Intel Stockpiling 10nm Chips • Hacker News Board

Re: Intel Stockpiling 10nm Chips

#101

Post by FrozenVoid » Sun, Apr 28, 2019, 4:33 AM UTC

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?

1. better integrated graphics.

2. better cache hierarchy, larger/faster cache. (Cache misses and various cache access penalties reduced)

3. faster/low-latency ram access, probably new interconnects to minimize latency.

4. integrated sound/network chips and other peripherals. (essentially the path to System on the Chip)

5. more vector extensions and specialized instructions. (machine learning, graphics, high-precision floats,etc)

6. more secure processors and mitigations for future exploits. (e.g. this is 2020 processors, but our 2021 processor is immune to that)

Re: Intel Stockpiling 10nm Chips

#102

Post by Dylan16807 » Sun, Apr 28, 2019, 5:09 AM UTC

sliken wrote: post #93

Dylan16807 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I don't know what's up with your model, but I can get a replacement keyboard for my seven year old laptop for $25.

15" laptops that are 2" thick are largely easy to work on and get replacement parts. However the popular "ultra" books and similar have to integrate more heavily to get close to 1". Even fans become hard to replace. Often there's no dimms (so you can't replace or add ram), even storage can be on the motherboard. They are close to disposable unfortunately.

I've had multiple ultrabooks too, measurably under an inch, and their keyboards were both thin and also easily popped out. It's disappointing to hear that many manufacturers are doing it differently.

Re: Intel Stockpiling 10nm Chips

#103

Post by shaklee3 » Sun, Apr 28, 2019, 5:11 AM UTC

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.

What does this mean? Why can't you use 10GbE?

Re: Intel Stockpiling 10nm Chips

#104

Post by cozzyd » Sun, Apr 28, 2019, 5:58 AM UTC

jniedrauer wrote: post #76

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…

> 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). I used an i5-2500k for 7 years. Only retired it because the rest of the computer was falling apart and I had already had too many computers. I think that a CPU built in $CURRENT_YEAR will be completely usable in 10 years.

Still using one of those on my home desktop. It's fine (just had to reapply thermal paste once or twice).

Re: Intel Stockpiling 10nm Chips

#105

Post by neltnerb » Sun, Apr 28, 2019, 6:13 AM UTC

analognoise wrote: post #32

neltnerb wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My question had the assumption of something akin to vacuum transistors that allow high frequencies without the heat generation, but yes, I agree that the current technology won't scale by 10x without a generational shift in underlying approach away from MOSFETs.

Re: Intel Stockpiling 10nm Chips

#106

Post by neltnerb » Sun, Apr 28, 2019, 6:15 AM UTC

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.

But on-chip FPGAs that reconfigure to enable specialized hardware might be enough to differentiate their product line. And being able to say you support DirectCNN 9.0 on your CPU isn't so absurd... I have the feeling a neural network accelerator will be no more surprising than a floating point unit in 20 years.

Re: Intel Stockpiling 10nm Chips

#107

Post by neltnerb » Sun, Apr 28, 2019, 6:18 AM UTC

analognoise wrote: post #30

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.…

What? No. As far as computing goes, the digital abstraction still and will always hold unless we start doing analog computations like were done with analog computers from the 1940's to about the 1960's (in the West, they lasted longer in Russia due to their inability to compete in Silicon). A vacuum transistor, used as a switch, is still a switch.

FWIW, I believe there's a theorem that given an allowable error rate in a digital computation was literally equivalent to a noise level in an analog computation. I agree that they are cool, especially for things like feedback and asynchronicity, but I'm not sure that they're fundamentally going to give us that much better results quantitatively.

Re: Intel Stockpiling 10nm Chips

#108

Post by whatever1 » Sun, Apr 28, 2019, 6:53 AM UTC

The intel CPU situation is pretty embarrassing. I built back in 2009 a desktop with the intel i7-920 @2.66GHz (the first real quad core from intel) which I bought for less than $300. I look today and the cpu I can get for less than $300 is a 6 core i5 9600K @3.7 GHz. According to Passmark [1], this new CPU, is less than 2.5x faster overall, despite the additional 2 cores, and the much higher frequency. Intel just spent 10 years designing sockets and mobos and mocking ARM instead of concentrating on how to push the computing (mobile & desktop) technology forward.

(1) https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/Intel-i5-9600K-vs-Intel...

Re: Intel Stockpiling 10nm Chips

#109

Post by atq2119 » Sun, Apr 28, 2019, 6:57 AM UTC

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…

It really depends on your workload. I need to compile large code bases often, and upgrading to a Threadripper last year made my life much more pleasant.

Re: Intel Stockpiling 10nm Chips

#110

Post by adrianN » Sun, Apr 28, 2019, 7:08 AM UTC

whatever1 wrote: post #108

The intel CPU situation is pretty embarrassing. I built back in 2009 a desktop with the intel i7-920 @2.66GHz (the first real quad core from intel) which I bought for less than $300. I look today and the cpu I can get for less than $300 is a 6 core i5 9600K @3.7 GHz. According to Passmark [1], this new CPU, is less than 2.5x faster overall, despite the additional 2 cores, and the much higher frequency. Intel just spe…

The TDP is a lot lower for the newer processor. Performance per Watt has improved quite a bit over the last years. Given that datacenters and mobile applications are increasingly more important than traditional "TDP doesn't matter" desktops, I think this is a positive development.