[HN Gopher] Intel tapes out chips on 1.8nm and 2nm production nodes
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Intel tapes out chips on 1.8nm and 2nm production nodes
Author : cainxinth
Score : 100 points
Date : 2023-03-08 13:01 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.tomshardware.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.tomshardware.com)
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| Would be great to get more competition from Intel in the fab
| space.
|
| Would also be great if intel would stay in the GPU race as a
| third player to put some pressure to AMD and Nvidia.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| > Would also be great if intel would stay in the GPU race as a
| third player to put some pressure to AMD and Nvidia.
|
| Are they not?
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| Their discrete GPU business has had loses over 3.5 Billions
| so far and it will likely keep loosing money for the near
| future since they aren't competitive yet and the next gen,
| Battlemage is not planned till 2024 the earliest.
|
| Their ability to support the losses of the GPU division to
| keep them in the race for the long run will depend on the
| other businesses making bank to compensate.
|
| Are they making bank? If not, they might axe the GPU
| division.
| LegitShady wrote:
| other perspective - in the long run, intel can't afford to
| axe the gpu division, because there's so much potential in
| that space where x86 and its new generations is
| increasingly getting bigger competition from arm based
| designs.
|
| Intel basically has to get gpus right, eventually. AMD is
| already doing it. Apple is already doing it, for their
| purposes. Intel has to catch up.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> intel can't afford to axe the gpu division, because
| there's so much potential in that space_
|
| Haha, that's adorable when you consider how many things
| with potential Intel has either axed, sold off, or
| abandoned over the years. - ARM mobile
| chips (StrongARM) - Mobile modems (now
| belonging to Apple) - Compute stick
| - Itanium - The Edison and Curie -
| IoT Gateway - Xeon Phy - Movidius
| VPUs haven't been axed but they don't seem to be getting
| developed further - Recon smart glasses
| viewtransform wrote:
| Don't forget the Intel purchase of McAfee software for
| $7.5B
| sogen wrote:
| > ARM
|
| Oh what could have been
| thunderbird120 wrote:
| None of those were core to Intel's business in the way
| GPUs are likely going to be going forward. The closer
| integration of CPUs and GPUs is an industry wide trend
| with Apple, Nvidia, AMD, and Intel all trying to
| eliminate the need to go off-chip for as much as
| possible. Things can be dramatically faster and more
| efficient across both consumer and server workloads if
| everything is just part of the same actual chip and you
| don't have to go out and use things which are plugged
| into the motherboard. Making that work is a lot easier if
| you have both your own CPU and GPU architectures. Apple
| has both in the M1, Nvidia is pairing ARM cores with its
| GPUs, AMD obviously makes both, and Intel is trying to
| get in on the game. They recognize that having their own
| GPU designs are going to be very important to both their
| consumer and HPC products going forward, especially as
| use-cases which rely on GPU or GPU-like acceleration (AI
| stuff) proliferate. Having competitive GPU designs is
| critical to their future competitiveness.
| mepian wrote:
| Intel actually spent too much effort on the Itanium, it
| was stillborn. The Xeon Phi was just the product name of
| the Larrabee without the display output parts, and the
| Larrabee was demoted to the Xeon Phi BECAUSE it didn't
| have enough potential to compete with the discrete GPUs
| from Nvidia and AMD. The current attempt at discrete GPUs
| is more promising.
| elihu wrote:
| Also, they helped develop Infiniband before dropping out.
| Much later they got back into the Infiniband business by
| buying QLogic, and from there developed Omnipath which
| they eventually gave up on, spinning the product line off
| as a separate company, Cornelis Networks.
|
| Some others: Realsense, Optane, and they sold their NAND
| busisess to SK Hynix.
| 7speter wrote:
| They went into this knowing they'd spend billions before
| making money. Its taken almost a decade of development and
| Alchemist is out on the market and the drivers continue to
| improve. Intel's a big company with 28 billion in cash on
| hand, I don't see them giving up in this space when AI/ML
| is becoming a burgeoning cash cow.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> They went into this knowing they'd spend billions
| before making money._
|
| They went into this during the covid and crypto driven
| GPU scalpocalipse when everything that could render
| triangles would sell for whatever sticker price you put
| on it but ended up launching right after the bubble bust.
| Very unfortunate timing. Now their products need to
| actually be competitive.
| 7speter wrote:
| Intel didn't just jump into the gpu market because of the
| 2020 mining craze. It takes much longer to develop these
| products. They hired Raja Koduri in 2017:
|
| https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/11/intel-poaches-
| amds-t...
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> They hired Raja Koduri in 2017_
|
| Ah yes, the person who led the development of the least
| successful GPUs in Radeon's history. Intel looked at his
| achievements and thought "that's the rockstar we need".
| ksec wrote:
| Thank God I find another person on HN with similar views
| on Intel's GPU and Raja.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| But I wouldn't hesitate to buy one if it's the right card
| for your needs. I'm likely going to. Even if they axe the
| discrete cards the tech will make it into CPU's and SOC's
| so driver support will continue.
|
| And of course their Linux support is open source and top
| notch.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| Yeah, as many other things as I dislike about intel, I
| give them some grace for how well they support their GPUs
| on linux. If I could only figure out how to get flux.jl
| to work with oneapi.jl
| helf wrote:
| I'm loving my A770. Absolutely zero issues with it and
| it's handling raytracing and all with aplomb.
| smcl wrote:
| I recall seeing some issues with performance on some
| older games - do you know if this is still the case, or
| did you not try it? I'm not in the market for a graphics
| card at the moment, but if there's another competitive
| company in the space when I am that would be excellent.
| propter_hoc wrote:
| Nice seeing angstroms used in real life!
| Havoc wrote:
| Can't wait to see negative Nanometers
| linuxftw wrote:
| High voltage anti-electrons that produce power rather than
| consume it while we're at it.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Exciting news. 1.8nm in late 2024 is quite soon.
|
| Intel to Apple: If you can't accept me at my worst you don't
| deserve me at my best.
| Someone wrote:
| Intel Foundry Services
| (https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/foundry/intel-
| foundr...) needs customers.
|
| We'll see whether they turn down Apple when it offers to buy
| stuff worth billions.
|
| Also: how large are Intel's nanometers, compared to those of
| the competition? I wouldn't know.
| tambourine_man wrote:
| I know you're kidding but this is capitalism, not a spouse
| relationship.
|
| If they pay, they're always welcome.
|
| Pat even said they wanted Apple's business back in an
| interview.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Of course. If Apple brings the money Intel will gladly fab
| their chips.
| tambourine_man wrote:
| It wasn't so obvious a few years ago. You couldn't have
| Intel fab your design for any price. x86 was as strategic
| for them as their fabing expertise.
|
| Now it's a different story.
| BeetleB wrote:
| Not many people are aware, but for a while Intel was
| manufacturing parts for the iPhone. They made no money out
| of it - Apple demanded too low a price.
| tambourine_man wrote:
| I don't think they did. Apple made an offer and they
| refused. One of Intel's worse mistakes.
| BeetleB wrote:
| https://www.wired.com/2016/09/oh-hey-intels-iphone-now/
| daneel_w wrote:
| _> "Intel to Apple: If you can't accept me at my worst you
| don't deserve me at my best."_
|
| Thank heavens for that. Good riddance.
| counttheforks wrote:
| Yeah, I can't imagine wanting to work with Apple.
| daneel_w wrote:
| Me neither, with all those hundreds of millions of devices
| sold annually.
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| Outbidding every other company for the fab.. it's truly a
| nightmare
| Tagbert wrote:
| Looked at from the fab's viewpoint, that is just selling
| their capacity to the highest paying customer. Seems
| pretty much standard business practice. Nothing
| nefarious.
| mdasen wrote:
| Intel did say that they were hoping to win Apple's business
| back (https://www.macrumors.com/2021/10/17/intel-hopes-to-win-
| back...). I doubt that Apple will go back to x64 architecture,
| but Intel is offering to work as a third-party foundry for
| others' chips and Apple is willing to pay a ton more than most
| companies (probably including Intel's own internal accounting)
| for the latest fabrication processes.
|
| If Apple is willing to pay such that the margin on Apple's
| business is better than the margin on Intel's own chips, I
| don't think Intel is going to be vindictive. In fact, Apple
| choosing Intel for their fabrication would probably be the best
| thing for Intel's fabrication business. Not only can Apple pay
| lots of money in advance, it would signal to the industry that
| Intel's fabrication process is something they should all be
| paying attention to. Apple tends to be very risk-averse with
| their supply chain and Apple is known as the company that pays
| for the best fabrication. If they move to Intel's fabrication,
| they've done a lot of due diligence in that process. Yes, Intel
| could offer a good deal to Apple to get them to move so some of
| it might be marketing - but that's exactly what Intel could use
| for its third-party fab business.
|
| I doubt that Intel will hold a grudge. It would be way more
| valuable to Intel to win Apple's business. Heck, TSMC is on the
| cutting edge today in part because Apple will commit so much
| money. If Intel can win Apple's business, they can remove a lot
| of the wind behind TSMC's sails. Yes, TSMC will still be a
| great company, but Apple's willingness to pay premium prices
| definitely helps TSMC. They know that investing in new,
| expensive processes will be paid back by Apple. If TSMC has to
| rely on Qualcomm and MediaTek (who want to wait for nodes to
| become cheaper), it's likely that they won't have the same
| purchasing for their latest nodes leading them to slow down
| their progress a bit. If TSMC's progress slows, that gives
| Intel so many benefits. All those ARM datacenter processors
| that people might move to? Not if TSMC's progress slows and
| Intel gains and keeps a sizable advantage on fabrication.
|
| If Intel can snag Apple away from TSMC, it will probably be the
| best thing Intel could do for itself.
| eganist wrote:
| Edit: I was going only off the headline, never opened the
| article. original comment below.
|
| ---
|
| Somewhat surprised we're not measuring in Angstroms yet.
|
| 18 and 20 angstroms respectively. Might not be a SI unit but it's
| still metric and gets rid of that pesky decimal. Especially since
| a silicon atom is 2 Angstroms, it seems like the right unit.
| kirab wrote:
| Did you read the article? It's literally what Intel is doing.
| taspeotis wrote:
| Did you read the HN Guidelines [1]? It's literally saying not
| to do what you did:
|
| > Please don't comment on whether someone read an article.
| "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be
| shortened to "The article mentions that".
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| eganist wrote:
| I didn't. I was going off the comments and headline. Thanks
| for the call-out, it's well deserved.
| kilgnad wrote:
| How does Intel China coexist with Intel USA without proprietary
| information leaking out?
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Doesn't Intel only produce memory in China, and is in the
| process of moving all of that production to SK?
| elihu wrote:
| Strict export controls on information. People from countries
| that are subject to export controls aren't allowed to see
| certain things or work on certain projects.
|
| I'm not sure how big a presence Intel has in China these days,
| but my impression is that it's small and it shrunk quite a bit
| when Intel got out of the NAND memory business.
| kilgnad wrote:
| I'm curious how this is enforced within the company
| ecosystem. Seems that it can easily be violated.
| williamDafoe wrote:
| This article about Intel candy canes and unicorns and rainbows
| looks like simply a large hit of cocaine to keep their bloodied
| investors hopes' up!
|
| To quote Newt from alien 2, "Ripley, it won't make a difference!"
| because SRAM is NOT scaling down!
|
| https://fuse.wikichip.org/news/7343/iedm-2022-did-we-just-wi...
| ddren wrote:
| Isn't this problem solved with a chiplet design like AMD does?
| Just manufacture the SRAM using an older and cheaper node and
| keep the logic in the most advanced node.
| helf wrote:
| And? Just because one aspect isn't scaling well doesn't mean
| the rest being scaled is pointless.
|
| Besides the fact they will _probably_ figure out a way to
| either replace sram with something else that does scale better
| or they will figure out novel techniques to scale sram.
| nerpderp82 wrote:
| HBM is scaling up!
| timmg wrote:
| This seems so good (almost too good) that I wonder if they are
| being realistic. It _seems_ like Intel has recently been missing
| all their projected timelines.
|
| Considering they are talking about full-on manufacturing in about
| a year, they should be pretty far along. But I can't help being a
| little worried that it will happen.
| ac29 wrote:
| > Considering they are talking about full-on manufacturing in
| about a year, they should be pretty far along
|
| When they say "manufacturing ready" in 2024, that doesnt mean
| you will be able to purchase anything built on those nodes next
| year. Intel 4 was manufacturing ready last year, but final
| chips being available isnt expected until the end of this year
| (and availability of final chips is usually months before you
| can buy, for example, a laptop with one in it).
| wmf wrote:
| If these milestones aren't verifiable maybe we shouldn't be
| reporting and commenting on them.
| ac29 wrote:
| Its of course not possible to know what will happen in the
| future, but the particular topic this article is about was
| announced by Intel during their Q322 earnings release:
|
| "Intel 20A, 18A: First test chips have taped out"
|
| Quote from page 5 of the Earnings Presentation here:
| https://www.intc.com/news-events/ir-
| calendar/detail/20221027...
| VHRanger wrote:
| To be fair, they started missing all the timelines after Brian
| Krzanich succesfully executed his political coup as CEO of the
| company.
|
| It's hard to overstate how toxic he's been to the company.
| rjzzleep wrote:
| Is there context to this claim? If so, can you share it?
| jacquesm wrote:
| The performance of Intel during the five years that he ran
| it is plenty of context, no? 2013 is a pretty clear
| inflection point for Intel and that was the year that he
| became CEO.
| williamDafoe wrote:
| I arrived at Google search in 2013 and soon they were
| complaining about how much Intel was "Slacking" and how
| badly they needed an alternate supplier for data center
| chips.
|
| I followed Chromebook and laptop iGPU 3D performance very
| carefully from 2013-2019. Did you know Intel made ZERO
| iGPU performance improvements in this time period? The
| 2013 IRIS Pro 5200 and Haswell (4000 series) were a major
| highpoint for FIVE years. The 5000 Through 8000 Intel
| core cpus were highly stagnant and forgettable! Mostly
| they were slacking off with new designs like the Ynnn
| "thermal throttlemaker" Such chips ran fast for 3 secs
| then quit - completely! From 2013-2019 their marketing
| pinheads sure had a field day making up new names for the
| same old shit iGPUs year after year after year!
|
| I have seen NO impact from Pat Gelsinger so far! Almost-
| competitive CPU's using 250% of the power of Ryzen 7000?
| Are you kidding us, Pat?
|
| Kryzanich laid off a huge number of CPU architects in
| 2014 so they could have a much bigger and of course -
| more important marketing department! Who needs these
| useless digital designers when all they can do is reduce
| the mips per watt? I mean who cares about that? And while
| we're at it why not staff the boardroom of the world's
| greatest physics company with community college marketing
| people? Because, why not?
|
| I don't see Apple returning to use the Intel
| i9-thighburner CPUs anytime soon!
| jacquesm wrote:
| What's interesting is if you put all of that next to the
| stock price. The disconnect is so weird.
| bfrog wrote:
| Short term gains traded for long term losses is a pretty
| standard CEO playbook move. Make yours then bail with a
| golden parachute as the plane crashes.
| dyingkneepad wrote:
| > from 2013-2019. Did you know Intel made ZERO iGPU
| performance improvements in this time period?
|
| This is absolutely not true at all. Haswell was a major
| perf-per-watt improvement compared to previous Ivy
| Bridge. Broadwell and then Skylake both had significant
| improvements over their successors, not only in
| performance but also in power consumption and by adding
| necessary GPU tech to them. Then both Ice Lake and Tiger
| Lake had near 2x improvements in some industry standard
| benchmarks (e.g., Manhattan).
|
| The difference between Intel's 2019 and 2013 integrated
| GPUs is much bigger than the difference between their
| 2019 and 2013 processors.
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| Gelsinger's only been there 2 years. You don't expect a
| major turn-around for roughly 5 (at the least) since it
| takes a pretty long time to go from research node to
| production.
| BeetleB wrote:
| Not sure what he's referring to, but during his tenure he
| decided to "shake things up" and laid people off almost-
| Elon-Musk-style. He basically had a target in terms of
| Dollars, and he asked HR to come up with metrics to hit the
| target. They laid off everyone who had had a bad review the
| prior year. But that wasn't enough to hit the target, so
| they laid off everyone who had an average performance
| review, but low bonuses. But that didn't hit the target, so
| they offered voluntary severance packages to those who had
| not had a promotion more than N years. That, along with
| encouraging early retirement let them hit the target.
|
| The layoffs happened all at once - not in phases. You had
| cases where a manager was suddenly told to inform his
| report that he is being laid off, only to then be told that
| the manager himself is being laid off.
|
| As you can imagine, any time someone does a blunt top down
| approach like this, you lose a lot of critical people with
| no one in the team knowledgeable to take over.
|
| No one saw it coming. Managers were not told in advance.
| klyrs wrote:
| Note that the product of "tape-out" is just data. That data is
| then used to produce masks, which are then used in
| photolithography to define features on a chip.
|
| Now, I could go off and tape out some test circuits for a 1pm
| process. That doesn't mean I'm making _any_ progress towards
| bringing a 1pm fab node to reality.
| dougmwne wrote:
| Intel has been troubled for about 10 years now. The cracks
| started showing in 2013 when they delayed the 14nm process for
| about a year, then widened when they couldn't get 10nm into
| production for several years. At this point we are allowed to be
| a little skeptical when they tell us they are going to regain the
| crown.
| mbgerring wrote:
| People were skeptical of Apple for a long time after Steve Jobs
| came back, too.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Intels issue is that it's competing on technology. Jobs never
| really tried to compete on technology. Apple competed on user
| experience and its "unfair advantage" was vertical
| integration.
|
| Apple didn't become competitive on a technological basis
| until 2012 with the iPhone 5s.
|
| What's Intel's "unfair advantage".
| ijidak wrote:
| Wait, isn't Intel vertically integrated exactly like Apple?
| They own design and foundry. TSMC is mostly foundry. AMD is
| mostly design.
|
| Right now, vertical integration is a weakness for Intel --
| just as it was for Apple during the Jobs interregnum and
| the beginning of his return. (e.g. the pre-Apple-on-Intel
| silicon years.)
|
| But the situation could quickly change and vertical
| integration could become an advantage again for Intel.
|
| Especially in a "challenging" geopolitical environment.
| ozarker wrote:
| I definitely agree with you. Though AMD's comeback with Ryzen
| really surprised me and I don't think other companies can't
| replicate comebacks like that.
|
| After the Bulldozer fiasco who would think AMD would be where
| they are today?
| nordsieck wrote:
| > After the Bulldozer fiasco who would think AMD would be
| where they are today?
|
| I mean... for people who remember AMD's original breakthrough
| with the Athlon, it's not super surprising.
|
| Although it feels a bit like a problem with Intel as well. I
| think, too much time wearing the crown can be bad for a
| company. Although some companies don't seem to suffer from
| that problem - Nvidia and TSMC being 2 pretty good examples.
| snovv_crash wrote:
| TSMC hasn't been on top nearly as long as Intel was.
|
| NVidia indeed seems an outlier, although arguably the GPU
| division of AMD hasn't had the same overhaul that the CPU
| side had.
| mepian wrote:
| Yeah, the last significant stumble of Nvidia I can
| remember is the GeForce FX (aka GeForce 5) series being
| notably inferior to the ATI R300 series.
| nerpderp82 wrote:
| I do, Bulldozer was a great lesson on how to run a great
| team to make a mediocre product because you don't have the
| right feedback in place. When you have silicon is not the
| time to find out you perform poorly.
| silisili wrote:
| A bit apples and oranges, isn't it? Intel has been having
| trouble fabbing. AMD was having trouble designing. Keller et
| al designed a hell of a chip with Ryzen, then threw it to
| TSMC to produce. Intel probably could have done the same, but
| for the sake of having a competitive home grown fab, I'm glad
| they didn't.
| ac29 wrote:
| AMD also had trouble fabbing. They didnt spin out their
| fabs until 2009 and continued to use manufacturing from the
| spun out entity (Global Foundries) for many years after
| that despite their capabilities being behind Intel and
| TSMC. Ryzen manufacturing didnt move to TSMC until 2019
| with Zen 2.
| Vt71fcAqt7 wrote:
| >I don't think other companies can't replicate comebacks like
| that.
|
| AMD didn't really _do_ so much. It was TSMC that saved them.
| nl wrote:
| This isn't really true. Zen was built for years at Global
| Foundries on 14nm and out performed Intel at the time.
|
| Moving to TSMC definitely helped later, but it was the
| original Zen architecture that put them back in the game.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_(first_generation)
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| Couldn't be a more false statement.
|
| AMD's success was also due to their new Zen architecture
| and move to chiplets. TSMC alone wouln't have been enough
| to save them if their architecture would have sucked.
| Vt71fcAqt7 wrote:
| Right. It was just a coincidence that they became
| competitive only after selling glofo and moving to TSMC.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| Please get your facts straight. Zen architecture and
| their move to chaplets were also big factors of their
| success.
|
| AMD still used Glo-Fo for the first gen Ryzens and still
| do for the I/O die in some chiplets because it's cost
| competitive.
|
| It they would have just ported their failed Bulldozer
| architecture to TSMC, that wouldn't have helped them at
| all.
|
| Your original claim that "AMD didn't do much" and it was
| "TSMC that saved them" is a blatantly false. You are
| grossly misinformed if you believe that.
| [deleted]
| NovaDudely wrote:
| For about 20 years I had the mantra of "Don't bet against
| Intel". A good example of this was in the early 90's when all
| the hype from the Apple fans about PowerPC and the end of x86
| by the year 2000. The hype was real but Intel was just quietly
| saying "we have a road map and we will go well beyond what
| people expect" and then Intel did it - while PPC slowly faded
| away (for various reasons).
|
| Everytime someone predicted the end of Intel - they just kept
| knocking out of the park when least expected. Thinking going
| from Pentuim 4 Prescott to Intel Core series for instance. Side
| note - At least the Prescott was vaguely ambitious!
|
| But the last decade has not been great for Intel. That
| engineering prowess has faded a little. Their new GPU stuff is
| neat and very forward thinking but it is still a wait and see
| on that. But when it comes to their other elements, it feels
| like they have just been doing the same thing with very minor
| tweaks for far too long now.
|
| ---
|
| Another aside, it is same theoretical greatness doesn't always
| translate to market greatness. If it worked like that we would
| probably all be using PowerPC machines in some degree. A
| wonderful ISA!
| tiffanyh wrote:
| Since "nm" is meaningless these days, what's the transistor
| count/mm2 of this 1.8nm Intel node?
|
| As reference: TSMC 3nm is ~290 million transistors/mm2 (MTr/mm2).
| IBM TSMC Intel Samsung 22nm
| 16.50 16nm/14nm 28.88 44.67 33.32 10nm
| 52.51 100.76 51.82 7nm 91.20 237.18
| 95.08 5nm 171.30 3nm
| 292.21 2nm 333.33
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27063034
|
| https://www.techradar.com/news/ibm-unveils-worlds-first-2nm-...
| hardware2win wrote:
| 240m on 7nm node vs 290 on 3nm? Oo
| sct202 wrote:
| Intel renamed their nodes to align better to the foundries.
| 10nm is now Intel 7, 7nm is now Intel 4, which would broadly
| look more aligned in that table if it were updated.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| If it's meaningless then why does Apple spend a shitload of
| money on it? While the nm number doesn't translate to a feature
| anymore, the nm number is not meaningless. It is more an
| estimate of behavior. They behave as 2nm transistors would
| behave in terms of spec.
| teawrecks wrote:
| > They behave as 2nm transistors would behave in terms of
| spec.
|
| And how do 2nm transistors behave?
| babypuncher wrote:
| TSMC's 3nm process is still more dense than their 5nm
| process, just not by as much as the name would suggest. The
| name is meaningless because it no longer gives you an
| accurate idea of the average feature size.
| tiffanyh wrote:
| Because TSMC is the fab that can mass produce today the
| highest density transistor count.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| The customer doesn't care about density they care about
| performance. If you could somehow build a magical low
| density but performant chip that's what people would buy.
| ZoomerCretin wrote:
| Density = bigger cache, more cores.
| bpye wrote:
| Is that true? Density also means your chips are smaller
| which means you're getting more parts on a wafer (though
| yield is important there).
| SilverBirch wrote:
| This is correct from a logical point of view but not a
| practical point of view. With a few major exceptions
| transistors basically are one shape and do one thing. So
| if you can scale the process node you scale the density,
| if you scale the density you scale the performance. It's
| not like 1 transistor could you give you 0.01 flops and
| another could give you 0.02 flops, a transistor does 1
| thing and it works or doesn't (with a few caveats), and
| the second order effects don't really overcome that.
| marricks wrote:
| I feel like many threads said Apple's main advantage was
| process.
|
| So with a better process Apple and mobile chips can become even
| more power efficient than intel chips?
|
| Hard to piece this info together with that.
| Jensson wrote:
| Intel never shipped any 7nm, they stayed on their 10nm which
| is as you can see far behind the 5nm TSMC node that Apple
| used. So Apple benefiting from a far superior process is
| real.
| bschne wrote:
| Am I reading this correctly that at 7nm intel had >2x the
| transistor density of TSMC and their 7nm node is still ahead of
| TSMCs 5nm node on that measure? That's not what I'd have
| expected given everything one hears abt. intel --- have they
| fallen off mainly by not progressing beyond that node, or along
| other dimensions?
| ajross wrote:
| They have fallen off, but not by nearly as much as the node
| names indicate. TSMC has been "cheating" with their node
| designations for years (c.f. 3nm is not remotely a
| (5/3)^2==2.8x increase in density vs. 5nm, it's more like
| 30-50% denser), where Intel stuck with the notionally numeric
| scales for longer.
|
| But Intel has given up now too, the "7nm" line in that chart
| is actually showing the process they're marketing as "Intel
| 4" (denoting that it sits roughly where a "4nm" process would
| vs. their competitors).
| giantrobot wrote:
| The Athlon XP naming approach. Intel following AMD again!
| /s
| mepian wrote:
| Nitpick: this practice actually began way before the
| Athlon XP, with the Am5x86:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performance_Rating
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| Isn't what Intel now sells as "7" a rebranded 10nm process
| and actual 7nm which you're referring to does not yet exist
| commercially?
| monocasa wrote:
| Intel 7nm on that chart is what has been rebranded Intel 4,
| ie the process that still isn't in high volume production.
| Meanwhile TSMC is in high volume for N3 (the next iPhone
| chips are currently using up that capacity).
| thunderbird120 wrote:
| Even the density figures are mostly lies. For example TSMCs N5
| is closer to 134MTr/mm2 in the real world[1]. It can also
| depend on the chip design itself. Some designs may scale better
| than others because not all transistors get the same density
| improvement from new nodes. Ultimately simple metrics for
| predicting performance are sort of breaking down at the scale
| these chips are currently being manufactured at. For example,
| their TSMCs N3 increases transistor density for logic
| transistors but SRAM sees no improvement over N5[2].
|
| [1]https://www.angstronomics.com/p/the-truth-of-tsmc-5nm
|
| [2]https://www.tomshardware.com/news/no-sram-scaling-implies-
| on...
| eigenform wrote:
| Is this some image of how the devices you'd build with SRAM
| (ie. big uniform array of bitcells) are very regular? I feel
| like logic being not-as-uniform makes the talk about density
| scaling different, but I can't exactly articulate how
| trsohmers wrote:
| It's in large part due to the wire density... a 6T SRAM bit
| cell by itself could scale transistor density well, but the
| word lines and bit lines are the limiters as they typically
| have to go up 4 metal layers. Also, each read/write port
| you add to the SRAM macro increases the size exponentially
| rather than the linear scaling of the bit cells.
| eigenform wrote:
| I see! Thanks for finishing the thought!
| hummus_bae wrote:
| [dead]
| spiffytech wrote:
| What does nm measure these days? I hear it's just a marketing
| term at this point, but "1.8" seems like a specific enough
| number that it must be measuring _something_.
| ddulaney wrote:
| Nothing anymore.
|
| Originally it measured a specific dimension on the
| transistor. Then transistors started shrinking non-uniformly,
| so they adjusted it -- "how big the transistors _would_ be at
| equivalent density if they had shrunk evenly ". That's an
| easy thing to play with though, and so you see more and more
| departures from reality.
| babypuncher wrote:
| Minimum feature size.
|
| The problem is that we've reached a point where not all
| features scale down evenly. So while some transistors might
| be 2 nm on a new process, others are largely unchanged from 3
| or 5 nm.
|
| How much you get out of a new process is now highly dependent
| on how you design your chip and what you want it to do.
|
| This is why AMD is using multiple processes in a single CPU
| package these days. Some elements of their processors get
| little or no benefit from smaller nodes, so it's cheaper to
| make them on an older node.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| It's like RHA on tank armor.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I can't decide if that's an excellent analogy or a terrible
| one. On the one hand it's very true, on the other hand I
| suspect the fraction of HN readers who are familiar with
| tank armor is fairly small.
|
| For those not familiar, RHA is the type of armor used circa
| world-war II. Armor has gotten better on a per-inch-
| thickness with improved technology. Modern tanks (and
| modern anti-tank munitions) are often rated as to the
| equivalent thickness of RHA protection (or penetration)
| they provide.
|
| For example, Explosive Reactive Armor (ERA) can have a very
| high RHA rating if you use a traditional HEAT (High-
| Explosive Anti-Tank) round as your benchmark, but a tandem
| HEAT round can almost completely eliminate the per-
| thickness protection advantage that ERA offers. So a tandem
| HEAT round might have a lower RHA penetration rating than a
| traditional HEAT round, yet be more effective against an
| ERA with a very high RHA rating.
|
| So, if you have a spiffy new tandem HEAT round, and want to
| fake^H^H^H^H present good numbers, you find the highest RHA
| rated ERA armor that it can penetrate and claim that as the
| RHA rating of your projectile. Even though it might not be
| able to penetrate that many inches of actual RHA, or
| possibly even modern composite armor with such an RHA
| rating.
| zamnos wrote:
| took me a second to find the meaning of RHA
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolled_homogeneous_armour
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