Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Intel Stockpiling 10nm Chips

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 131 posts

Re: Intel Stockpiling 10nm Chips

#111

Post by atq2119 »

wtallis wrote: post #63
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?

Multi-chip packages are getting more common, with Intel's EMIB and AMD's new EPYC processors. Only portions of the CPU are moving to leading-edge fab processes while things like the memory controller and iGPU are good candidates to stay on proven processes (eg 14nm).

Ironically, the leaked roadmap shows a product with a 14nm (old process) CPU combined with a 10nm (new process) GPU.

The article's interpretation is that Intel are struggling to get clock rates up on 10nm.

Re: Intel Stockpiling 10nm Chips

#112

Post by adrianN »

benrbray wrote: post #55
vbezhenar wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But at the same time, I'm considering replacing my 2015 HP laptop because my "A" key stopped working, and the cost to replace the keyboard is 25% the cost of a new laptop, which I'll need anyway in another year or two even if the keyboard were fixed.

Paying 25% of a new laptop to increase the lifespan of your current laptop by 25-50% is a fairly rational decision, especially if you factor in the environmental impact of replacing the whole machine.

Re: Intel Stockpiling 10nm Chips

#113

Post by fungi »

benrbray wrote: post #55
vbezhenar wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But at the same time, I'm considering replacing my 2015 HP laptop because my "A" key stopped working, and the cost to replace the keyboard is 25% the cost of a new laptop, which I'll need anyway in another year or two even if the keyboard were fixed.

that pretty disappointing, i would expect a bit better from HP.

is it a consumer grade or corporate model?

Re: Intel Stockpiling 10nm Chips

#114

Post by purpleidea »

mbell wrote: post #73
bogomipz wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"TSMC is already doing risk 5nm production and 3nm seems entirely viable." What is "risk production?" Is this similar to prototyping? I'm not familiar with this term. Thanks

It's analogous to a release candidate in software. Basically means the fab line has passed all tests and run some test chips but hasn't actually done a production run of anything yet. The risk of issues / bad yield is higher than it would be after a few million chips have been run through the fab to work out all the kinks. In practical terms it means they aren't building low cost consumer products yet, they are proba…

> low volume high $ parts that desperately need 5nm

What sorts of parts fit this criteria? Details would be appreciated, thanks!

Re: Intel Stockpiling 10nm Chips

#115

Post by johncolanduoni »

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…

Quantum computing is profoundly unlikely to be a solution to maintaining performance increases in desktop, datacenter, or mobile processors. Unless someone comes up with a good way to do a single thing people use a PC, phone, or server (outside of very specific HPC applications) via a quantum algorithm that isn't just a classical one with extra steps, it would not be useful at all for this.

Re: Intel Stockpiling 10nm Chips

#116

Post by zrm »

analognoise wrote: post #33
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…

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.

Couldn't we just go back to the older transistor densities? Forget about 5nm and instead keep tuning the 32nm process (or whatever the last reliable one was) for yields and power efficiency.

Modern processors are faster than Sandy Bridge, but not by an overwhelming amount, and it's not clear how much of the improvement is due to smaller transistor sizes now that they no longer result in clock speed increases, rather than design improvements that are independent of transistor size.

There has to be a market for something with 80% of the performance and 2000% the reliability.

Re: Intel Stockpiling 10nm Chips

#117

Post by Strom »

purpleidea wrote: post #114
mbell wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's analogous to a release candidate in software. Basically means the fab line has passed all tests and run some test chips but hasn't actually done a production run of anything yet. The risk of issues / bad yield is higher than it would be after a few million chips have been run through the fab to work out all the kinks. In practical terms it means they aren't building low cost consumer products yet, they are proba…

> low volume high $ parts that desperately need 5nm What sorts of parts fit this criteria? Details would be appreciated, thanks!

Cryptocurrency mining hardware probably fits it. Not that low volume is preferred, but better performance per watt efficiency is definitely worth high $.

Re: Intel Stockpiling 10nm Chips

#118

Post by imtringued »

rayiner wrote: post #45
Const-me wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Processors are not that fast yet, but computers as a whole are. 20 years ago we had Pentium 3 500MHz, 2 FLOPs/cycle, 1 GFlops. GPU of my desktop PC computes 11 TFlops, that's 4+ orders of magnitude faster. For CPUs alone it's indeed less impressive, $500 for that P3 inflated to $760, the comparable modern CPU is Threadripper 2920X, 16 flops/cycle * 12 cores * 3.5 GHz = 672 GFlops.

> GPU of my desktop PC computes 11 TFlops, that's 4+ orders of magnitude faster. But they’re much lower quality (less flexible) FLOPs. If you don’t have much data parallelism or heavy conditional logic for each datum, you’re not going to come close to 11 teraflops.

Fortunately the most resource demanding algorithms involving grapgics or machine learning can run on GPUs.

Re: Intel Stockpiling 10nm Chips

#119

Post by imtringued »

chx wrote: post #91
notyourwork wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Memory and graphics are the limiting factors these days moreso than CPU.

Memory... if you mean the amounts, not really. The gap between the necessary and the possible is really huge now. 8GB is more than enough for everyday computing and any two slot DDR4 laptop can do 64GB RAM.

8GB in an age of electron is pushing it. If one more idiot decides to turn one of your commonly used applications into a memory guzzler you will be forced to upgrade.

Re: Intel Stockpiling 10nm Chips

#120

Post by ksec »

mbell wrote: post #10
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?

TSMC is already doing risk 5nm production and 3nm seems entirely viable. We won't see a 'wall' until sometime after 3nm (~2025). Depending on whom you talk to, 2nm and smaller process sizes are also viable. I wouldn't expect any serious shift away from silicon processes till 2030.

And just a Note, TSMC Node Number is like one step smaller than Intel's equivalent. So TSMC 7nm DUV is roughly Intel 10nm.

And to the point the OP was asking, I don't think there is a technical problem to 3nm, or even 2nm process size. Expect this year's iPhone A Series SoC to be on 7nm EUV, 5nm in 2020, 3nm in 2022, likely 2nm in 2024 / 2025. There may be a 5nm+ and 3nm+ in between those. Or as TSMC's CEO Joked, expect to see 5.5nm in the future.

We don't have a technical barrier, we do have an economical / cost barrier. With every node progression near to doubling of design cost, not everyone can afford to be on leading node. [1] The extremetech article is an easy to read version of Semi Engineering [2], if we assume the number are correct ( I do think the number are little exaggerated ) $500M for 5nm. Apple will need to find a $2.5 BOM reduction per iPhone to off set that cost. Qualcomm will have to sell their chip $5 to $10 more expensive. Now if you imagine $1B for 3nm, and $2B+ for 2nm.

Unless you are Apple, who can easily hike the price by another $100. For others like Qualcomm, this is going to create lots of problems unless they could spread the design cost over many more units.

[1] https://www.extremetech.com/computing/272096-3nm-process-nod...

[2] https://semiengineering.com/big-trouble-at-3nm/

Post reply on HN