, it's called High NA EUV from ASML and relies on a new optical design that improves the Numerical Aperture (NA) of the system to allow for more dense designs/smaller minimum feature size.GeoffreyA - Friday, July 30, 2021 - link
Nobody can predict the future, Machinus, and never underestimate a company like Intel.Machinus - Monday, August 2, 2021 - link
its ok buddy. theres a camp full of very special boys just like youGeoffreyA - Monday, August 2, 2021 - link
Thanks. Here's a golden star for you.mode_13h - Monday, August 2, 2021 - link
There's no arguing with this one. I just wish there were a way to report posts or posters to the mods. Didn't there used to be a "Report" button?GeoffreyA - Monday, August 2, 2021 - link
Hmm, can't seem to remember.Machinus - Tuesday, August 3, 2021 - link
Don't eat your camp utensils, kidGeoffreyA - Tuesday, August 3, 2021 - link
Here's another gold star. Paste it in your notebook, along with the rest. Collect enough and they'll promote you to prefect.Machinus - Tuesday, August 3, 2021 - link
Your extra chromosomes are showing :(GeoffreyA - Wednesday, August 4, 2021 - link
Everyone, round of applause for Mr. Congeniality.Machinus - Thursday, August 5, 2021 - link
dont worry little guy, we'll find a box factory that you can be useful in!uefi - Monday, July 26, 2021 - link
Why do companies eventually shifts terms away from its original perceived concept?As seen in politics and at the msm, to mislead the uniformed masses, of course.
mode_13h - Tuesday, July 27, 2021 - link
It's a lot easier to inflate the degree of progress than to actually deliver it.I don't know why you're trying to tie that to the MSM, by the way. If you want misleading and inflated stories of progress or decline, nobody beats the partisan media.
TheinsanegamerN - Tuesday, July 27, 2021 - link
I dont know why you are trying to create another "media" to protect MSM when the MSM has not only become hyper partisan the last 5 years, but has also lost nearly all credibility after being caught in one lie and scandal after another.As for the politics, well shifting terms to cover up the lack of innovation and progression is typical of the government.
mode_13h - Wednesday, July 28, 2021 - link
I don't see how you can trust someone with a blatant political bias to be more truthful than someone with actual journalistic ethics and standards. Calling out lies doesn't make them partisan. And if your guy happens to be a compulsive liar, then yeah it's going to look like they're against him.Oxford Guy - Wednesday, July 28, 2021 - link
Humans mainly define truth on the basis of convenience.That is, in fact, the basis of politics (what’s most convenient for that wealthy).
Spunjji - Thursday, July 29, 2021 - link
100%mode_13h - Thursday, July 29, 2021 - link
Politics isn't necessarily about the wealthy. It's about finding a powerbase, though. Often, that lies with the wealthy, but sometimes not.Oxford Guy - Wednesday, August 11, 2021 - link
‘Politics isn't necessarily about the wealthy.’Citation needed.
mode_13h - Thursday, August 12, 2021 - link
> Citation needed.Do you *really* need me to cite every proletariat uprising?
GeoffreyA - Friday, July 30, 2021 - link
"Humans mainly define truth on the basis of convenience."That's true. However, there is an absolute (or relative) truth out there in the nature of things, and it's our job to find or draw nearer to it.
mode_13h - Sunday, August 1, 2021 - link
> there is an absolute (or relative) truth out there in the nature of things,> and it's our job to find or draw nearer to it.
The scientific method is a powerful technique for doing that. Probably one of humanity's greatest conceptual achievements.
GeoffreyA - Sunday, August 1, 2021 - link
Absolutely. Along with mathematics. Time and time again, the mathematician discovers some new region of maths, and decades later the physicists find it's just the thing they needed.Oxford Guy - Wednesday, August 11, 2021 - link
The scientific method is not political.So... apples and oranges fallacy once again.
mode_13h - Thursday, August 12, 2021 - link
> So... apples and oranges fallacy once again.When someone diminishes the value and even the existence of truth, a rebuke of some form is to be expected. And politics is no cover for being untruthful.
BTW, your post was actually countered by @GeoffreyA. Mine was a reply to his. You're losing the plot. Or maybe we're beyond that point and you're just needling me out of sheer spite.
Spunjji - Thursday, July 29, 2021 - link
If you have to talk in such general terms about the media that you're not even able to refer to the specific acts a "mainstream" news organisation took part in that somehow persuaded you to distrust *all of them equally*, it's a good indicator that you're repeating talking points rather than saying anything of value.Fox News is "MSM", for the record. Same with the Daily Mail in the UK - outsells any other paper, most popular website. Both are hyper-partisan, both mainstream. Then you have these swirling masses of pseudo-news organisations that harp on relentlessly about the MSM - The Daily Caller, GB News, Rebel Media, etc. - that exist entirely to push propaganda. Their not being "mainstream" doesn't make their perspectives more valid. Same goes for partisan dickholes with their own pages like Drudge and Guido.
No media source is universally reliable. Some do at least have standards, even if they don't always hew to them.
Weird that you just segued to "the government" for no reason. Which government, where? 🤷♂️
GeoffreyA - Friday, July 30, 2021 - link
Well said.JoeDuarte - Monday, August 9, 2021 - link
You seem to conflate "partisan" with conservative, which broadcasts an obvious bias and double standard.Leftist websites like the Guardian, NYT, and Washington Post are extremely unreliable because they're partisan leftists, with no apparent deeper commitment to truth or professional journalism. We've found some amazing patterns of false statements in their work, especially when they couch it as "fact checking", which was unexpected. We haven't yet found comparable patterns at Fox News, though their story selection on their homepage is clearly biased (story selection is a different bias measure entirely, and leftist websitre score high on that form of bias as well – try finding coverage of the Biden Administration flagging posts or topics for censorship for Facebook at any of the leftist websites...)
Daily Caller might have the only credible fact-checking operation in the US at the moment. They score much higher than anyone else I've seen, in the US at least.
mode_13h - Tuesday, August 10, 2021 - link
> Leftist websites like the Guardian, NYT, and Washington PostIt's funny how those who do the most to discredit quality journalism also happen to be the ones who stand the most to gain by having no critical oversight of their actions within office.
Right-wingers decry anyone as leftist who doesn't hew to their ideology. Sorry, that's not how it works.
> try finding coverage of the Biden Administration flagging posts
Maybe because there's no substance to it? Just because they don't pick up whatever stories right-wing media gins up doesn't mean they're leftist.
KAlmquist - Monday, July 26, 2021 - link
The reason ASML is switching to High-NA EUV is diffraction. Diffraction makes an image blurry, and increasing the aperture of a lens decreases the amount of diffraction.Photographers normally measure apertures in terms of “f-stops” rather than “numerical aperture.” The current ASML EUV machines have an aperture of f/1.5, while the high-NA machines will have an aperture of f/0.91.
Spunjji - Thursday, July 29, 2021 - link
Thanks for that - I did wonder what it corresponded to! I know there are other engineering and optical issues that creep in with wider apertures, so I'm guessing that's what's preventing them switching to High-NA sooner.JayNor - Monday, July 26, 2021 - link
Pat's statement that Alder Lake uses advanced packaging seems to be news. Did he just mean to say Meteor Lake?Rudde - Tuesday, July 27, 2021 - link
Alder Lake was said to use Foveros when announced. Foveros is advanced packaging.JoeDuarte - Monday, July 26, 2021 - link
I think it's doubtful that we'll ever see these nodes. It's certainly unlikely that Intel will deliver them on schedule, even though the schedule is now several years behind their original promises.It would be very interesting to see some rigorous organizational research on how some foundries are able to reliably advance with new nodes and shrinks, while others fail. It's a complete mystery to me how TSMC is able to reliably advance on schedule, moving the threshold of the physics and engineering, but Intel is simply unable to do the same. It's not clear what is different in terms of process, talent, organization, etc. Does TSMC have secret discoveries in engineering management? Is it possible for companies to decide to hit a node and then hit that node? What makes it work for some and not others?
Whatever the reasons, it looks like Intel is simply unable to advance. They've been treading water for many years now. It's been a long time since they did anything major. If not for TSMC, it would make me think that the physics just didn't work for any more shrinks.
Machinus - Tuesday, July 27, 2021 - link
Taiwan is smart enough to invest it its industry, and TSMC is smart enough not to waste all of its retained earnings on shareholders. Research project done.TheinsanegamerN - Tuesday, July 27, 2021 - link
If someone tells you to "reasearch" anything to support their argument, their argument immediately becomes invalid.mode_13h - Wednesday, July 28, 2021 - link
> If someone tells you to "reasearch" anything to support their argumentHe didn't. What he meant was for someone like a prof at a respected business school to do a thorough analysis of the organization, in order to understand how they've been so successful. This sort of thing happens, from time to time, and usually ends up in a best-selling book like those you can find about other massively successful companies in recent history.
Spunjji - Thursday, July 29, 2021 - link
That's an inference, not a law. Stating inferences as laws immediately invalidates your argument.mode_13h - Thursday, July 29, 2021 - link
> Stating inferences as laws immediately invalidates your argument.Good point, as usual.
JoeDuarte - Tuesday, August 3, 2021 - link
That's not how knowledge works, or how reality works. It's not possible to know the answers to these sorts of questions by a moment's reflection and opinion generation, especially when the opinions contain no real info. "smart enough to invest" is meaningless without concrete data, like how much "Taiwan" actually "invested" in TSMC, when they did so, and how this investment influenced TSMC's ability to develop new nodes, if at all.(And your second clause is probably false in that I don't think any chipmaker wastes all of their retained earnings on shareholders, and of course "wastes" is a loaded term that would have to be justified with arguments and data.)
You can't really know anything about the world around you using your method here.
mode_13h - Wednesday, August 4, 2021 - link
> You can't really know anything about the world around you using your method here.To put it another way: the term for inferencing without data is "imagination".
mode_13h - Tuesday, July 27, 2021 - link
> It would be very interesting to see some rigorous organizational research on> how some foundries are able to reliably advance with new nodes and shrinks
True. But these must be closely-held secrets. I'm sure they'd closely guard them for decades.
> it looks like Intel is simply unable to advance.
They're advancing, just slowly. They finally got 10 nm performing competitively, by the time they reached 10 nm++ (SuperFin).
And they've delivered products with Foveros and EMIB.
That's why I said above that it's not a question so much of *whether* Intel will deliver, but in what decade!
JoeDuarte - Monday, August 9, 2021 - link
Is Foveros in anything? In desktops? I haven't heard anything.I don't remember what EMIB is, but it only matters if it matters. That is, if it confers benefits to users, like speed.
I don't trust their plus sign stacking anymore, or labels like "Super"-this or that. At this point it's all going to be bottom line metrics for me re: Intel. Is it faster? How much faster? That sort of thing.
Also, it has to actually exist and be ready to buy by normal means, like Dell, Amazon, etc. If there are no desktops with SuperFin+++++ Tiger Claw, Cougar Lake, Bald Eagle Lake, Rocket Man, etc. then it's moot. I think whatever Lake is supposed to have SuperFin++++ is in desktops yet.
JoeDuarte - Monday, August 9, 2021 - link
I *don't* think...mode_13h - Tuesday, August 10, 2021 - link
> Is Foveros in anything? In desktops? I haven't heard anything.Lakefield, but I'm guessing that's why you added "in desktops". Chip development times seem to be around 4 years or so. That means you wouldn't expect an overnight transition to something like Foveros. First, it has to be proven and refined. Then, you might see chips still early in their design phase start to utilize it, but that should result in a gap between the first example and more widespread adoption. So, the fact that we haven't yet seen widespread adoption doesn't mean anything, in itself.
> I don't remember what EMIB is
It's easy to look up. It's Intel's technology for building multi-chip modules. I think Sapphire Rapids is slated to use it. Otherwise, I think Meteor Lake might be first.
> I don't trust their plus sign stacking anymore
If we were talking about 14 nm, then I'd agree. However, they've been a bit more transparent about what distinguishes 10 nm+, 10 nm++, and 10 nm+++. For details, see the article (which refers to ++ as SF and +++ as ESF).
> Is it faster? How much faster? That sort of thing.
Their foundry business should offer new transparency into their manufacturing node. Before, when Intel was practically their fabs' only customer, they didn't need to reveal detailed performance characteristics of their process iterations. However, when you're trying to attract customers to use your fabs, the standard for transparency is a lot higher. It also means that Intel needs to be more conservative about their roadmaps, since actual manufacturing contracts are going to hang by on-time and on-target delivery.
However, I agree that the end result (cost, area, power, frequency, and wafers per month) are what really matters. I'm not really bothered about dubious density metrics, and that's why I think they should just switch to a sequential version numbering scheme.
> Also, it has to actually exist and be ready to buy by normal means
Manufacturing process roadmaps are not of much interest to end-consumers, precisely because the timelines for getting end products on shelves is so far out.
Also, I'd say consumer shouldn't even think much about manufacturing tech. Good product reviews will show the relevant performance and power characteristics, and that's what most people really care about.
> I think whatever Lake is supposed to have SuperFin++++ is in desktops yet.
Ice Lake uses "regular" 10 nm, which is really 10 nm+ (but Intel doesn't call it that, because they'd rather pretend that Cannon Lake's 10 nm didn't happen). Ice Lake launched in laptops toward the end of 2019 and in servers a few months ago.
Tiger Lake uses 10 nm SF. The quad-core launched in laptops at the end of 2020 and 8-core launched a few months ago. The only "desktops" that have either are small-form-factor PCs, such as NUCs. Intel skipped selling it as a normal desktop CPU, probably due to manufacturing constraints (i.e. insufficient volume), but *maybe* also having to do with performance or power scaling.
Alder Lake should launch (for desktops!) around the end of this year and will be the first CPU on 10 nm ESF (now called "Intel 7"). It'll be the first "10 m" product they've launched for desktops.
JoeDuarte - Friday, August 13, 2021 - link
@mode_13h, Foveros isn't new though. It's old. I first read about it in 2019, or earlier. My comment rested on my unstated framing view that Foveros is old, and it's in my bucket of "Things Intel has hyped but never delivered.", like the optical Thunderbolt (Lightpeak?), Hybrid Memory Cube RAM, especially HMC2 and later, silicon photonics (as something that exists in even high-end desktops and servers), 10nm, 7nm, Phi/Knights (in computers we can buy), Panel Self-Refresh, and that optical connector embedded in functional USB ports (which would be awesome; I think Sony did something similar on a VAIO).I don't know what Lakefield is, but Googling it reveals that Intel has cancelled it, so Foveros isn't real yet, and might never be, not as something in a computer we can buy. I doubt EMIB will ever matter.
I didn't mention desktop as some sort of cynical ploy. I mentioned it because it's what I care about most, and it's also where Intel has failed to advance the most, re: 10nm etc. It's also a pet peeve of mine that desktop computing is often dismissed as unimportant because of what I call the Growth Fallacy, or the Relative Growth Fallacy. It's the fallacy that a market or industry doesn't matter, or doesn't matter much, is it's not growing at any arbitrary present. Or if some other category is growing faster, or growing a lot. Desktop is enormously important, a huge market, and where work happens. So I care most about desktop. The 7 watt stuff doesn't solve any problems for me.
mode_13h - Saturday, August 14, 2021 - link
> Foveros isn't new though. It's old.In the relative scheme of things, it's pretty new. It's also newer than the rest of the things you mentioned. And, for some of those, the issue is more that their time hasn't yet come. For instance, the OCP article (Rebecca Weekly interview) mentioned silicon photonics as an area of growing focus.
> Lakefield ... Googling it reveals that Intel has cancelled it
Not cancelled, but it reached end-of-life. There's an important difference, as one involves actually bringing a functioning product to market and supporting it.
I think Foveros is slated to appear possibly in Meteor Lake, which will be Intel's first chiplet-based desktop CPU. It's planned to come after Raptor Lake, which will follow Alder Lake. So, probably near the end of 2023. I'm not sure if they have any other products planned to use it, before then, but I wouldn't be surprised.
> desktop computing is often dismissed as unimportant
I haven't heard that, recently. For several years, the PC sector was on a slope of inexorable decline, but that changed around the time Zen launched.
> Desktop is enormously important,
It's indisputably high-profile. It was the beachfront for AMD's comeback in the CPU space, and it routinely generates lots of publicity for Nvidia and AMD's GPU products.
BTW, I'm not trying to be an Intel apologist, here. I'm just trying to present the facts as I understand them. And my understanding is that technologies like EMIB and Foveros are still in their commercial infancy. Certainty will only come with time.
AdrianBc - Tuesday, July 27, 2021 - link
To be fair, after a few years of complete stagnation, during the last 4 years Intel has improved steadily their 10 nm process.For example the maximum clock frequency has increased from 3.2 GHz in 2018 to 4 GHz in 2019, then 5 GHz in 2020 and finally 5.3 GHz (according to rumors) in 2021.
The renamed "Intel 7" manufacturing process will be the first Intel process better than the 7 nm TSMC process, if the Intel claims are true.
The problem for Intel is that this slow recovery might be too late, because meanwhile TSMC has been using already for a long time the superior 5 nm process, in high volume production (for Apple).
mode_13h - Tuesday, July 27, 2021 - link
> the maximum clock frequency has increased from 3.2 GHz in 2018 to 4 GHz in 2019,> then 5 GHz in 2020 and finally 5.3 GHz (according to rumors) in 2021.
Wow, almost like their 14 nm process!
mode_13h - Tuesday, July 27, 2021 - link
Anyway, the real point is that the first two of those iterations basically don't count. The first was *completely* noncompetitive and the second was *barely* competitive.Usually, when Intel introduces a new node, it's already superior to the existing node, which is something we can't really say until their 3rd gen 10 nm (SF). Granted, if they hadn't refined their 14 nm quite so much, Ice Lake (2nd gen 10 nm) probably would've compared more favorably to it.
AdrianBc - Tuesday, July 27, 2021 - link
I completely agree.TheinsanegamerN - Tuesday, July 27, 2021 - link
So they finally caught up to where they were before 5 years after the product was support to be used for a mass release? At least according to rumors, there's no telling if alder lake will actually be able to do that, let alone sustain such speeds.Skylake was supposed to be 10nm BTW.
Spunjji - Thursday, July 29, 2021 - link
"Skylake was supposed to be 10nm BTW."Based on what information? Are you sure you don't mean Kaby or Coffee Lake? Skylake was only the second architecture on 14nm - the tock to Broadwell's tick (or whichever way around that went).
Spunjji - Thursday, July 29, 2021 - link
TSMC hasn't always been like this. They had a history of delayed, underperforming, or even cancelled nodes - 32nm was a big one, as it screwed up both ATi and Nvidia's plans for a generation and effectively gave Nvidia time to catch up after the Fermi disaster. More recently, AMD had to cancel their 20nm projects because the node sucked, and swallow the resulting financial losses at a time when they couldn't really afford it.I'd say their secret sauce is learning from experiences like that and - as others have said - ploughing funds into R&D rather than resting on their successes.
throAU - Tuesday, July 27, 2021 - link
might be catching up in name but a shame they are still nowhere in terms of processing per watt.shabby - Tuesday, July 27, 2021 - link
Don't worry, pat will rename the watt to intel watt soon. Formula will be watt/2=intel watt = intel in more efficient than amd!29a - Tuesday, July 27, 2021 - link
I can't see that even making them more efficient, a 5600x literally uses 65w max.Oxford Guy - Wednesday, July 28, 2021 - link
Isn’t Apple’s M1 more efficient, as least in some workloads?mode_13h - Thursday, July 29, 2021 - link
Yes, efficiency is where the M1 really excels.yannigr2 - Tuesday, July 27, 2021 - link
This is probably the only site on the Internet that swallows Intel's marketing and puts(on the title) "3nm" next to Intel's name.I would expect better from this site.
I guess Intel is hiring.
mode_13h - Tuesday, July 27, 2021 - link
Good point. Even Intel doesn't call it "3 nm". They call it "Intel 3". The title shouldn't misrepresent what they're actually saying.zodiacfml - Tuesday, July 27, 2021 - link
i agree. can't believe theyre just eating all this crap whereas they could have easily investigated Intel's 10nm 8 core laptop vs. AMD/TSMC 7nm laptop chips.29a - Tuesday, July 27, 2021 - link
It's become quite the shitshow since Anand sold the site, I'm only now realizing he sold it to FoxNews.ET - Tuesday, July 27, 2021 - link
It's certainly an aggressive roadmap. I'll be waiting to see how it turns out.mode_13h - Tuesday, July 27, 2021 - link
Intel's process roadmaps have never lacked in ambition.Timoo - Tuesday, July 27, 2021 - link
Ah, you have to firgive them. They simply didn't understand yet that the slave boats with 2 whipmen and hundreds of rowers have been "out of fashion" for quite some time now.siuba - Tuesday, July 27, 2021 - link
intel 7nm (intel 4) ... the table information incorrect.. it should be 200MTr/mm2+.. 5/4nm (Intel 3) density still unknown..Gondalf - Tuesday, July 27, 2021 - link
Looking at the suboptimal density found in Apple A14 SOC (5nm TSMC), this look like a good roadmap. We must remember that TSMC does a lot of claims about great density, still we find disappointing results in final products.There is too much enphasis on density, a lot less on availability of the process across the customers and a lot less about real yields at the claimed high density.
Bet in these days many have pissed off TSMC (Automotive, Nvidia in primis). A lot of claims but in pratics TSMC can not satisfy the demand cause low yields, simple and plain. AMD is a good example of the disaster. Qualcomm large utilization of Samsung say a lot.
name99 - Tuesday, July 27, 2021 - link
This statement about TSMC is a strong claim. The ONLY validated TSMC 5 density we have is A14/M1 and those are weird cases bcs Apple’s ONLY priority with them was to ship on time and working correctly (as far as x86/Mac transition matters). Physical optimization may have been tossed overboard as schedule slipped.There are claims that the Huaiwei chip fabbed on N5 met TSMC density as expected, but since few have seen that chip (bcs US forced Huawei off TSMC) who knows?
I’d wait for an alternative chip on N5 (should be one soon, surely) before making strong density claims.
Spunjji - Thursday, July 29, 2021 - link
"TSMC can not satisfy the demand cause low yields"False. We know their yields, and they're good. They can't satisfy demand for many reasons, mainly that they simply don't have enough fabs, but also including literally running out of water.
mode_13h - Sunday, August 1, 2021 - link
> also including literally running out of water.I've heard about the fresh water shortage, but do we know this is actually impacting fab throughput?
zodiacfml - Tuesday, July 27, 2021 - link
wtf is this waste of time. they band-aid their problems with a name change? Intel 10nm is inferior to TSMC 7nm, as I found in their latest 8 core 10nm laptop chips vs AMD's. If you dont believe me, the clue is in TSMCs use of EUV in a few layers of 7nm products. TSMC is no engineering slouch and Intel can't beat physics by just using DUVKeyrock42 - Tuesday, July 27, 2021 - link
Regardless of the naming scheme, the problem for Intel is a lot less about deceptive naming by competitors and a lot more about being able to actually stick to their own roadmap. You can show me an impressively aggressive roadmap and that's all well and good, but my confidence in Intel's ability to stick to said roadmap is at about 2%.DougMcC - Tuesday, July 27, 2021 - link
Seems like the more straightforward naming convention would be based on the density, going ever upward. If the new process offers no advantage in density, you get +, ++ etc. for power improvements and whatnot.mode_13h - Wednesday, July 28, 2021 - link
Makes sense, but I think their 14 nm debacle spoiled the idea of using "+".I'd rather see sequential numbering for major advancements, with letter suffixes for minor ones. Or heck, maybe just a sequential versioning scheme like 2.1 for major.minor improvements.
Spunjji - Thursday, July 29, 2021 - link
That would be nice!six_tymes - Tuesday, July 27, 2021 - link
so many so called enthusiasts are hyper focused on process size, and unfortunately type comments that often read like that of a 12 year old. Most of these types of comments are called trolls, or trolling? What matters in processor technology are results, results in performance and stability. It looks as if this new Intel CEO knows what he is doing, and seems to be steering the ship back in the right direction. I am looking forward to this new competition he is bringing to the industry.diediealldie - Wednesday, July 28, 2021 - link
Can't agree more. Pat showed difficulties ahead and provided how they'll overcome that hardship using technologies only Intel has. He's also brought IDF back which made Intel a great company.It wasn't merely a 1~2 year hyped self-praise, but it was more like long term roadmap to be great again. People are saying that IDM's time is done, but who knows. There are things only IDM can do and Pat seems to know a lot.
mode_13h - Thursday, July 29, 2021 - link
> how they'll overcome that hardship using technologies only Intel has.Uh, the article repeatedly translates between Intel's terms for things and what equivalent or similar things other fabs are working on.
alufan - Tuesday, July 27, 2021 - link
Lol is all just LolSeems Anandtech is still swallowing all Intels Bull
so a 4 is not 4nm but is actually 7nm!
You just know they are failing at producing decent CPUs at up to date processes when they think of a ruse like this to slap on machines in store to make the non Techies of the world swallow the pill intel is lower so must therefore be better, shame on you Anandtech for not calling this what it is an Intel crap sandwich
mode_13h - Wednesday, July 28, 2021 - link
> when they think of a ruse like this to slap on machines in storeNobody ever said they're using this in retail branding! No, they already have BS numbering schemes for that, with i3/i5/i7/i9 and Nth generation.
These names are mostly for foundry customers, and also those tech insiders who even know what a manufacturing process is.
dicobalt - Tuesday, July 27, 2021 - link
When I started reading I automatically assumed this meant Intel is going to lie about the process just like everyone else is. Then I saw that I was right. Maybe Intel should be using density as they have suggested before instead of lying like everyone else. There's also the most real life relevant performance per dollar metric too. Intel should be setting standards that people can use not playing a stupid marketing game with the coke addled wallstreet gimps.mode_13h - Wednesday, July 28, 2021 - link
Manufacturers never *want* to use real metrics. Maybe when their products are head-and-shoulders above everyone else, but otherwise not.It's like how hi-fi gear uses A-weighted SNR, when they really should use C-weighted (if they even tell you the SNR, that is). Why do they use A-weighted? Because someone figured they could get better numbers that way and then everyone else had to follow.
But they'd really rather sell on the basis of non-quantifiable things, like Apple is probably most famous for doing. When Apple lists product specs, it's mostly just to upsell its customers vs. other products they're considering or already own. But rarely does someone actually buy Apple because of the specs.
Oxford Guy - Wednesday, July 28, 2021 - link
‘But rarely does someone actually buy Apple because of the specs.’Tell that to all the Mac owners who were forced to buy replacement machines because Apple force-fed them the APFS file system — incompatible with hard drives (unless one counts glacial speeds as evidence of compatibility).
Then, there are the quickly-orphaned iPad 1 owners, orphaned because Apple put so little RAM into them. (That’s Apple’s #1 ploy and has been since 1984.)
Spunjji - Thursday, July 29, 2021 - link
You're still making a pretty solid argument in favour of most Apple owners not buying due to specs. I know a few people who still used iPad 1s until relatively recently (usually as a glorified e-Reader) and really didn't care about the OS not being updated. Most of them only stopped when the devices got physically broken.For most of the people who got screwed by the things you mentioned, it was a surprise because they just didn't think about those specs until they were forced to.
GeoffreyA - Friday, July 30, 2021 - link
"Apple is the best. I'm buying this. Not interested in any of that last-grade Android junk."Oxford Guy - Tuesday, August 3, 2021 - link
Android was quite an inferior experience the last time I used it — and I think a good number of iOS design choices are vile. Just today, for instance, it harassed me with pop ups twice in a row (three times over the course of me writing a single message) — demanding that I turn on dictation. It also popped up a harassment window to order me to enter my Apple ID.So, for Android to be a worse experience than that says what needs to be said about the state of ‘smart’ phones.
mode_13h - Wednesday, August 4, 2021 - link
> for Android to be a worse experience than thatThere's not a singular Android experience. Each phone maker customizes it in varying ways and to varying degrees. Samsung supposedly does heavier customization, among phone makers.
Back when Google had the "Nexus" product line, it was supposed to be mostly unmodified. I'm not sure if their Pixel devices continue that tradition, but it would make sense.
Oxford Guy - Wednesday, August 11, 2021 - link
‘There's not a singular Android experience’Uh huh.
GeoffreyA - Wednesday, August 4, 2021 - link
Android and iOS have grown towards each other over time. Today, it looks like iOS in many ways and is a lot more polished. Things have certainly changed. Going from Lollipop to Pie in 2019 was quite a departure for me but I got used to it after a few days. My Android experience (always Samsung) has been pleasant all the way, and I don't think I'll ever go onto Apple, though I hand to Tim, Craig, and the gang for their polish and their conservative addition approach vs. Android's curtailing the open doors.GeoffreyA - Wednesday, August 4, 2021 - link
I think for many people, the mobile brand and OS square with who they are, so to speak. For my part, I'd feel pretty odd using an iPhone, despite the excellent hardware. Quite likely, it's just the whole Apple atmoshere that I've got an aversion to. They'll have to send me to Room 101 if they want to convert me.mode_13h - Thursday, August 5, 2021 - link
> I'd feel pretty odd using an iPhoneApple lost me at walled garden.
I really wanted Mozilla to succeed with their Firefox OS phone project. I wish they'd stuck with it a bit longer. If they'd gotten it on another generation of phones, I was going to buy one.
I know a dyed-in-the-wool Windows user & developer who tried to stick with their phone platform, but even he got burned too many times and eventually jumped ship. If they ever had any hope of competing with Android, they couldn't afford so many strategic blunders. Also, they really just needed to copy the open source model, or at least not try to make a profit on the OS.
GeoffreyA - Thursday, August 5, 2021 - link
Let's hope they keep developing Gecko and Quantum and don't go over to Blink. I will sigh the day that happens, being a Firefox user.mode_13h - Friday, August 6, 2021 - link
> Let's hope they keep developing Gecko and Quantum and don't go over to Blink.I don't follow their developments that closely, but I know I had to disable Proton when it got switched on. It was too resource intensive and bogged down the browsing experience considerably.
GeoffreyA - Friday, August 6, 2021 - link
Me too! I disabled Proton on the first/second day. Those floating tabs were terrible.GeoffreyA - Sunday, August 15, 2021 - link
Unfortunately, 91 has made it harder to disable Proton. Wonderful.Oxford Guy - Wednesday, August 11, 2021 - link
‘I really wanted Google to succeed with their Firefox OS phone project.’Fixed it for you. Guess who runs Mozilla?
Just take a look at how many entries Google gets in about:config
mode_13h - Thursday, August 12, 2021 - link
> Fixed it for you. Guess who runs Mozilla?No, why do you say that? And why would Google get Mozilla to make a phone OS that's a competitor to Android?
> Just take a look at how many entries Google gets in about:config
That's proof of what, exactly? With one exception, they're 'browser.safebrowsing.provider.google'. If you have better providers, I'll bet Mozilla would like to hear about it.
Wow, you're like one of these conspiracy theory nuts that finds a spelling error in some random document and uses it as if it's iron clad proof of some vast, sweeping scheme.
Before Google had their Chrome browser, they were indeed a big backer of Mozilla. However, those days are long gone. Mozilla had big layoffs about a year ago, unfortunately.
Oxford Guy - Tuesday, August 3, 2021 - link
‘You're still making a pretty solid argument in favour of most Apple owners not buying due to specs.’I have met a good number of intelligent people who quit buying MtG cards long ago. Sometimes people need to learn the hard way to not feed a bad deal.
Then, there are wealthy lazy people, who I have also seen, who will fork over the blood money to Apple. In their defense, many of them are quite old and don’t want to learn new tricks — even though UI is changing anyway, mainly due to the penchant of corporations for having only contempt for the productivity and happiness of customers.
s.yu - Tuesday, July 27, 2021 - link
So...NA 0.33 is f/3, NA 0.55 is f/1.82?dsplover - Tuesday, July 27, 2021 - link
Hope it happens, more choices for us since Intel has only had some i5’s worth buying in the last 2 years.Single Core scores got me interested again. But marketing hype on TDP and nm size is still a tad too high compared to AMD.
I like the negative -nm response. Humor and competition make me happy.
eldakka - Tuesday, July 27, 2021 - link
" Intel believes it can follow an aggressive strategy to match and pass its foundry rivals"Isn't that exactly what caused their failures with 10nm? The blame for the repeated delays was usually put on them being too agressive with their 10nm shrink, attempting too big reductions in feature sizes, increases in density, etc.
whatthe123 - Wednesday, July 28, 2021 - link
That's true but it was also because they were still ahead of everyone else with 14nm so they continued shooting for unrealistic goals on 10nm instead of just accepting the density loss and shipping something, which is basically what they've done with their SF/ESF updates. They also weren't willing to eat margins to ship products and enjoyed huge profits for a long time.If they accept the costs and react fast to failing strategies then maybe they can actually ship something closer to TSMC's timeline instead of being years behind. Either way they have to be aggressive considering TSMC is still improving.
Oxford Guy - Wednesday, July 28, 2021 - link
The word aggressive signals desperation in this context.mode_13h - Thursday, July 29, 2021 - link
Aggressively pursuing density can also serve greed, since it means more dies per wafer -> bigger profit margins. I think this is the more plausible explanation, because Intel had a comfortable lead at the time they were initially designing their 10 nm process.Heh, I feel sorta weird for having to point that out to you.
Oxford Guy - Tuesday, August 3, 2021 - link
Apples and oranges.Peskarik - Wednesday, July 28, 2021 - link
By 2025 most will not give a s about some processorsPeskarik - Wednesday, July 28, 2021 - link
naming should be more positive, more inventive and more inclusiveunicorn
duecorn
tripplecorn
fourcorn
and, as apotheosis, hornycorn
GeoffreyA - Friday, July 30, 2021 - link
I doubt whether the Censorship Department at Intel HQ will let the last one through.watzupken - Wednesday, July 28, 2021 - link
I think by now we all know that the XXnm naming convention don't mean anything. It does somewhat give you an indication there is some progress in the node, but that's all. In my opinion, I don't really think Intel's current 10nm is in reality, better than TSMC's 7nm. I know the CPU architecture is also a major factor in the efficiency, but just looking at Intel's Tiger Lake H vs AMD's Ryzen 5000H, it is clear that the former consumes a lot more power to reach its performance target. And at the higher power limit, it is not able to decisively pull itself away from the Ryzen processor. Even Alder Lake is rumoured to launch with a PL2 value of 228W, despite using the improved 10nm SuperFin is quite a high number compared to a proper 16 cores Ryzen 5950X.nadim.kahwaji - Wednesday, July 28, 2021 - link
Excellent Article, that's what keep Anandtech so special, i hope the other topis (Especially Graphics ;) ) will Catch soon..SaolDan - Wednesday, July 28, 2021 - link
This move reminds me of Dewalt when they went from torque to UWO. They couldn't compete in torque so they made up their own unit of measurement so they didn't look bad. 20A makes me think of 20Amps.Spunjji - Thursday, July 29, 2021 - link
Dyson with "air watts", too 😅back2future - Wednesday, July 28, 2021 - link
How do consumers follow these advantages on real systems? TDP and energy efficiency, benchmarking tools from chip companies or reviews of integration into different systems or scores/$ and per years of duty?yankeeDDL - Wednesday, July 28, 2021 - link
4 new nodes in 4 years.Very aggressive.
If they can do it, they might actually regain the tech leadership. Wow, 20A tech in 2025 should bring more cores, significant more speed at less power than today's CPU (and GPUs).
Can't complain if that happens.
NickConrad - Wednesday, July 28, 2021 - link
What happened to the December 2019 roadmap that put a 3nm target on 2025? Is this not an admission that they’ll already miss that target by at least a whole generation?Spunjji - Thursday, July 29, 2021 - link
Looks like it!MDD1963 - Sunday, August 1, 2021 - link
Considering the interval between 14 nm and 10nm mainstream desktop CPUs, I'd recommend we look at one step at a time, lest the next shrink step take an additional 7 years...Oxford Guy - Wednesday, August 11, 2021 - link
I’m more concerned with how much power is going to be sacrificed to pursue the AI/spyware route.That’s Apple’s big thing in particular but it’s an industry-wide trend. Individuals are data, products corporations believe are purchased by them when individuals fork over cash.
We have already seen Apple roll out, for instance, a file system that’s abominably inefficient with hard disks and slower than the old one with flash. Then there are all those groovy black box piggybacked chips. I have read that the preposterously-named T2 is now to be embedded in the M2 CPU, like AMD’s PSP and whatever Intel’s spy chip is called.
A new page in CPU reviews will have to be devoted to how much power and die space is going to AI/spyware tech — like making it easier for the government:corporate complex to not only scan your files and take extremely extensive data about them — but move forward with thought crime like ‘preventative indefinite detention’ — a policy then president Obama laid out in a speech.
China is working to force employees to grin correctly in order for office equipment to work. Ugh.
Oxford Guy - Wednesday, August 11, 2021 - link
‘preposterously-named T2’According to mainstream news, Google’s phone-drone-bomb military program was called Skynet. Can’t these megacorps be even slightly creative?
mode_13h - Thursday, August 12, 2021 - link
This is *exactly* what I meant by pulling the thread off-topic. Sometimes, it naturally meanders into these directions, but you grab the wheel and launch us directly off the path and into the weeds.This is not contributing in good faith, IMO. It's like you're just searching for somewhere to air your grievances, not unlike the right-wingers who try to derail the discussion into some dark place about same-sex bathrooms.
> ‘preventative indefinite detention’ — a policy then president Obama laid out in a speech.
If he uttered those words, it must have been in reference to Guantanamo Bay, which he actually tried to shut down (and on his very first day in office, no less)! And while that move was foiled by political opposition, he did succeed in mostly emptying it out. Obama lectured on Constitutional law at Harvard and he was an institutionalist (for better and for worse). He's not the guy to end Habeas Corpus.
> China is working to force employees to grin correctly in order for office equipment to work.
I thought that was Canon, which is Japanese.
cheshirster - Tuesday, November 23, 2021 - link
It is no secret that having "Intel 10nm" being equivalent to "TSMC 7nm"There is zero evidence these are equal.
In fact even the latest 12 gen ADL on 10+++ aka ESF loses in power efficiency to Zen3 bult on N7+12FF
CBeddoe - Wednesday, December 8, 2021 - link
One of Intel's main issues is they are trying to push transistor density beyond the capability of the manufacturing process.They are being hyper aggressive with their designs and can't back it up with their manufacturing capability.
What that wiki chip transistor density comparison shows is they aren't changing the aggressive nature of their designs which likely means they won't be achieving high enough yields to meet targets and they might continue to miss their manufacturing roadmaps.