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Intel is all-in on backside power delivery

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Re: Intel is all-in on backside power delivery

#151

Post by smolder »

rektide wrote: post #12
Tuna-Fish wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They really are not making amazing GPUs. The ones on the market are only decent value because Intel is selling them far below what it cost to make them, because there's no way they could sell them at proper prices. Even still, they have ceased production, and the product is still on the shelves.

I'd have it the other way around. Intel's doing OK with cpus but man their P-core is way too big & hot. They've been adding and adding to the same core design for a decade & it's a monster. Also their process is still flagging. They've managed well for such limitations but real change has to come, soon. Meanwhile Arc is kicking ass. It's launch was a dud, but the team has really kept pushing on making the chip run be…

They're only too hot and inefficient when run at 5+ ghz. You'll see those same P cores perform very admirably in terms of efficiency when they are run in their peak efficiency zone, like in server and mobile chips.

Re: Intel is all-in on backside power delivery

#152

Post by fennecfoxy »

evilduck wrote: post #150
fennecfoxy wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"My old PC" Well of course a newer laptop of going to be "snappier" lmao. "My new car is faster and more fuel efficient than my old car"

11th gen Intel isn't some ancient PC, it released in 2021, before the M1 that user compared it to. Don't be disingenuous.

Aha, it's still a perfectly cromulent point. _every_ device starts off fast, phones laptops, whatever.

I've had quite a few MBs and they all slow down after a while, needing an overhaul/refresh in the same way that windows machines, phones etc do.

Get that red memory pressure and kernel desperately swapping pages in & out, woooo. Perhaps things are different with >16GB machines with the SSD mostly empty.

Re: Intel is all-in on backside power delivery

#153

Post by TheRealPomax »

wtallis wrote: post #39
TheRealPomax wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does "start leading" even mean? Every CPU launch, AMD is ahead and the Intel beats them or Intel is ahead and then AMD beats them. There is no leading here. There are only wins for people who want CPUs that keep getting faster, cooler, require fewer watts to run, and overall improve generation upon generation.

It's only been perennial leapfrogging for the past several years, when AMD has been doing well with their Zen processors and Intel has been on a recovery path from their 10nm failures. But before that, there were a few stretches of several years each where Intel was solidly in the lead and AMD was always an also-ran. Intel couldn't have retained their dominant market share for decades without having those long period…

Sounds like someone either wasn't around for, or forgot about, both the Athlon era (when folks were just as likely to have an Intel as they were AMD), as well as the 486 days, where folks were just as likely to have an Intel as they were a Cyrix (thanks, Quake, for ruining that party).

It's not "only the past few years", it's "we're back to healthy competition" after a period of basically illegal business practices breaking the market.

Re: Intel is all-in on backside power delivery

#154

Post by evilduck »

fennecfoxy wrote: post #152
evilduck wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

11th gen Intel isn't some ancient PC, it released in 2021, before the M1 that user compared it to. Don't be disingenuous.

Aha, it's still a perfectly cromulent point. _every_ device starts off fast, phones laptops, whatever. I've had quite a few MBs and they all slow down after a while, needing an overhaul/refresh in the same way that windows machines, phones etc do. Get that red memory pressure and kernel desperately swapping pages in & out, woooo. Perhaps things are different with >16GB machines with the SSD mostly empty.

I've never had slowdown issues with PCs or Macs unless hardware is outright failing. You can stop gaslighting us now.

Re: Intel is all-in on backside power delivery

#155

Post by hn_thrwn »

svantana wrote: post #125
hn_thrwn wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow so we still design CPUs on silk screens by hand?

I'm writing this comment on a computer, not with pencil and paper. Does that mean it was automated?

Are you nailing it to a church door when you're done?

Re: Intel is all-in on backside power delivery

#156

Post by boringuser2 »

wtallis wrote: post #96
boringuser2 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely disagree. The new P's are insane. I have an i5-1240p and it's the best chip I've ever owned. 12 cores, 25w tdp.

The -P SoCs are not the same thing as the P-cores contained within. The i5-1240P SoC has 4 P-cores and 8 E-cores. The -P at the end of the model number denotes it as being in the middle product segment of their mobile lineup, between the lower-power -U models and the higher-power -H models. All three product segments use the same P-cores and E-cores, but in varying quantities and clock speeds.

Apologies, I misunderstood.

In any case, the i5-1240p is fantastic. I wouldn't prefer any other SOC over it given it's an Intel, an x64 chipset and an absolute animal in power, compatibility and performance (especially multi-core).

Also, their n100 chipsets are insanity for low-end, low TDP computing. I don't think there is anything comparable on the market. As I understand it, this uses all efficiency cores.

An n100 server could handle any task you could ever throw it and only pull 6watts of power.

Re: Intel is all-in on backside power delivery

#157

Post by boringuser2 »

Tuna-Fish wrote: post #18
rektide wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd have it the other way around. Intel's doing OK with cpus but man their P-core is way too big & hot. They've been adding and adding to the same core design for a decade & it's a monster. Also their process is still flagging. They've managed well for such limitations but real change has to come, soon. Meanwhile Arc is kicking ass. It's launch was a dud, but the team has really kept pushing on making the chip run be…

Again, it only looks good because it's sold at such a deep discount. A770 has a 400mm^2 die and a 256-bit bus to 16GB of GDDR6. It only competes favorably to cards that cost less than half of what it did to manufacture. You can say that it's a great deal for a consumer, but it is a terrible deal for Intel, and the only reason they are selling them for such a price is that they already have the stock and couldn't sell…

Tuna-Fish decides what qualifies as a "discount" simply by shooting out of his ass, unless you have insider knowledge you'd like to share.

Re: Intel is all-in on backside power delivery

#158

Post by icelancer »

bee_rider wrote: post #142
icelancer wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's to hoping a real engineer (Gelsinger) at the helm will make the difference.

It is hard to nail down exactly when things started going poorly for Intel, but they definitely weren’t going well under Krzanich (engineering background) and I have trouble blaming Swan given the dysfunctional company he inherited. If Gelsinger pulls it all together, IMO Swam deserves some credit for laying a good foundation. Intel has put out some interesting chips in the last couple years. Anyway, their dominant y…

I personally don't think that Swan and Krzanich did incredibly stupid things; I think it's just very hard to run a billion dollar corporation. A few mistakes, a few unlucky breaks, and a few bad decisions - yes, they made some - can really turn your fortunes bad fast. Having run a small business myself (two, actually), you realize how much a role luck, fortune, and randomness plays in your success and failure.

That said, if there's a person built for this job, Gelsinger is him. Life's better when this industry has competition.

Re: Intel is all-in on backside power delivery

#159

Post by thrtythreeforty »

rcxdude wrote: post #116
lisper wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think it's necessary to debug signal layers by physically connecting to them (other than the I/O pins of the chip)? The only time you would actually try to connect to a chip other than through the I/O pins is in an adversarial situation. You might want to read this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_for_testing

It's not usually necessary, but they do in fact have this capability and do use it for testing and failure analysis (I think it is mostly used for debugging fabrication issues, where physically seeing the construction of the chip is important). The other amazing thing they can do is some level of rework: creating or removing connections to test a change or hypothesis without the expensive process of making a new mask…

Typically failed transistors are identified by the DFT scan chain. After the logic is netlisted (meaning, they create a giant list of flops, gates, and the wires that connect them), the DFT tooling adds additional inputs to each flop that let it be controlled by a sideband signal, as a giant shift register. So you can put the chip in DFT mode and set all the flops to a known pattern. Run the clock a few cycles and you know what state the chip should be in (because you can simulate it). So you scan that giant shift register back out and check for differences.

This process is automated, and for a given chip you might have a few gigabytes of stimulus total, which can collectively identify a single failed transistor (and kick that part out of the batch).

Now, I have no idea how you take a picture of a bad transistor. That's beyond me.

Re: Intel is all-in on backside power delivery

#160

Post by wpietri »

svantana wrote: post #125
hn_thrwn wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow so we still design CPUs on silk screens by hand?

I'm writing this comment on a computer, not with pencil and paper. Does that mean it was automated?

Have you ever published anything without using a computer? Comparing that process versus this, I think it's obvious the answer is yes.
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