Is Intel's 18A (~2nm) their own hardware or did they acquire ASML equipment for this plant?
Intel Core Ultra Series 3 Debut as First Built on Intel 18A
111–120 of 187 posts
Re: Intel Core Ultra Series 3 Debut as First Built on Intel 18A
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nearly all modern SOCs have built in RAM now. Apple Silicon does it, AMD Strix Halo and beyond do it, Intel Lunar Lake does it, most ARM SOCs from vendors other than Apple do it… Now, unified memory shared freely between CPU and GPU would be cool, like Apple and AMD SH have, if that’s what you meant.
Isnt Strix Halo and apple's m series a bit different. Iirc you need to choose how much ram will be allocated to the igpu, whereas on mac it is all handled dynamically.
On the Mac it's all dynamically handled.
With Strix Halo there's two ways of going about it; either set how much memory you want allocated to GPU in BIOS (Less desirable), or set the memory allocation to the GPU to 512MB in the BIOS, and the driver will do it all dynamically much like on a Mac.
Re: Intel Core Ultra Series 3 Debut as First Built on Intel 18A
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
I got a MacBook. No, not an air or pro, just MacBook.
Back when there were MacBooks, it was MacBook (standard model), MacBook Air (lighter variant), and MacBook Pro (more expensive, high-performance variant). Sure, 3 is more complicated than 2, but come on. If you really want to complain, you can go back to the first unibody MacBook, which did not fit that pattern, or the interim period when high-DPI displays were being rolled out progressively, but let’s be serious. Th…
> The fact is that even at the worst of times their range could be described in 2 sentences.
It’s a good time to buy one. They are all good.
It would be interesting to know how many SKUs are hidden behind the simple purchase interface on their site. With the various storage and colour options, it must be over 30.
Re: Intel Core Ultra Series 3 Debut as First Built on Intel 18A
#114Is Intel's 18A (~2nm) their own hardware or did they acquire ASML equipment for this plant?
Intel never made EUV machines, never claimed to make EUV machines, never aspired to make EUV machines, and have run multiple marketing campaigns bragging about the ASML EUV machines they purchased.
And even prior to EUV, Intel didn't make their own lithography tools.
Re: Intel Core Ultra Series 3 Debut as First Built on Intel 18A
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure I've ever heard of a single task that comes built into the system and uses the NPU.
Remove background from an image. Summarize some text. OCR to select text or click links in a screenshot. Relighting and centering you in your webcam. Semantic search for images and files. A lot of that is in the first party Mac and Windows apps.
Selecting text in a photo is a game changer. I love it.
Re: Intel Core Ultra Series 3 Debut as First Built on Intel 18A
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apple is very consistent. You have the MacBook Air (lighter, more portable variant) and the MacBook Pro (more expensive and powerful variant). They don’t mess around with model numbers.
Apple is so "consistent" the way to know which kind of an Air or Pro it is, is to find the tiny print on the bottom that's a jumble of letters like "MGNE3" and google it. And depending on what you're trying to use it for, you need to map it to a string like "MacBookAir10,1" or "A2337" or "Macbook Air Late 2022". Oh also the Macbook Air (2020) is a different processor architecture than Macbook Air (2020).
The canonical way if you need a version number is the "about this Mac" dialog (here it says Mac Studio 2022).
If you need to be technical, System Information says Mac13,1 and these identifiers have been extremely consistent for about 30 years.
Your product number encodes much more information than that, and about the only time when it is actually required is to see whether it is eligible for a recall.
> Oh also the Macbook Air (2020) is a different processor architecture than Macbook Air (2020).
Right, except that one is MacBook Air (retina, 2020), Macbookair9,1, and the other is MacBook Air (M1, 2020), MacBookAir10,1. It happens occasionally, but the fact that you had to go back 5 years to a period in which the lineup underwent a double transition speaks volume.
Re: Intel Core Ultra Series 3 Debut as First Built on Intel 18A
#117Any speculation on what the equivalent TSMC node is for Intel 18A?
It’s the final phase of Intel’s 5N4Y plan aimed at reaching parity with TSMC by the end of 2025, so it’s comparable to TSMC’s most advanced node N2 - [0]
As for comparison between the two: According to TechInsights, Intel's 18A could offer higher performance, whereas TSMC's N2 may provide higher transistor density - [1]
[0] - https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/intel-announ...
[1] - https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/intels-18a-and-ts...
Re: Intel Core Ultra Series 3 Debut as First Built on Intel 18A
#118x86? max 96GB RAM? is this a joke?
It's 96 GB max when using LPDDR5, or 128 GB when using DDR5. These are consumer chips with the same 128-bit memory bus width that x86 consumer chips have been using for many years, and this is a laptop-specific product line so they're not trying to squeeze in as many ranks of memory as possible.
Re: Intel Core Ultra Series 3 Debut as First Built on Intel 18A
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perhaps in a vacuum… On package memory is claimed to be a 40% reduction in power consumption. To beat actual LL by 30%, it means the PL chip must actually be ~58% more efficient in an apples-to-apples non-SoC configuration. Possible if they doped PL’s silicon with magic pixie dust.
> On package memory is claimed to be a 40% reduction in power consumption. 40% reduction in what power consumption? I don't think memory is usually responsible for even 40% of the total SoC + memory power, and bringing memory on-package doesn't make it consume negative power.
Lunar Lake had a 40% reduction in PHY power use by using memory directly onto the processor packaging (MoP)...roughly going from 3-4 Watts to 2 Watts...
Re: Intel Core Ultra Series 3 Debut as First Built on Intel 18A
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
It means they did cost cutting on Lunar Lake and are excited to sell a lot of them at similar or higher prices.
> cost cutting on Lunar Lake It's... the launch vehicle for a new process. Literally the opposite of "cost cutting", they went through the trouble of tooling up a whole fab over multiple years to do this. Will 18A beat TSMC and save the company? We don't know. But they put down a huge bet that it would, and this is the hand that got dealt. It's important, not something to be dismissed.
Lunar Lake integrated DRAM on the package, which was faster and more power efficient, this reverts that. They also replaced part of the chip from being sourced from TSMC to from themselves. And if their foundry is competitive, they should be shaking other foundry customers down the way TSMC is.
If they have actually mostly caught up to TSMC, props, but also, I wish they hadn't given up on EUV for so long. Instead they decided to ship chips overclocked so high they burn out in months.