My AMD positions like this
Intel is dying and we can’t save it
21–30 of 268 posts
Re: Intel is dying and we can’t save it
#22I'd be cautious about the use of "We Can't Save It" in the title of this article. This industry has a history of big players losing steam and then making big comebacks.
Including Intel themselves, who came back from the Pentium 4 Prescott design disaster, late dual-core support, and late x86_64 support. And then promptly ate everyone's lunch with the Core 2 Duo and ruled unchallenged for a decade.
Re: Intel is dying and we can’t save it
#23How is Intel dying if AMD can't even produce enough chips to avoid being out of stock the whole time? Production bottlenecks with TSMC are a thing.
Re: Intel is dying and we can’t save it
#24Re: Intel is dying and we can’t save it
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
Realistically, Intel only have to get one process node right to either be right back in the game or buy themselves years more time to play with. They are currently somewhere between 3-5 times behind TSMC lithographically, but nowhere near that far behind in raw performance, which suggests that they could at very least knock AMD off their perch in single-threaded work. Obviously process nodes are much harder than pret…
> 3-5 times behind TSMC lithographically, I'm not entirely sure that is true. TSMC plays fast and loose with their definition of node. Any fab folks want to speak up? What I mean by that: https://www.pcgamesn.com/amd/tsmc-7nm-5nm-and-3nm-are-just-n... "And also goes some way to explaining why, despite TSMC offering a nominally 7nm process, the general consensus has been that Intel’s 10nm design is pretty much analogo…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor_count#MOSFET_nodes
Look it up yourself. Intel being on 14nm vs (say) 5nm is actually quite flattering to Intel.
Re: Intel is dying and we can’t save it
#26Intel innovates in process. Everything else is ruled by backwards compatibility and frenetic management scared to stay the course. (The vast majority of projects are killed if they don't tape out in ~2 years.) Intel will shift to a TSMC model. They have the best fabs on the planet, and the best fab engineers. I believe it is something like a 3 millions dollars lost per minute if they are idle. They have already start…
I mean their Sunnyvale HQ was a kind of mini mimic of the Whitehouse (at least to me, if you use your imagination a tad) --except for the garish storm fences that surrounded it.
Re: Intel is dying and we can’t save it
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 3-5 times behind TSMC lithographically, I'm not entirely sure that is true. TSMC plays fast and loose with their definition of node. Any fab folks want to speak up? What I mean by that: https://www.pcgamesn.com/amd/tsmc-7nm-5nm-and-3nm-are-just-n... "And also goes some way to explaining why, despite TSMC offering a nominally 7nm process, the general consensus has been that Intel’s 10nm design is pretty much analogo…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor_count#MOSFET_nodes Look it up yourself. Intel being on 14nm vs (say) 5nm is actually quite flattering to Intel.
That only lists the number, not what the # actually means in terms of actual lithography or more importantly, transitor performance. It used to be minimum feature size, or just L of the gate, but with finfet it can be an overloaded term. Scaling in x of .75 and y of .7 lead to 10% performance improvement per node at Intel. TSMC hasn't been that clear. And that doesn't even account for increase in metal layers, pitch of layers (or if they use poly lower layers to get even faster gains), or average track density due to above/below electromigration minimums.
EDIT: All of this stuff is usually stated at ISSCC every time a new process is announced, so it isn't NDA. I haven't followed this in years which is why I was asking for a process person to step in.
Re: Intel is dying and we can’t save it
#28I see Intel not being dominant, having to take a back seat, shrinking a bit.
But dying??
Nup, I'm not seeing this at all.
I mean AMD for years survived in a situation much worse then Intel currently is.
Intel's productions nodes might be behind TSMC's but they are still quite valuable, not all chips need 5nm processes. Heck we could say most chips don't need it.
Intel is still innovating, just because they currently lack behind doesn't mean that will stay that way.
Even when lacking behind wrt. the production node Intel still manged to produce Chips which are often not much worse then the competition.
Intel is not just about CPU's.
Etc.
So no Intel is not dying at all.
It's taking damage, and lost dominance but it still has a fairly good shot at survival and might even take back dominance (in a 2-3 years). Or it might not but still stay competitive.
And if we look at the world situation TSMC might not be a think anymore in a view years. It would make me supper angry but thinks are heading in that direction (China Taiwan conflict).
Re: Intel is dying and we can’t save it
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
Realistically, Intel only have to get one process node right to either be right back in the game or buy themselves years more time to play with. They are currently somewhere between 3-5 times behind TSMC lithographically, but nowhere near that far behind in raw performance, which suggests that they could at very least knock AMD off their perch in single-threaded work. Obviously process nodes are much harder than pret…
> 3-5 times behind TSMC lithographically, I'm not entirely sure that is true. TSMC plays fast and loose with their definition of node. Any fab folks want to speak up? What I mean by that: https://www.pcgamesn.com/amd/tsmc-7nm-5nm-and-3nm-are-just-n... "And also goes some way to explaining why, despite TSMC offering a nominally 7nm process, the general consensus has been that Intel’s 10nm design is pretty much analogo…
Every fab plays loose and fast with the terms, including Intel these days.
More or less TSMC 7nm := Intel 10nm, and TSMC 5nm := Intel 7nm. It's more complex than that, one has denser logic while the other has denser SRAM and what have you, but it's a good baseline.
Since Intel is struggling with 10nm but is shipping, that puts TSMC about a node and a half ahead.
If you want to dig in deeper, wikichip has most of the public specifics on the process nodes (which are heavily shrouded in secrecy). For instance: https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/7_nm_lithography_process
Re: Intel is dying and we can’t save it
#30Any analysis that says that Intel's death is being precipitated by AMD and Apple rather than by TSMC is pretty much worth ignoring. The fact that they're almost equivalent to those two at 5nm when Intel is at 14nm+++++++++ shows how killer the RTL and tape out folk are at Intel. The real fight has always been at the fab layer.
It also shows that you can't compare nm measurements which measure slightly different thinks and are missing out a lot of factors ;=)