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Intel Stockpiling 10nm Chips

arstechnica.com

11–20 of 131 posts

Re: Intel Stockpiling 10nm Chips

#11
post #9
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like they plan to shift to novel hybrid architectures, at least if things like Intel owning Altera mean anything. I'd expect them to be doing things like putting neural network accelerators down and the like. Or everyone has to make a dramatic leap to a new underlying computing physics, like the quantum dot transistor or the vacuum transistor [1] that lets them increase frequency or lower power consumption.…

A big problem with increasing the clock speed is that your processor still needs to wait for the DRAM to respond. Modern processors are crazy smart about prefetching, caching, and running instructions in parallel, but at some point Memory bandwidth and latency begin to dominate over CPU clock speed. Many players have started looking at puting multiple dies on the same substrate with high-speed interconnects to reduce…

Is it roughly accurate to say that if your computing area operates at 10x the speed, you can do 10 cores worth of computing work with one core? That would free up a lot of die area for other things, though I don't know how to guess how much that extra space would improve the other bits.

I'd kind of figure that such a technology would also speed up the RAM, but I suppose that's not true either if the underlying storage technology is too slow. But I know that's also an area of active research.

Re: Intel Stockpiling 10nm Chips

#12
post #8

Stockpiling chips so partners can test them later? If the point is to validate designs, wouldn't you want to do the testing before the stockpiling?

It's not so the partner can test/validate the cpu, it's so the partners can test/validate their designs using the cpu. i.e. It's hard to test/validate a laptop design if no CPUs exist that work with it.

But why build a laptop with that CPU if there’s none of it available?

Re: Intel Stockpiling 10nm Chips

#13
post #3

What are Intel and other semiconductors planning to pivot to when they can no longer reduce process size at a reasonable pace (i.e. now)? Is there a plan, or is it an existential wall?

My impression is that they know moore's gravy train is over and they're scrambling to figure out new tricks to allow them to sell a new generation of processors every year. Personally, while I'm a little disappointed that processors 20 years from now might not be 4+ orders of magnitude faster than the one I have now, I wouldn't mind being able to buy a computer and not have to worry about upgrading it for 10 years (I think we're pretty close to this point already).

Re: Intel Stockpiling 10nm Chips

#14

Stockpiling chips so partners can test them later? If the point is to validate designs, wouldn't you want to do the testing before the stockpiling?

More like they already tested them, and they're junk, but their stock already took a hit, and it couldn't handle a public failure of their 10nm process.

Guaranteed in 6 months they blame a warehouse HVAC system with destroying all the chips after the fact.

Re: Intel Stockpiling 10nm Chips

#15
post #2

Semiaccurate claims that this is entirely Intel marketing fluff, and that in reality Intel can't get 10nm yield up to useful levels, now or ever. (that's a tl;dr for https://www.semiaccurate.com/2019/04/25/leaked-roadmap-shows... )

Semiaccurate is anti-Intel, they are not a bias free source of information.

Re: Intel Stockpiling 10nm Chips

#16
post #3

What are Intel and other semiconductors planning to pivot to when they can no longer reduce process size at a reasonable pace (i.e. now)? Is there a plan, or is it an existential wall?

My first thought is that they should increase the number of cores in a CPU as much as possible. Having a single CPU with hundreds of cores would be really useful. Of course, they also have to make advances on cooling technology. The types of applications that I have in mind are rendering, AI, and gaming.

The types of games that would benefit greatly from such CPU are the ones that make heavy use of a Physics Engine.

Re: Intel Stockpiling 10nm Chips

#17
post #3

What are Intel and other semiconductors planning to pivot to when they can no longer reduce process size at a reasonable pace (i.e. now)? Is there a plan, or is it an existential wall?

My first thought is that they should increase the number of cores in a CPU as much as possible. Having a single CPU with hundreds of cores would be really useful. Of course, they also have to make advances on cooling technology. The types of applications that I have in mind are rendering, AI, and gaming. The types of games that would benefit greatly from such CPU are the ones that make heavy use of a Physics Engine.

  >> single CPU with hundreds of cores would be really useful
Not with the current memory bus. If your algorithm is written properly it's very likely already memory bound. Adding more cores is only going to worsen the performance in that case.

Re: Intel Stockpiling 10nm Chips

#18
post #2

Semiaccurate claims that this is entirely Intel marketing fluff, and that in reality Intel can't get 10nm yield up to useful levels, now or ever. (that's a tl;dr for https://www.semiaccurate.com/2019/04/25/leaked-roadmap-shows... )

My understanding is that Intel is doing OK with smaller die size 10nm (Cannon Lake-U / Ice Lake-U) for Ultrabooks. But for bigger dies such as HEDT or server CPUs, the Ice Lake SP is still pretty much in the air with Intel's vague timeline of "sooner than expected end of 2020" claim.

Re: Intel Stockpiling 10nm Chips

#19
post #15
post #2

Semiaccurate claims that this is entirely Intel marketing fluff, and that in reality Intel can't get 10nm yield up to useful levels, now or ever. (that's a tl;dr for https://www.semiaccurate.com/2019/04/25/leaked-roadmap-shows... )

Semiaccurate is anti-Intel, they are not a bias free source of information.

That may or may not be, but what certainly is true is that Intel's public messaging about 10nm production has been much less accurate than that of SemiAccurate.

Re: Intel Stockpiling 10nm Chips

#20
post #13
post #3

What are Intel and other semiconductors planning to pivot to when they can no longer reduce process size at a reasonable pace (i.e. now)? Is there a plan, or is it an existential wall?

My impression is that they know moore's gravy train is over and they're scrambling to figure out new tricks to allow them to sell a new generation of processors every year. Personally, while I'm a little disappointed that processors 20 years from now might not be 4+ orders of magnitude faster than the one I have now, I wouldn't mind being able to buy a computer and not have to worry about upgrading it for 10 years (I…

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