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Intel Stockpiling 10nm Chips

arstechnica.com

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Re: Intel Stockpiling 10nm Chips

#81

Post by temptemptemp111 »

zitterbewegung wrote: post #52
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?

Looking at ARM they have the Big little architecture (little processors for more efficient energy usage and big processors for when you need the performance). Putting more emphasis on less power hungry ways to get similar performance or otherwise. Also putting more specialized parts like GPUs, FPGAs, ML accelerators either near or on the die. the A12 is a good example of this. Also, Intel's buyout of Xilinx shows tha…

I don't think they'll get far with QC... But I want to see GPU+CPU+Memory all compressed together under one heatsink ASAP. Reducing RAM by an order of magnitude in latency could be one of the next jumps.

Re: Intel Stockpiling 10nm Chips

#82

Post by mrtweetyhack »

dsr_ wrote: 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... )

ever is a long time. I mean, given "ever", I could build 10nm chips.

Re: Intel Stockpiling 10nm Chips

#83

Post by etaioinshrdlu »

zitterbewegung wrote: post #52
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?

Looking at ARM they have the Big little architecture (little processors for more efficient energy usage and big processors for when you need the performance). Putting more emphasis on less power hungry ways to get similar performance or otherwise. Also putting more specialized parts like GPUs, FPGAs, ML accelerators either near or on the die. the A12 is a good example of this. Also, Intel's buyout of Xilinx shows tha…

I bet CPUs, GPUs, FPGAs, modems, DRAM, flash, optane-like things will all end up on the same die eventually.

Granted some processes are better at making some types of devices ... but maybe we'll see more one-size-fits all type chips in the future.

Now that I write this it seems like we are already most of the way there.

Re: Intel Stockpiling 10nm Chips

#84

Post by 0xcde4c3db »

kristianp wrote: post #80
CoolGuySteve wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The leaked roadmap is not from SemiAccurate though, it's from here: https://tweakers.net/nieuws/151984/roadmap-toont-dat-intel-i... If you had read the SemiAccurate article you would know that.

According to that image,10nm isn't due until 2Q 2021, in Tiger Lake and Rocket Lake U series and Y series.

Sure, it's due in 2021 now. At this point, Intel's 10nm has been two years away for about 5 years.

Re: Intel Stockpiling 10nm Chips

#85

Post by ianai »

ethbro wrote: post #66
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?

> Is there a [post-Moore] plan, or is it an existential wall? Fixed function hardware and more emphasis on efficient software. We've had decades of software laziness, because anything less than an order of magnitude performance improvement on the software side was best shipped unoptimized, earlier, and just wait for hardware process shrinks. We'll likely get back to something like the 60s, before the mass-marketing o…

I’m still wondering whether gallium chips will ever make sense as replacement for silicon in cpus.

Re: Intel Stockpiling 10nm Chips

#86

Post by ianai »

jotm wrote: post #42
JohnFen wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually think along similar lines but at a higher level of abstraction. I think we'll have to start moving towards multiple complete computer systems, each with their own internal busses, memory, etc., that operate as a unified whole. A bit like massively parallel systems do.

Well hello there! I've been running 2 computers this way for years. Works very well for some stuff that supports multiple nodes, but unfortunately useless for most software. By far, the 1GbE link is the most limiting factor. Almost 15 years and we still don't have 10GbE as standard.

At that point I’d expect more like a shared bus with speeds similar to ram and large motherboards. But I don’t know how feasible that is.

Re: Intel Stockpiling 10nm Chips

#87

Post by steve_musk »

mjfl wrote: post #36
neltnerb wrote: 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.…

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

Might be fun to look back at this comment in 10 years

Re: Intel Stockpiling 10nm Chips

#88

Post by frankchn »

baybal2 wrote: post #24

Intel is very likely to miss holidays with 10nm. OEM manufacturers in South China, are screaming murder, and even ones who were Intel shops for decades like Weibu are jumping the ship. Intel is losing China big time. I'd say, a lot would've been fine even if Intel gave them existing 14nm chips, but since all 14nm capacity is gobbled by server chips, it's not gonna happen. I believe Intel is making a huge error by pri…

Xeons, even at wholesale prices, are probably much more profitable than laptop chips though.

Re: Intel Stockpiling 10nm Chips

#89

Post by reitzensteinm »

0xcde4c3db wrote: post #84
kristianp wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to that image,10nm isn't due until 2Q 2021, in Tiger Lake and Rocket Lake U series and Y series.

Sure, it's due in 2021 now . At this point, Intel's 10nm has been two years away for about 5 years.

I still remember pondering whether to delay the purchase of my Skylake laptop so I could play with AVX-512 on Cannonlake. That was two laptops ago...

Re: Intel Stockpiling 10nm Chips

#90

Post by chx »

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…

The turning point was Sandy Bridge, really and there's nothing to make it look like SB laptops will be unusable in two years. So yeah, we are there.

If you consider how far CPUs went in the ten years of Pentium 4 to Sandy Bridge vs Sandy Bridge to now... we certainly arrived to a plateu.

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