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Intel Stockpiling 10nm Chips

arstechnica.com

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Re: Intel Stockpiling 10nm Chips

#31

Post by whynotminot »

shrimp_emoji wrote: post #27
pault wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In 2010, you could've bought an Intel i7 980X for $1,000 (why would you? B-but still...) with six cores @ 3.33 GHz and easily OCed to 4 GHz. I think we're a year or two away before beefy, AAA games begin demanding 4 GHz minimum, and new CPUs barely offer over 4 GHz clocks as it is, so... we've already been there! CPU power's been flatlined, especially when you compare it to GPU power.

Frequency is not a great comparator for different generations of CPUs.

Your overall point is accurate, but your metric is not.

Re: Intel Stockpiling 10nm Chips

#32

Post by analognoise »

neltnerb wrote: post #11
apcragg wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 storag…

In CMOS the killer is that they consume power when switching (power ends up being a square of switching frequency). So if you switched. 10x, you'd have to somehow dissipate 100x the power.

Your core might be small, but the industrial-sized refrigerator needed to cool it suddenly isn't.

Re: Intel Stockpiling 10nm Chips

#33

Post by analognoise »

pault wrote: post #13
mjfl wrote: 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…

What's weird is that susceptibility to incident radiation has gone up tremendously. Cells minimize area, and exacerbate the problem. I'm wondering if computers will still need to be replaced regularly as a byproduct.

Re: Intel Stockpiling 10nm Chips

#34

Post by loeg »

whynotminot wrote: post #31
shrimp_emoji wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 2010, you could've bought an Intel i7 980X for $1,000 (why would you? B-but still...) with six cores @ 3.33 GHz and easily OCed to 4 GHz. I think we're a year or two away before beefy, AAA games begin demanding 4 GHz minimum, and new CPUs barely offer over 4 GHz clocks as it is, so... we've already been there! CPU power's been flatlined, especially when you compare it to GPU power.

Frequency is not a great comparator for different generations of CPUs. Your overall point is accurate, but your metric is not.

It's not even accurate to say CPU power has flatlined since Westmere. Instructions per cycle is significantly higher today than in 2010, so performance at the same nominal clock frequency is substantially better. Not to mention power efficiency gains since 2010.

Re: Intel Stockpiling 10nm Chips

#35

Post by keanebean86 »

whynotminot wrote: post #29
pault wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> not have to worry about upgrading it for 10 years (I think we're pretty close to this point already I think we're already there. Ivy Bridge machines from 2012 can still get the job done today if paired with a solid complement of RAM and an SSD. Graphics is really the only area where those older machines are starting to be a limfac, as their inability to drive the latest 4K+ displays is starting to be more of an iss…

My E6420 C2D from 2007 is still chugging away as a htpc. I had to go from 2 to 6GBs of ram 2 years ago but it's still plenty fast enough for video and web use. I tossed in a HD 6420 few years ago for video hardware acceleration.

Re: Intel Stockpiling 10nm Chips

#36

Post by mjfl »

neltnerb wrote: post #6
mjfl wrote: 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?

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.…

I feel like neural network accelerators are too small a market to replace their microprocessor business.

Re: Intel Stockpiling 10nm Chips

#37

Post by jdietrich »

shrimp_emoji wrote: post #27
pault wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In 2010, you could've bought an Intel i7 980X for $1,000 (why would you? B-but still...) with six cores @ 3.33 GHz and easily OCed to 4 GHz. I think we're a year or two away before beefy, AAA games begin demanding 4 GHz minimum, and new CPUs barely offer over 4 GHz clocks as it is, so... we've already been there! CPU power's been flatlined, especially when you compare it to GPU power.

An i5-9400 has the same number of cores, a lower base clock speed (2.9GHz) but is around 50% faster than the i7-980X. It also costs $180 and draws 75% less power.

CPU performance isn't increasing nearly as quickly as it used to, but it isn't stagnant. AMD's Zen 2 architecture looks incredibly promising. Credible leaks suggest a 16c/32t Ryzen 9 running at 4.3GHz base, with a 25% IPC improvement over the previous generation.

Re: Intel Stockpiling 10nm Chips

#38

Post by [deleted] »

neltnerb wrote: post #6
mjfl wrote: 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?

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.…

[deleted]

Re: Intel Stockpiling 10nm Chips

#39

Post by enraged_camel »

whynotminot wrote: post #29
pault wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> not have to worry about upgrading it for 10 years (I think we're pretty close to this point already I think we're already there. Ivy Bridge machines from 2012 can still get the job done today if paired with a solid complement of RAM and an SSD. Graphics is really the only area where those older machines are starting to be a limfac, as their inability to drive the latest 4K+ displays is starting to be more of an iss…

I upgraded my desktop PC from Sandy Bridge last year, and the only reason I did so was because I was upgrading some other components that required a motherboard update (which meant CPU chipset would no longer be compatible), so I said what the hell.

Otherwise, I was very happy with it in terms of performance.

Re: Intel Stockpiling 10nm Chips

#40

Post by vbezhenar »

sliken wrote: post #20
pault wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

New? Using epoxy to make batteries hard to replace and other tweaks to make other unreliable parts hard to replace. Popular recent choices are keyboards and backlights.

Not everyone uses Macbooks. There are plenty of laptops with easily replaceable batteries and sane keyboards. Not even talking about real computers, where you can replace everything without any tools.
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